I’ve been chanting for the last few months, and maybe longer, that our current economic environment represents a great opportunity for new and smaller brands. At an ASR seminar in September, somebody actually, finally, asked me, “What do you mean by that exactly?” My answer was that if you were a specialty retailer, and were still standing, you weren’t likely to succeed by relying on big, national brands as much as More…
Posts Tagged ‘Brand Building’
Opportunities for new Labels and Small Brands. What, Exactly, Should You Do?
Wednesday, October 21st, 2009Look! 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…
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…
You Did What !!?? Starting a New Snowboard Brand
Wednesday, October 30th, 2002Your first reaction is that they must be crazy. Starting a new brand when the snowboard market is dominated by five companies fighting to take market share from each other, pushing distribution to every corner of the retail world and, to some extent, using price as a weapon in the battle doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense. You can’t meet their prices. You can’t afford their ad budget. You can’t pay big More…
Life in the Real World; Hoisted by My Own Petard
Sunday, August 9th, 1998I’ve had the luxury, over the last couple of years, to be able to dispense advice and commentary from the relative safety of an observer’s perch. Suddenly and, amazingly, of my own choosing, I’ve given up a perfectly comfortable life style to reenter the snowboard management fray. I must be out of my mind. I’ve done this at a time when the snowboard industry consolidation, if measured by the number of companies, More…
Market Niches; Gimme One! Now! But How?
Thursday, July 10th, 1997Last issue I took most of this space to discuss some tactical measures businesses could take to respond to the extremely difficult competitive conditions in the snowboard industry. I went on to say in what may have seemed like an after thought that none of those measures mattered if you didn’t have a way to compete. That is, a market niche you can succeed in. Then I ran out of space. More…
