Rawlings Scores With Merchandising Effort

Rawlings Sporting Goods has thrown down the gauntlet.Despite its 136-year history, the St. Louis-based company is a beginner when it comes to point-of-purchase merchandising. But now this industry leader is challenging the way a mature product is merchandised.A major manufacturer of competitive sports equipment and apparel, Rawlings is a licensed supplier of Major League Baseball, NFL and NCAA retail, team and professional products."Over the past two years, our company has probably done more than in the last 50 years to try to improve its image at retail," says M. Scott Smith, director of marketing services. "We're not in a position to do a lot of consumer advertising," he explains.The company markets its footballs, golf bags, shoes, sweat suits and a myriad of other sports accessories through specialty sporting goods chains and mass merchants."As a rule," Smith says, "we work with each [retailer] individually. Unlike the grocery business, sporting goods are so diverse -- no two retailers are the same. They all have different goals, different objectives, different wants, and it's very difficult to find something that applies to all their environments."Just Rip Open a BoxFor the institutional and school market, long the brand's main area of focus, aesthetics like packaging and merchandising aren't terribly important. For much of the line's sales, it is a matter of "some equipment man opening the [shipping] box and passing out the baseballs, pads, gloves ..." explains Smith.But despite being the oldest, most stable equipment maker in the United States, the company had a somewhat schizophrenic retail look. "We were all over the place. We had no consistency in what we were putting in front of the public," Smith says.Thus, in the first step of a full-blown point-of-purchase program, in-house graphic designer Dan Fruend brought all the Rawlings packaging together with a unified appearance. The new look is based on black and silver-gray graphics with gold trim and plays up the company's red patch logo. The packaging redesign "was the first time we really ever concentrated on Rawlings' image at the point-of-purchase," explains Smith.The next step saw the company get involved in "small P-O-P projects with individual retailers," says Smith.Champs, an upscale mall retailer, asked Rawlings for a way to communicate to consumers the advantages of the Rawlings/Reebok Pump glove. The company turned to its advertising agency of record, Hughes Creative Services, St. Louis."We wanted to give the consumer a clear-cut idea of how the bladder functioned -- its shape, where it inflated inside the glove," says Chuck Malloy, product manager for baseball, softball, gloves and knits at Rawlings. The result, he says, "blew the doors off the Spalding and Mizuno versions," which came out earlier, but lacked strong point-of-sale support.The P-O-P program with Champs continues to evolve. In-house designers are busy working on a poster or header card to "educate consumers on spring protective equipment," says Smith."Only Rawlings can make statements like 'The number-one glove in the major leagues,'" Smith explains. The new P-O-P backs that powerful positioning with glove wraps, hang tags, ceiling danglers and banners. Laminated paper bands describing features and benefits of various models, the glove wraps curl around the fingers of the gloves and secure with self-sticking tape."We've offered [the] program to all our accounts across the board. They can use their co-op money [to] decorate their store with little plugs for Rawlings," he says.Getting Better all the TimeAt Rawlings, Smith says, "successes seem to build on successes. When something works, we take a step back and ask how we can make it better." Thus, the next logical question was "How can we extend the success of the Pump glove display and the success of the packaging program into other things?"An enthusiasm for point-of-purchase began to build, says Smith. "The next big step was to do a permanent display."The expanding Sports Authority chain was singled out for the rare attention. The baseball glove was the first product to undergo scrutiny.Ball gloves are possibly "the most difficult things to shop a sporting goods store for," explains Malloy. There are no specific sizes, they don't stand erect like cans of tennis balls, and there's no boxed packaging.Traditionally, the only options to merchandising gloves were extension rods on pegboard or wire baskets on shelves. "Crammed into baskets, the gloves lost all their cosmetic appeal -- not to mention their shape," Malloy observes."People like to put the glove on -- to feel it, to shape it on their hand," he explains. "Most people also want to see the lining and examine the web, the back." And when they're done pounding and peeking, he says, "they put it back upside down, in the wrong finger slot or on the floor."Often, not even the dealers themselves could make sense of their displays. Every season, they debated the question: Should gloves be organized by price point, by pattern size or by category? "There wasn't any set strategy to how the gloves flowed," says Malloy. "So the consumer walked in and he became overwhelmed by the amount of gloves and then confused. Finally, he became frustrated and left."Smith and Malloy saw the problem as a "tremendous opportunity" for Rawlings to change the way sports equipment is viewed at the point-of-sale. "I believe 90 percent of any sale is at the point-of-sale," says Malloy."The consumer knows the name Rawlings, so we probably have a built-in advantage before he walks into the store. But once he gets to the aisle of displays, the impression that he has right then can change his mind entirely," Malloy says."We knew we were the experts in ball gloves," says Smith. "We [were] not the experts on displays."Getting AdviceBetween December 1992 and the new year, Smith and Malloy interviewed a number of display designers. AG Industries, Cleveland, won out. "We felt they came back to us with the best understanding of what we were trying to accomplish," explains Malloy. "They showed a lot of interest. They were very, very proactive as far as meeting our timetable."But what "really flabbergasted us," says Smith, "were their ideas. They pushed the envelope."They came back with ideas that were revolutionary," he continues. "All of a sudden, this project became bigger than either of us ever thought it could become. That's when we got excited about the future of this particular fixturing."Rawlings gave AGI just two weeks to prepare art boards and a mock-up. The deadline was the industry's largest show: the Sporting Goods Manufacturer's Association Super Show, held in early February each year.The Sports Authority chain loved the presentation and agreed to test the glove display in three locations.Boat rocking in the world of team-sports equipment is not a casual activity. "Everything in business is a fight," Smith says. "The biggest hurdle was investing in the prototypes. Once we got to that point, the success kind of fed on itself. Everyone realized it was a good business decision for us to [get into point-of-purchase]."Rawlings' foray into P-O-P doesn't end with the endcap. An aisle version was tested in Miami and Chicago in December. "If it works the way we predict," says Smith, "all 80 [Sports Authority stores] will be completely dressed out [in Rawlings P-O-P] within the next year and a half."

Rawlings Scores With Merchandising Effort

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