Taking extreme measures - Young Men's/Juniors - department store marketing

DSN Retailing Today, June 10, 2002

The industry is going to extremes to get the attention of the young men's customer. More specifically, going to extreme sports, ramping up efforts to give threads the radical attitude they need to sell in today's market.

Whether it's skate or motorcross, BMX or boarding brands, the strategy is winning an audience of fashion hungry fans.

The skate and surf apparel, footwear and accessories market is about $7.8 billion, according to Board-Trac, Inc. 2001 research. Though juniors remains the easy sell it's always been, it's taken this extreme surge of adrenaline to jolt life into the young men's business.

The look--hooded sweatshirts with graffiti-tag graphic hits, long-sleeve T-shirts with logos and carpenters with the latest updates--is getting 10s from everyone from Sara Lee to Levi's within its Silvertab brand. It's popular everywhere from PacSun to Hollister. Hurley is recognized as one of the hottest names in skate by PacSun's vice president of brands Bill Rosenbaum. PacSun carries the brand, which was recently acquired by Nike, as the vendor realized it was missing this market.

"Eighty percent of our men's design is athletic influenced, for the athletic lifestyle," including extreme looks, says Adrienne Atkinson, men's designer at Roots, which sponsored the recent Olympics, which the industry thanks for taking snowboarding to a new level of visibility.

More recently, the mass market is starting to react to the extreme sports apparel market. Target is bringing in the new Physical Science by Marc Ecko line, based on specialty success with the red-hot extreme streetwar-influenced Ecko brand. ShopKo will roll out Bailey's Point, a new lifestyle brand in the vein of Abercrombie & Fitch to hit the athletic/surf teen customer base.

"We're working extreme sports themes into brands like 727 Originals and B.U.M., adding [the themes] to instore imagery," says Andrew Pelletier, spokesman for Wal-Mart Canada.

Russell Athletic recognizes a lack of skate brands at mass, and so it is gearing the Discus spring line collection to "cater to the urban athlete, with versatile garments the 18- to 29-year-old customer can kick around in, then just roll out and start skating or playing basketball. It's geared toward performance and the individual, and marketing will reflect this," says Jonathan Matthews, director of innovation for Russell Corp.

This market trend's popularity is far from a flash in the pan, since "alternative" sports are anything but. Annual Gravity Games viewership jumped 30 percent in the last year, hitting the key men's fashion customer age of 18 to 34. ESPN's biannual XGames has been picking up speed for seven years. Year round, events support the transseasonal sports--snowboarders become wakeboarders come summer.

If it's any indication, Tony Hawk appeared on "Late Show With David Letterman" last month. He is the single-most popular sports figure among teen boys, according to the "Super Study of Sports Participation' conducted by Action Sports. According to this research, skateboarding's popularity grew 49.2 percent into 2000 and continues to soar. On Letterman, Hawk wore a Quiksilver shirt; the same parent company is his partner in producing HAWK boys skate apparel--an area ready to catch some air, thanks to beanbag chair athletes who play his video games.

"About 50 percent of the participants in skate are under 12," says Dave Rosenberger, national sales manager for HAWK, of the growing audience. Quiksilver hits a core audience of 17 to 18, with the industry's much-coveted placement at PacSun. "Focusing on skate has opened a lot of doors for us, it has universal appeal in central U.S. cities where surf brands have more growth in coastal cities," adds Rosenberger.

Despite the tremendous fan base, the game becomes a popularity contest. Vendors are using every trick up their sleeves to edge out the competition.

PacSun holds court weekly to stay current: Brands present themselves for a potential test in Ts that, if successful, will give them broader, crucial placement with the extreme leader. The retailer dominates this market with $684 million in sales--an 8.8 percent share in the teen specialty apparel channel, according to Bear Steams estimates.

"I think right now the brands that are very successful are ones that produce some kind of authentic merchandise, like wetsuits for surf and footwear, if not boards in skate, some kind of hard goods component," adds Rosenbaum.

Posers beware: Having a hard-core, bona fide association with a sport is essential. "A skate shoe brand tied into an apparel line is not enough unless it's a brand that has become organically related to skate through supporting a sport," says Sharon Pommer, general merchandise manager of Alloy Inc. Its CCS division, the young men's extreme sports direct-to-consumer leader, is a catalog and e-tailer of apparel and gear. A Web site blends e-commerce and content, getting 500,000 audited unique visitors monthly.

Americo got feedback through a CD-ROM hangtag promotion in its Mountain Dew MD Stitches line, selling well at Mervyn's. "It was perfect for us, an invaluable marketing tool. Each question they answered gave them another chance to win a trip to a popular skate camp--they're springing up like movie theaters," says Valerie Korzec, director of marketing.