The Action Man
While athletic footwear brands like Nike and Reebok are rabid branders, most retailers that sell them are not. Take Footaction USA, for example. The $600 million, 572-store chain didn’t have a senior-level marketing executive until December, when it brought in John Lauck to sell sneakers to people after having filled them up with Honey Nut Cheerios and Stuffed Crust pizza.
Marketing used to report to general merchandising at the Irving, TX-based company, but Footaction now has split the two functions to become more brand-focused.
Selling shoes is “truly a commodity industry,” based on price, selection, and mall location, Lauck explains. “Everyone saw the Foot Locker model and imitated it. That’s been frustrating for manufacturers because no [retailer] has stepped out and done anything different in marketing.”
Footaction will step up to the plate in the second half of the year. For the first half, Lauck’s team will conduct consumer research “to get a fairly crisp segmentation of the marketplace,” and assess Footaction’s strengths “to find the positive baggage that we can turn into something extra.” Then Lauck will set a brand vision for the chain and kick off marketing, including promotion platforms for shoe marketers. Lauck is circumspect about how much growth Footaction is projecting, but says the chain will look at international markets as well as U.S. expansion.
Sales growth has slowed now that brown shoes like Dr. Martens are fashion standards. Consumers spent $14.73 billion on athletic footwear in 1997, up 4.6% over 1996, according to the Athletic Footwear Association. Research conducted by NPD Group found volume sales rose only 1 percent, while the average price per pair rose 3 percent in ’97, the last year for which sales numbers are available.
Nike, Reebok, and other marketers may participate in Footaction’s studies. The footwear industry hasn’t done much behavioral research, Lauck says. “They know demographics, but they can’t tell much about psychographics.” Footaction plans to study how shoppers buy shoes for different occasions. The same consumer may shop differently for the athletic shoes he wears to school and the ones he’ll wear on the baseketball or tennis court.
Lauck should know. An avid athlete, he bikes or runs daily. The day he spoke with promo, Lauck had done a 14-mile run in training for the Cow Town Marathon in Fort Worth this month. He stunned his colleagues last summer when he ran every day at lunch during Dallas’s heat wave. “If you train right, your system acclimates,” he shrugs.
“Athletics are about control. You set your own goals, and have tremendous control over achieving them. That’s so untrue about so much else in the world,” says Lauck, who was a bookworm as a kid. He turned to sports after college – “when the high school athletes had burned out,” he grins -and works out each day because “it’s the one thing I’m guaranteed to have a victory in. The whole day can go badly, but if I had a good run that morning, at least I did well with that.”
Partial to retail Lauck still has a couple of trophies on supermarket shelves. In his four years at General Mills during “the heyday of granola bars,” Lauck worked on the launches of Yoplait yogurt and Honey Nut Cheerios. He moved from The Mills to Pizza Hut, where he set up the promotion department and cut deals with entertainment properties like Nickelodeon and The Land Before Time animated movies.
“We went from doing a glassware deal every other year to movies, sports, and kids’ entertainment tie-ins,” Lauck says. He also helped launch Bigfoot and Stuffed Crust pizzas. After 10 years at Hut, Lauck moved to Blockbuster Video in 1997 as vp-corporate development, deepening his experience in retail.
“I like the pace of retail. It’s faster than classic packaged goods, because you get a daily read of sales,” Lauck says. “Plus, you own the point of purchase, and the store is part of the marketing mix. You’re so much closer to the consumer transaction.”
If that sounds like a chance to do some focus group work, Lauck is on it. Research, like marathon training, can fuel an impressive burst of speed at the finish line.
