With product expansion, innovation, sponsorship and heavy involvement in youth culture, Vans has become a global footwear and apparel brand, while still keeping their classic heritage alive. Never losing sight of who they are and what they represent. Vans is however not the industry leader in New Zealand as it is in the US.
Vans paid Alva and Peralta to wear their shoes so that when other kids saw Alva sporting a pair of blue and red 44s in the magazines, they would run out to the Vans store to get the same shoes as their role model. Vans has gone through a few changes of management, tried expanding their market, and now over 40 years later they are going strong, sticking to what they do best.
In , the company lost its footing see what I did there? The bottom line was that the brand lost its focus and spread themselves too thin. Instead of targeting their niche extreme sports market and doing one thing exceptionally well, they began producing average-quality shoes for too many different audiences.
You got big powerhouses like Adidas, Nike and Puma and we were just getting our butts kicked on the athletic shoes. After Vans switched management in they refocused their brand on board sports and BMX. Since then, Vans has vigorously projected a brand image of subversion, creativity, and self-fulfilment. Its jazz-striped shoes have attained cult status among its loyal fan-base.
In the s, Vans capitalized on two emerging crazes in Southern California: skateboarding and to a lesser extent, bicycle motocross BMX. Members of these sports and their surrounding cultures were often depicted as unconventional and anti-establishment.
Indeed, skateboarding, for instance, was more than just a sport. Image courtesy of Vans. These sets of footwear were not only aesthetically eccentric, but also ergonomically built. They were durable, and provided superior flexibility, grip, and ankle support. The company nurtured its relationship with skateboarding, BMX, and other alternative action-sports, thus sowing the seeds of its enduring association with youth, adventure, and self-expression.
Further reading: Just like Vans has, many other brands have used sports to promote their products. Find out how here in our sports marketing article.
Penn fell in love with the shoes, insisting he wear them on camera. The movie, itself a cult hit, helped popularized the shoes, and turned Vans into a counter-cultural phenomenon. Vans footwear has formed the uniform of skateboarders, BMXers, punk rockers, street artists, snowboarders, comic book enthusiasts, and even students.
As Vans has a recognized name in the international market, the company participates in numerous sponsorship events in order to retain this brand name.
Also, in order to appeal to the youth, Vans promotes products through social media. This platform is mainly used by youth and thus advertising through social media — such as Instagram, Facebook and Twitter helps Vans grab the attention of the youth.
Currently, Vans has about Social media helps Vans not only to promote their products, but also promote their events and share photos and videos about the content of cultural sports. This technique has indeed been successful as according to Business Insider, Vans Old Skool was the third most popular sneaker on Instagram in Primarily, Vans focuses on segmenting the market and hence they can obtain a better overview of their customer-base, focus on their needs and wants and can adapt to the changes quickly and when required.
Secondly, Vans produces high quality products. Producing high quality products increases the longevity of the product, satisfies the needs thereby increasing the efficiency and helping Vans achieve their brand recognition and help build brand loyalty. Brand recognition helps Vans to stand out as the customers can distinguish and identify the features and attributes of Vans. Brand loyalty helps customers become committed to Vans and causes repetition of customers, which leads to higher profits.
Lastly, the creation of innovative designs. Creation of innovative designs is a differentiator and helps grab the customers attention as the designs are unique and original and hence making the products desirable. Despite having several strengths, Vans has some weaknesses. After establishing a solid position in the skating industry, Vans wanted to target the market of the fashionable youth. However, there are many companies in that market and hence it gives the customers plenitude of substitutes to choose from and since Vans does not specialize in fast fashion, it is difficult to adapt to the changing trends compared to the other companies.
Secondly, Vans also offers a limited variety of product lines of shoes compared to its competitors. This is a disadvantage as customers can choose from a variety of products in other companies whereas in Vans they are restricted to the few limited options that are offered. External analysis External environment is basically all the external factors outside of the firm that might affect the marketing of the business. The external environment will be analyzed in macro and micro environment level.
The major competitors in the sports goods market are for example, Nike, Adidas, Converse and Puma. Among these, the biggest competitor of Vans is Nike, which is one of the most widely spread sports brand over the world. The most important difference between those companies and Vans is that they are only professionally specialized in skateboarding gears, while others produce shoes and apparel for different sports in general. Another aspect to take into account is the design of the shoes.
Vans unique shoe design is one of the points that the brand takes pride in. While other companies, have a wider range of designs and different types of shoes compared to vans that pursues supporting few of their main models. In this sense, other brands can target a wider scale of customers by providing them with choice alternatives. These are: demographic, economic, natural, technological, political and cultural forces. The first force is demographic force. Also as the GDP of major marketplaces of vans is in increasing tendency it is supposed that there will be greater number of consumers willing to pay for high quality brand footwear.
The third force is about ecological or natural environment. Vans has admitted that their operations have certain impact on the environment as they produce waste, use water and energy from fossil fuels which inevitably contribute to climate change. The fourth force is the technological force.
However, after analyzing the Vans brand, we do not think Vans will have a great impact on their opportunities and threats from technological environment. Political forces are the fifth point to be analyzed. As Vans entered the Asian market, the issue of counterfeit goods has always been crucial to the brand. In many Asian countries where vans expanded, a clear government act to restrain the fake goods market is not present and this became an unexpected competitor since the fake products are much cheaper than the real ones.
Lastly, the cultural forces will be studied. For this reason, Vans can be seen as one of the forerunner brands of the recent fashion trend.
In this part of the report, we will identify the main opportunities of Vans. Expand in the Asian market In recent years, extreme sports as skateboarding or surfing has been gaining more and more awareness from young people throughout the world. Even though primarily these sports were mainly diffused in western regions like Europe and the US, skateboarding culture has now entered the Asian countries.
This new tendency of interest in active sports influenced the fashion market in Asia. Nowadays, people consume skateboarding sneakers not only for sports but also as fashion item regardless of their gender or age.
For this reason, penetration of Vans in the Asian market should be seen as a successful opportunity to expand their business since the brand has been already recognized in the western market. However, if Vans will try to focus on some sports which are popular recently in order to follow the rapidly changing market taste and produce the shoes or clothes that fit the new sports, it will be a great contribution to enhance the brand value. However, as the fashion trend is changing rapidly, introducing various innovative models would be a refreshing approach to attract attention of young people.
Since other rival brands are focusing more on releasing new models every season, the attention of consumers is easily captured. However, it might be harder for Vans to collect new customers as they are only focusing on upgrading the quality of the existing models without reacting to the trend.
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