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 November, 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…
