Recession? You’re Kidding- Right? Please?

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The NASDAQ stock market rocketed towards heaven for several years. Its decline has been equally spectacular. Four trillion dollars of value have been wiped out in a year. It’s matched its worst fall ever in percentage terms, but it’s done it in half the time. Should we be surprised? No. The statistical concept of “regression to the mean” is working like it always works. Things do tend to even out. What goes up must come down. If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is.

 
You get the idea. 
 
Now, after an unprecedented economic expansion, we’re facing, or we’re already in, a recession. Pundits are hoping for a soft landing. I’m hoping for one.
 
The skateboard market has taken off like the stock market or the economy of the 90s. Someday it will soften. A little? Or will we be facing regression to the mean? If (maybe when?) we are, what should skate retailers be doing?
 
The Word at the Retailer
 
The first thing I did was to call at random half a dozen skate shops in various parts of the country. I’d introduce myself and get the shop manager or owner on the phone. When I ask if the economic slowdown was having any impact on skateboarding sales, the responses ranged from a long pause to hysterical laughter in the background. I think I was lucky they didn’t want to offend anybody from Transworld.
 
Without exception, the response was some variation on, “What recession? You’re kidding, right?” One San Diego shop talked about sales being the same. Everybody else talked about them being up.
 
Carolyn Zuzworsky, the owner of CD Skate shop in New York, said it was “so crazy we’ve had to hire extra people.” NC Skate in North Carolina has been open three years. Manager Trey Womble indicates sales had grown every month. With a skate park opening two blocks away, he anticipates that will continue.
 
Tim and Stephanie Pogue, at Faction in Seattle, see nothing but strength in the skateboard market.
 
Reggae Destin at Push Skateboarding and Culture in Illinois told me there was a “surge of new little kids coming out of nowhere.” His only problem is the lousy Chicago weather. That would be a problem for me too.
 
Lots of happy, happy, joy, joy going around. Margins on decks are still lousy, but expensive shoes are flying out the door and a lot of kids somehow have money (nobody knows exactly where they get it) for new decks as often as every couple of weeks.
 
See paragraph one under “If it sounds too good to be true….” I am reminded that it was March of 2000 when a major brokerage house finally recommended internet stocks they had heretofore pronounced as too expensive. That was the top. Sort of like going to the last ASR show and seeing the Savier shoe brand.   
 
Still, things are great in the skateboard market at retail, and there are no clouds on the horizon. Everybody is making lots of money.
 
So stop reading. Obviously, there’s nothing to worry about. But if you don’t mind, I’m going to finish this article anyway. What I want to suggest is that there are some things you can do that are not only good for your business now, but will serve you well if someday, impossible as it seems now, things aren’t quite so good.
 
Don’t Kid Yourself
 
Everybody looks like a hero when cash flow is good. Customers are coming in without much marketing expense. Inventory is flying off the shelf. There’s less price sensitivity. Skate parks are popping up like mushrooms.
 
Made a couple of bad inventory choices lately? Got one more kid working on the floor than you probably really need? Haven’t bothered to update your web site regularly- or don’t have one? Haven’t bought new racks to replace those old beat up ones? What the hell- the lighting in the store is so bad nobody can see the racks anyway.
 
But it really doesn’t seem to matter. You’re a hero of retailing because the kids, with their parent’s money clutched firmly in their fists, keep coming in. Cash flow makes a few things you could be doing better seem unimportant. It covers up deficiencies.
 
But this is precisely the time when you should attack these issues – for three reasons.
 
First, right now you can afford to. There’s a little extra money in the till. Second, profitability will improve right now if you manage expenses like you would if times weren’t so good and good merchandising can increase your sales even further. Finally, and most importantly, you’ll be positioning yourself for when times aren’t so good. Let me explain.
 
Someday, (Next month? Next year? Next decade?) because skateboarding won’t be so hot, or because there will be less money floating around, or just because there are too many places to buy skateboards, customers will be harder to come by. They’ll still come of course, but not as often and they won’t spend as much. Why will they come to your store?
 
Maybe it will because you put in those new racks and improved the lighting. Or because you send them occasional emails on what’s new in the store. Perhaps you’re a habit for them- your shop has consistently offered them the merchandise they want and expect to see. You’re part of their lifestyle. Maybe they’ve got a personal relationship with you, or with one of the sales people (assuming you keep sales people long enough for a relationship to form).
 
However you did it, you’ve created an image of your shop in your core customer’s mind. There’s a more durable relationship there, and that relationship can survive when times aren’t so good. Your customer knows what you stand for and why they shop there. Make sure you’re building that relationship now.
 
 
Don’t Just Sell
 
Brands often get screwed up because they expand their distribution too far, too fast. Shops can get screwed up if they become willing to sell anything to anybody.
 
In both cases, the customer gets confused. He loses his motivation to buy that brand or go to that shop. Right now, you don’t even notice the impact. You’ve got a skateboarding feeding frenzy.
 
I’m not suggesting you shouldn’t be responsive to what the customer is asking for. I’m not saying its bad to grow sales. But growth of sales alone shouldn’t be your exclusive focus and only measure of success- because right now anybody can grow skateboarding sales.
 
Focus also on gross margin and select products and brands at least partly on the margin you can earn. Control expenses. Paying attention to just those two things will serve you well now and if the day comes when sales aren’t so easy to come by. 
 
Never lose sight of who your customers are and why they buy from you. Try writing that down and hanging it over your desk. Look at it every day. Make your purchasing decisions through that filter.   
 
If you find you can’t easily write that down, or if when you have written it you know in your heart of hearts it’s bullshit, or it’s three pages long, you have a problem.   
 
This will especially be an issue with new shops who have only known the good times and have never had to figure this out. If your shop has been in business more than a couple of years, you may have had the good fortune to have to succeed when skateboarding wasn’t going off. If so, this little exercise I’ve suggested shouldn’t be a big deal to you.
 
If anybody wants to email me their statements of whom their customers are and why they buy from you, I’d be glad to comment on them. If I get a bunch of them it might be the basis of an article for SkateBiz, though of course I wouldn’t identify the shops.
 
Good Business
 
The challenge, then, is to make hay while the sun shines (whatever that means exactly) but to do it in such a way that you’re ready for a cloudy day. It’s a bit of a balancing act. To some extent it goes against human nature because I’m suggesting that selling everything you can isn’t necessarily the right thing to do if you take the slightly longer view. Nor is it the only thing to focus on. I’m also asking you to recognize and react to your opportunities to do things better when there’s no pressure to do so. That’s the easiest time to do it. But I’ve learned that it’s also the time when any of us are least likely to do it. I never worry about marketing my consulting business when I’m busy with lots of consulting.
 
I think we’re about to enter a bit of an economic downturn. I don’t know how severe it will be, or how much skateboarding will be affected. The good news is that the things I’m suggesting you do to position yourself for it are good business in any economic environment.
 
What would your business look like if sales were down five to twenty percent, and margins were two percentage points lower? How would you react? What can you do to make sure it’s somebody else’s sales and margins that fall? Think about it now. Run your shop well now.

 

 

After the Gold Rush; The Internet’s Role in the Surf Industry, One Year Later

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Just about a year ago, I asked here in Surf Biz what it took to make money on the internet in the surf business. I said that if you were exclusively an etailer, and had to be both a merchant and journalist, it cost a lot of money just to operate, and you had the added expense of building a brand. I saw no financial advantage, and perhaps a disadvantage. Existing brands and retailers already had existing infrastructure and/or brand recognition. They would figure out how to use the internet to their advantage and it would become just another distribution channel, to be used or not depending on their strategy. Ultimately, they would realize that they were in control.

 
Internet e-commerce stocks were in the tank when I wrote that first article last May and things have been basically downhill since then. The Nasdaq has experienced a percentage decline that’s as bad as its worst decline ever, but it’s done it in half the time. There must be a bottom here somewhere.
 
Still moving forward with internet strategies in the surf industry are Becker, Swell, and Hub360. Becker, the four (about to be five) store Southern California surf retailer, is building its internet business based on a strong brand name and existing retail business. The retail business came first.
 
Swell is the leading (maybe the last?) combination etailer and content provider in the surf industry. It also owns and runs the Monster Skate and Cross Rocket web sites. It’s highly successful Surf Line, established in 1985 and purchased by Swell, is the genesis of the business.
 
Hub360, which has yet to launch its site, is positioning itself as a service provider to suppliers and retailers- a place where retailers and suppliers can place orders, check status, and see what’s in inventory.   Essentially, it sees itself as being able to make it easier and cheaper for suppliers to accomplish certain logistical activities and administrative activities that are important to do right, but don’t necessarily represent critical competences.
 
Three different business models. Three different ways to use the internet to build a successful company. Let’s look at each and see what we can learn, how the models might relate, and what the potential opportunities and sticky points are.
 
Becker
 
This is kind of the easiest one to talk about, because they aren’t an internet business, though they do business on the internet. They are a 20 year old, successful, core surf retailer with four (going on five) shops in Southern California.
 
And that brings us quickly to the first generalization we can make about successful internet businesses- in surf or anywhere else. There’s no such thing as a successful internet business- there are just successful businesses that can competitively provide a product or service to a defined customer base that happen to use the internet. The internet is not the source of their competitive advantage and is not their key differentiator, though it facilitates (or maybe makes possible) the delivery of their product or service.
 
Becker’s competitive advantage, according to CEO Dave Hollander, comes from the fact that they are a family of people and employees that sells the cool California culture without bastardizing it. To maintain what he sees as this key competitive advantage, they have intentionally limited their growth to preserve the company’s culture and market position.
 
Their internet site (www.beckersurf.com) first went up three and a half years ago. That’s practically back in the late Bronze Age in internet years. The brand was already credible when the internet presence was established. They didn’t have to begin with no brand recognition and spend lots and lots of time and money creating it. They didn’t have to work very hard to convince brands to allow their product on Becker’s web site due to the trust that long relationship brings. There are no discounted prices on the internet and never anything for sale, Hollander says. Some items end up selling for more than they sell for at a store.
 
They already own the inventory, and buy no inventory for the internet that they wouldn’t be buying for the stores anyway. “Well, no kidding,” I said the first time Dave told me that. But as we talked a little more, the significance hit me.
 
Dave (and, I imagine, any surf retailer who’s been in business twenty years) knows what will sell in his stores and what will not. That’s what he orders. On the internet, it’s a different story. He never knows what’s going to sell well, and where he’ll be shipping it. “The challenge of inventory management if you don’t have retail stores is overwhelming on the net,” states Hollander.
 
If you’re an internet only retailer, how do you choose and manage your inventory? If you never know who your customer is going to be or where they live, how do you order for them? If inventory selection is a crapshoot, what margin can you really expect to earn after discounting the stuff that doesn’t move? How will that discounting affect the perception of your site and brand?
 
A brick and mortar store gets its customers locally, and can learn about purchase patterns. The only thing Dave knows for sure about his internet purchasing patterns is that those U.S. accounts that are shipping to Indonesia always represent credit card fraud, and he won’t ship to them. Becker’s biggest internet problem is, in fact, credit card fraud, estimated to be ten to fifteen percent of orders received though, happily, not of orders shipped.
 
So here’s internet model number one- as an extension of an existing retail brand. With existing brand recognition and the infrastructure and inventory already in place, it’s an efficient, lower risk and cost strategy.
 
In most industries, we’re seeing existing brick and mortar retailers figure the internet out, using the same advantages Becker is using to make it work for them as an extension of their already successful brands.
 
Swell
 
Rumors about Swell being bought, running out of money, or going out of business are as common as fleas on a stray dog. Passing those rumors around seems like an industry obsession. But Swell is still here when most other internet companies aren’t and certainly at least some of the rumors are the result of the overall abysmal performance of the internet sector.
 
In response to all the rumors, Swell CEO Doug Palladini puts it this way: “Swell is not in imminent danger of running out of money. Funding was obtained consistent with a financial model showing profitability by the end of 2001
He didn’t seem inclined to answer questions like, “How much money do you have in the bank?” and “How much are you spending each month?” Well, I tried.
 
Enough of the fun stuff. Let’s get on to the business model.
 
The Swell internet site launched last October. According to Palladini, the business model, since its earliest presentation, wasn’t just about etailing- it always included the concept of brick and mortar retail. He isn’t prepared to be specific about how that will be accomplished or what the timing might be. Other revenue sources include advertising, catalogue sales (the second issue is out), and content syndication.
 
Although this is about surf, it’s a bit hard to talk about the Swell model without reminding everybody that the company includes the Monsterskate and Crossrocket sites for skate and snow boarding respectively. According to the Corporate Overview on the Swell website (www.swell.com), “Swell, Crossrocket and Monsterskate will be the definitive sources, regardless of medium, in the sports and cultures of surfing, snowboarding and skateboarding. Delivering rich content – news, information and entertainment – with extensive community applications and a robust etailing enterprises, Swell, Crossrocket and Monsterskate bring together action sports’ premier editorial talent to produce content of unparalleled quality and depth aimed at the core of each market, yet will appeal to the broader lifestyle audience as well.”
 
That’s a lofty goal. And expensive to achieve. Given the expense, how do you make money at it? Check out below the matrix of Swell’s existing or planned business opportunities.
 
Revenue
Source
                        Market>                                  Surf                Skate             Snow
                                                            Core/Lifestyle   Core/Lifestyle   Core/Lifestyle   
Etailing
Catalog
Retail Stores
Content Syndication
Surf Line
Advertising
 
Surf line only applies to surf obviously. The other revenue sources are potentially valid across the three markets. And they want to address both the core and the lifestyle markets as well. Five revenue sources times three markets is fifteen. Add Surf Line in the surf market. That’s sixteen. If you choose to look at core and lifestyle as related but distinct markets, that’s thirty-two possible market segments.
 
Not all these segments are really distinctive of course. There’s significant crossover and, Swell hopes, (oh god, here comes that word) synergies.
 
Here we are, I think, at internet business generalization number two. Few if any companies selling only to consumers will make it strictly by etailing. The internet is a tool- not a competitive advantage. Existing brick and mortar retailers have it all over etailers, especially if you’re selling fashion, and the brands control product supply.
 
Swell’s first challenge it to build its brand name. Or maybe three brand names, since they seem intent on doing the same with their skate and snow sites.
 
Its next challenge is to get customers. They are going to have to take them from somebody else, unless they believe that what they are doing creates new customers.
 
Time for internet business generalization number three. The internet does not create new customers. Okay, I know there was some kid in Northfield, Minnesota who stumbled on an etailer when he was checking out porn sites and bought something, but that doesn’t amount to a hill of beans, and I believe he probably would have bought it anyway at a traditional retailer.
 
Getting customers requires that Swell do etail as well or better than other etailers. I think they are doing surf content better than anybody, so I guess they might have a leg up there if you believe that people who come to look at content turn into etail customers. They have to do brick and mortar retail at least as well as existing retailers. They have to do catalog at least as well as existing cataloguers.
 
The third challenge is to get all this done. Somebody who’s in a position to know told me that opening a new surf shop requires between $180,000 and $225,000 in inventory plus $100,000 to $250,000 in up front expense. Just to pick the number in the middle, let’s say a total of $375,000 per store. They will have the same brick and mortar retail expense structure as any other brick and mortar retailer. They will have the same catalogue expense structure as any other catalogue retailer. They will have the same etail expense structure as any other etailer. And producing the killer content they have, which I agree is critical to their strategy, ain’t cheap.
 
To quote what I said a year ago, “Chaching! Chaching! Chachaching!”
 
Their final challenge is to make one and one equal three, or at least more than two. They are creating a brand and all these retail channels for the consumer (the same consumer everybody else has/wants) to choose from. Swell has to represent such a ubiquitous buying opportunity that the consumer who normally buys one hundred dollars of stuff buys more than that one hundred dollars. How much more? Don’t know. If that doesn’t happen, they are creating convenience for the consumer for sure but they’ve got a bigger expense structure that has to survive off the same dollar in sales.
 
But fundamentally, I like their “brand centric” concept. So do a number of important surf industry brands including Reef, Quiksilver, Billabong, Oakley and OP who have year long, not inexpensive, commitments to Swell. If they can get big enough fast enough, and create enough brand legitimacy, their different business pieces and revenue sources can feed off each other more than justifying the expense structure.
 
The idea is almost “Amazonian” in conception and I hope the market is large enough to support it. I wish Swell was doing this two years ago, when a recession didn’t seem imminent and money was easier to come by.
 
Hub360
 
When Hub’s business becomes active in the second quarter of the year Hub, as a business to business site, will allow retailers to browse catalogues on line, check inventory, place and track orders, access order history, and use online forecasting tools. Suppliers will be able to track retailer status. Hub President Dan McInerny describes it as a B2B marketplace for the action sports industry.
 
“It will bring together manufacturers, retailers, sales agents and industry organizations into one standard platform that allows them to better communicate, collaborate and conduct business,” he says.
 
Hubs customers will be the suppliers. There will be no charge for retailers to access the various supplier spaces once approved by the supplier. Hub will make its money the same way as somebody who runs a trade show. A company can have as big a presence on the web site as they want, and they will be charged accordingly.
 
Dan stresses that this is a service business that happens to do business on the internet. He’s helping suppliers by outsourcing certain tasks they have to perform, but that don’t represent critical competences to them. He believes Hub can do them better and cheaper.
 
Some suppliers seem to agree. Dan says he has letters of intent from over a dozen of the biggest companies in the industry representing apparel, footwear, optics, wetsuits and accessories. Their focus will be on surf and skate, because that’s the industry they know.   He hopes that once the concept has proven itself, they can license the idea and their proprietary software for use in other industries by people who know those industries.
 
Obviously, the suppliers won’t care if the retailers don’t come. Hub has signed letters from fifty top retailers saying they will use the site, giving the suppliers some assurance that the cash they pay Hub won’t be wasted. Dan indicated that Hub360 expects to be profitable in its first year if nothing happens except that the twelve suppliers sign on the dotted line.
 
Most suppliers may not have the time, energy, focus and/or money to develop their own site that can do everything the Hub site will do. The benefit to the retailer is that they won’t have to learn a different system and functionality for each supplier.
 
Of course, all the suppliers are already doing (well or not so well) what Hub will do for them. For better or worse, they have the systems and resources in place. Resistance to change can be a powerful force, and I’ll be interested to watch how retailers and suppliers adopt Hub’s system. Because the suppliers will still have to physically handle the product (that’s where much of the cost lies in the activities Hub will facilitate) I can imagine that the benefit from working with Hub will be from providing better customer service and having more accurate, timely information, rather than from overall cost reductions achieved.
 
At the end of the day will it work? The concept seems to make sense, but it’s a hell of a lot easier to evaluate an operating business model than it is a concept that has yet to see the light of day.
 
What’s New?
 
Well, I note that the internet stocks have gotten worse since I started writing this and several more companies have gone out of business. I guess I’m not inclined to change any of the conclusions I reached a year ago. Neither Becker, Swell, nor Hub360 are internet companies- they are just companies who use the internet. Their success depends, has always depended, and will continue to depend, on their ability to give their customers what they want- not on the internet.