Yes. And no. The snowboard industry consolidation that started around 1995 or 96 could probably have better been called extermination. Literally hundreds of brands went away either because their founders got tired of losing money or because the Japanese stopped paying cash in advance for snowboards. Though there were exceptions, these brands didn’t get subsumed under the multi-brand umbrella of a large corporation. They just ceased to exist. A Business Week article in September talked More…
Archive for 2005
The Impact of Consolidation; Wasn’t That Over Years Ago?
Wednesday, November 16th, 2005Doing Marketing; What, How and Why?
Monday, November 14th, 2005At the Skateboard Industry Conference earlier this year and in these hallowed pages, I’ve argued: 1. That advertising and promotional tactics like running ads and hiring teams pass for marketing in this industry but aren’t. 2. That marketing (maybe better called market research) is the process of finding out who your customer is and why they buy your product. 3. That few people in skateboarding (or in action sports) More…
Conversations with a Skate Retailer; A (Pretty Much) True Story
Friday, November 4th, 2005Some month ago, I got a call from an actual skate retailer. “It said at the end of the article that you work with companies in transition,” he asked almost as a question. “It’s true,” I told him. “Okay,” he said. “Help me with mine.” The story unfolded like this. He’d been in business for a bunch of years, and loved the business. He was doing about $500,000 a year but increasingly it More…
New Stuff to Do More; New Strategies are Critical as the Snowboard Industry Evolution Continues
Tuesday, August 30th, 2005I remember when this was a simple business. Or at least I thought it was a simple business. You had a pro team, ran some ads, built relationships with core shops, sold C.O.D. or on 30-day terms, and were thrilled if you could get enough product to fill orders. With supply shortages, the fact that quality wasn’t always very good was less crucial. Margins were better anyway. Your team is still valuable, More…
The Dilemma of Being “Core;” Identifying and Managing the Conflict.
Thursday, August 18th, 2005A few years ago I wrote a column called “Are there Any Core Snowboard Shops Left?” It generated a good discussion, though I got burned at the stake by quite a few people. Happily, I was wearing my asbestos underwear. The question, however, is still valid because of some of the problems core shops are having and how important they are to the industry. I want to talk today about why the snowboard More…
Hard Truths about the Action Sports Business; Use Them to Make Lemonade from Lemons
Wednesday, June 15th, 2005As I said in the last issue of Boardsport Source, the way companies choose to compete in the action sports industry and, I suppose, in most industries, is largely responsible for the maturing and consolidation of fast growth industries. Ask the skate and snow people. People way smarter than I have acknowledged that surf’s time will come. It wouldn’t hurt to read that last article before this one. So if you’re one More…
Look! New Brands. That’s Great! Or These People Are Crazy. Or Both.
Friday, April 29th, 2005Probably both. It’s not like brands haven’t been coming and going for years beyond count in skateboarding. Historically, there have been two categories of new brands. The first was the truly new company started by some skaters who wanted in on a burgeoning industry that just happened to be something they loved. The second were the new brands that came from established companies where brands came and went as their popularity rose and More…
The Basis of Competition; How Do We Sell More Stuff?
Friday, April 15th, 2005It’s funny how the fundamentals of business never change. Three years ago at the Surf Industry Conference in Cabo, I facilitated a panel of people from the skateboard industry because skate was going off and the surf guys thought skate was going to have them for lunch or something. Then skate sales plummeted though, happily, they are recovering now. Many of us were around when snowboarding was going to take over the More…
Small Brands Are Cool! How Can They Stay That Way?
Monday, February 21st, 2005Actually, the question is not how small brands can stay cool. It’s how they can stay at all. As in stay here- alive, in existence, solvent. Not toast. I have been so encouraged by the number of small brands I’ve seen in snowboarding recently. I love them. There was a bunch at the SIA show in Vegas. There were some of the same ones at ISPO and some different ones that I’d never heard of. At ISPO More…
Living in the Past- Or Not; The New Old Skateboarding
Wednesday, February 16th, 2005I can’t be the only one it’s occurred to that skateboarding seems to have dodged its historical cycle of disappearing and being reborn every ten years. I think that’s a good thing, though shrinking to nothing and more or less starting over had the advantage of letting everything be fresh and rediscovered. True, sales fell from their peak by maybe a third. But a third is better than nine tenths. And sales are More…
