Jeremy Smith

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A new Italian bicycle manufacturer, Legend, is dual-purposing their showroom to sell other brands related to their core market.

This looks to be a viable trend for premium brands, as also seen at The Stronghold in LA. They carry their own line, but support it with add-on sales of Filson, White’s boots, and other staple heritage brands.

The same concept also plays out well on the web, sell your core product, but support with related items from other vendors.

As department stores suffer from decreased quality of merchandise, premium small retail has a good chance to make up the gap, and bolstering margins with add-on sales is the simplest way to succeed for brand-owned stores.

Over in the bicycle industry, we often refer to the bicycle shaped object or the BSO. You can usually find these hanging out in the big box stores, and often times, at the lower price points at Performance Bike.

After taking a stroll through retail stores this last weekend with my wife, I’ve noticed that the mid-market of apparel and fashion seems to be occupied by what seem to be brand-shaped-objects. That is, entire runs of retail brands that sell endless variants of the same poor quality clothing. There’s nothing behind a brand with no quality or identity to set it apart, and there’s little that can be done with infinite marketing dollars to fix that.

A good place to play this game is thrift stores after the holidays. Thumb through the racks and try to discern any difference in production quality from any mid-market brand after a few wears.

Of course, it gets complicated because you can’t simply spend your way out of the problem unless you’re willing to put in the legwork to learn the difference between luxury (expensive brand-shaped-objects) and premium (genuinely well-made) products. Often times, you’ll see a premium product of higher quality sell for less than a similar luxury item.

Is any wonder consumers are confused and fatigued?

A recent article on self-storage in the NY Times mentions that “we’ve spent more on furniture even as prices have dropped, thereby amassing more of it.” The same appears to be true in other markets, apparel, housewares, etc. As the prices drop, people spend the same, but amass more items of a poorer quality.

This trend has no choice but to reverse, as we are facing a downturn in available income coupled with consumer burn-out. If spending ticks down a little, but consumers choose to again buy higher quality, the premium market will make a comeback against the discount stores. Consumer behavior also predicts this movement, as the early adopter markets have already moved this direction, and the larger consumer backlash against the surge of stuff should follow soon.

Again, this is going to take substantial consumer education to overcome the price barrier. Tactically, there are many options at every contact with your customers, starting at the first encounter all the way to the point of sale.

I’ve helped a few companies and retailers work through price-sensitivity for a premium product. It’s hard going, but it can be done.

Right now, Made in USA and heritage/heritage-styled brands are cleaning up. From all the reports from Vegas this week, it looks like the trend is over the top, and it’s going to start the long slide down through consumer exhaustion.

The question is, how are we going to move forward without losing the focus on quality, longevity, and origin that these brands are encompassing?

This is a question with a 2 to 3 year horizon, and the replacement trends that seem to be lurking now are 90’s surf style (see Warriors of Radness) and another wave of grunge (logical follow-up to flannel and boots overload).

If there’s a way to combine those surfacing trends with the current focus on stateside production and craftsmanship, now is the time to start thinking about it. We won’t be knee deep in waxed canvas, aged leather, and Pendletons for too much longer.

The question that’s been bothering me the most lately is why so many people want to buy so much cheap crap. It makes no sense to me, and the prices people want to pay are astronomically low.

Consumer price sensitivity is perfectly reasonable, but when that price sensitivity manifests as demanding specialty items such as bicycle jerseys for under twenty dollars, there’s something wrong with the larger consumer goods ecosystem. The demand for low cost seems to be driven by the desire to have as much cheap crap lying around as possible, combined with tight economic conditions.

It seems that the smartest thing to do right now is focus on producing quality long-lasting goods, and deflecting consumer price criticism with messaging around longevity, the thriftiness of a well-made item, and environmental aspects of re-purchasing cheaper goods. Consumer education now will pay off long-term, especially in for active and outdoor brands.

Reasonable, one would expect customers to start to tire of poor quality and start to migrate towards the higher quality products.

The opposite approach, getting tangled up in the price wars led by Ikea, WalMart, and H&M will simply dilute brands, dissolve loyalties, and leave consumers with no upward path to quality/longevity.

The same inefficient food supply model proposed in this Grist article by Tom Philpott could very easily be extended towards the entire marketplace of goods and services. Just as it makes more sense for quality food to be produced this way, it makes sense for large swaths of consumer needs to be produced in the same way. Etsy is doing well, indicating there’s a growing market for the handmade.

If we look at current conditions wherein people are buying less of everything, yet still need certain things, exploiting the flaws of the efficient marketplace with “inefficient” products should lead to increased regional prosperity. A good portion of consumer needs can be met in the so-called craft marketplace, by local tailors, cobblers, woodworkers, and, to repair the factory produced appliances, a sizable force of repair people. Needless to say, this inefficiency also has positive environmental outcomes as well, with less packaging, less shipping, and fewer large trucks on city streets.

There’s definitely holes to be filled in to make the plot work. Many of the skills needed to build a local economy have evaporated over the last 50 years. Our infrastructure isn’t particularly friendly to local living once you get out into the suburbs. People have to buy into the concept of well-made, slightly imperfect goods made inefficiently, rather than poorly made, perfect appearing goods made efficiently. However, we’ve also got an army of marketers and advertising agencies who are going to need something to do now that simply telling people to buy more stuff isn’t working.

This post on Off the Cuff , and this response on Name Development got me thinking about the issues of aspirational branding when it comes to developing clothes and accessories around bicycling.

Surf and skate have been thoroughly co-opted, as has the preppy New England lifestyle. The lumberjack/outdoorsman theme has been mined deeply as of late. The question is if the story of riding a bicycle is compelling enough to make people want to belong in the same way.

At least in the US, riding a bike has come to mean stretchy synthetics, silly shoes, and minimum style. Other than a brief lycra flare-up during the 1980s, there hasn’t been much impact on general fashion from the bicycle world. There’s been some cross-over with the track bike and fixed gear explosion, but nothing to qualify as widely aspirational as Vineyard Vines, Ralph Lauren, or Vans.

It doesn’t feel right to create a bicycle clothing brand as an “other”, since the goal of creating good riding gear for everyday people is to make clothes that function in the real world, rather than clothes that are acceptable at best when in a business environment.

However, at the same time, if bicycling becomes an aspirational activity at the level of summering on Martha’s Vineyard or surfing, then the branding will become self-perpetuating. More people will start riding to fulfill the lifestyle promised by the clothing, and hopefully, continue on to buy more of the clothing to meet their new-found needs as cyclists.

For a recent project for a non-profit, I had to make a decision about using an out of the box solution for managing donations versus building our own solution.

We are still working on the decision, but here are the key points to consider:
1) Opportunity cost – What asking opportunities are we going to miss if we take the time to build our own?
2) Staff quality and availability – Do we have the staff and spare cycles to build a solution?
3) Upkeep – Can we maintain this solution with spare time and volunteers?

The outcome of my research indicates that the cost (on average, about $300 to setup, with 3 to 5% transaction fee, and usually a monthly fee) is often cheaper and will pay for itself in the first round of donations received on the platform, while freeing up staff and volunteers to focus on the core mission of the organization.

Groundspring seems to be the best of the non-profit tools available for donation management. Most offerings also include email list management, crm features, and other extras, all of which are better done with specific standalone packages.

I subscribe to several niche job feeds. At least once a day, I see postings for “rock star developers” and “javascript ninjas’. Occasionally there’ll be a need for a Ruby on Rails wizard.

I’m pretty sure ninjas and rock stars are too busy being ninjas and rock stars to write code.

If you’re looking for solid talent, write a descriptive ad. Say what it is you’re really looking for, not just ninjas. Know the roles you’re hiring for, understand that (usually) a web designer doesn’t know AJAX, and most web developers (usually) can’t design. If you don’t know the job you’re hiring for, get some advice.

1) Goal
2) Metric
3) Measure & track
4) Action
5) Refine & repeat

Should get you to where you’re going.