“If the shoe fits, wear it,” goes the old saying, and today’s Times shares the state of indie shoes which may sound familiar to indie gift shop owners. This story seems to be ‘a fit’ for our industry, too.
I recently visited a Footlocker and noticed they had moved the Nike shoes to the back of the store. Why? Nike, with all of its stores and direct to consumer website promotion, is now a competitor and Footlocker is trying to reduce its reliance on Nike. To that affect, I went to the Nike store and they encouraged me to sign up for a free program offering shoe returns. When I got home they had already started emailing me shoe news and offers—which all sales back to Nike.com and not their retailers. In hindsight, I suspect the true purpose of their shoe program is to get my email and bypass Footlocker. Whoever sends me, the customer, the most emails often wins, and the current score this year is: Nike: 34 emails. Footlocker: 0 emails.
Which brings to mind a few questions: + How many emails do you think the indies stores featured in this article sent to customers? + What’s the current status of your email campaigns to your customers? + Are your brands emailing your customers directly? Are your brands targeting your customers on Facebook? If you use Facebook, the answer is almost definitely yes. In particular, years ago I recall seeing Julia Knight ads targeting customers and asking the brand about this. That didn’t go over too well :) + Are the minimums you’re asked to meet fair? + If brands sell direct and sell more and more Amazon and Zola, should the minimums changes?
PS - Thanks to Diane Seidle for brining this article to my attention initially :)