Shoe Companies Run Hard to Get Feet in Doors

The word "footprint" has a double meaning for in-store marketers in the shoe industry: That's because they face a crush of competing footwear makers galloping to get their feet in the door of stores that are often small or particular about what they'll use, while an industry orientation toward semipermanent, modular displays means fewer floor spaces are opening up. On top of this, modest budgets -- and consumer buying habits -- often mean that P-O-P must play a central role in their overall marketing efforts."Retailers don't want to get too cluttered. The good retailers have an image they want to project, as well. They don't want to just hand it over to the brands," says Greg Dutter, editor in chief of Footwear Plus magazine, New York. Virtually all brands offer a P-O-P program of one variety or another, says Bill Boettge, president of the National Shoe Retailers Association, Columbia, MD, which he says represents privately owned retailers that comprise about 20% of the industry."I don't know of any vendor, other than way up at the high-end fashion lines, that doesn't offer something," he says. "Our retailers would rather have good P-O-P than national marketing. There's nothing wrong with national marketing, but most brands don't have enough money to really make an impact.""Point-of-sale is absolutely critical," says John Kocis, president of Concept One Communications, which has done consulting work for Cole-Haan, where Kocis once worked as vice president of integrated marketing. "The shoe category's tough. It's fashion, but there are opportunities to deliver some promotional messaging if the concept works strong. You have to think about the channels, independent vs. department stores. You have to know what your accounts will do." "We've tightened things up a bit because a lot of stores are smaller now, and they have a lot of product in them," says Jenn Rosumny, director of visual merchandising at Skechers, Manhattan Beach, CA. "There's a basic footprint we try to follow so we know they'll work within a majority of retailers. You don't want anything to stick out too far or be too bulky. The more compact it is, the better chance we have of placing it."Department stores' clean-floor policies have definitely had an impact on footwear companies, Rosumny says. "It's been a challenge in the past few years. Where we used to be able to get in a floorstand or a concept shop, now we fight to get a table display or logo block," she says. "The smaller items have been better for us in the past year: floor mats, risers, logo blocks."Skechers, which spends about one-fifth of its advertising in-store, has kept most of its displays about the same size, Rosumny says. Recent rollouts have included a metal floorstand with burled wood and chrome accents for its 310 line, an S Lights counter or slatwall piece, and a window section display that features any shoe the retailer wants inside a frame that features a collage of the company's advertising imagery.Shannon Scott, manager of marketing communications at Asics America Corp., Irvine, CA, says, "What's happening more and more is that retailers are very selective about who they will and will not give space to. They really don't want you coming in and taking over the whole look of the store. We try to build pieces that stand out, but not like a sore thumb." Asics is creating a new fixture that comes in 2-foot-wide sections that can be strung together if the retailer desires.Differentiation is key, says Scott Drew, marketing services coordinator for Dr. Martens AirWair USA, Portland, OR. "The look and feel of the materials sets P-O-P displays apart," he says. "There are a lot of brown shoes and a lot of black shoes out there. If you don't do something to make yours jump into consumers' hands, it's a much harder fight.""Everybody wants to be an individual, and that ripples up to the retailers have to be individuals," agrees Jennifer Owens, managing editor of Footwear News magazine. "The shopping experience is a very emotional thing. You have to have good stuff."Built to LastTo most retailers -- and shoe companies -- "good stuff" translates to sturdy metal or wood displays, depending on the image a brand is trying to project. Discount retailers and more promotion-driven brands will sometimes opt for lighter, more temporary displays constructed of corrugate or plastic, but these are the exceptions."I've seen everything from cardboard cutouts to more advanced, permanent kinds of materials, to actual display stands that have a lot of durability and can have a long-term life on the shelf," Boettge says. "A lot of retailers don't like inexpensive-looking temporary things on their selling floor. Secondly, in a busy store, those things get knocked over, they get dust on them, and it doesn't take long for them to look poor."Metal is more Skechers' style, says Rosumny. "Our colors are silver and blue -- with silver, obviously, you're going to go with metal," she says. "It lasts a long time. In the shoe industry, for independent accounts, you tend to get a fairly long shelf life. You can have a display up in a store as long as three to five years, which is not always the case in other apparel industries. You want to get something in there that looks good and doesn't have shelves bending." Asics Corp. uses all metal for its shoe shelves in the hopes they'll be up for 12 to 18 months at a shot, says Scott. "We're building for the long haul," she says. "For the retailer, it gives them an opportunity to put something up and not have to worry about it breaking. It's something they can count on not having to change out a whole lot."Footwear companies invest more in in-store fixtures because they need to reflect the staying power of their merchandise, says Drew of Dr. Martens, which typically uses clear-coated and powdercoated steel for its P-O-P."You want to be able to display a quality good on a quality fixture," Drew says. "If you get something that's cheap and disposable, you don't want that look reflected on a product that might retail for, in our case, $80 to $100." He adds, "If you're in grocery, and you've got a new candy bar, and the candy bar costs 75 cents, you might as well put in a cardboard display that can be put in the recycling bin."Footwear displays also tend to take a beating, which helps to explain the drive for more solid materials, says Vern Aisner, director of marketing for Earth, Waltham, MA, which is using metal displays to "contemporize" its image."Earth shoes were the hippie shoes in the '70s; everyone automatically thinks of crunchy granola, wood, and so forth," he says, adding that companies' use of heavier materials "could have something to do with the nature of the product itself. People are always picking them up and putting them back down."Earth is rolling out a concept shop that's now operational in Oh My Sole, Santa Monica, CA, and should pop up in about 50 stores in the next six months, Aisner says. "Our product physically feels different, and it's critically important that we communicate that at point-of-sale," he says. "It's not about shoes; it's more about lifestyle."Not all footwear companies lean toward woods and metals. Franklin, TN-based EJ Footwear, which makes the Georgia Boot and Dickies lines, serves such a wide gamut of types and sizes of stores that they've used everything from peel-away decals to branded "Open/Closed" signs to make their presence felt, says Stephanie Petry, director of marketing services."I have to have a variety of things to service all of those outlets," says Petry, who handles everything from a 400-store tractor supply chain to a 27-store boot chain to outdoor independents. "We have to be pretty mobile so the displays can be put anywhere. We have a lot of small things to offer. A $300 floor display may only work for 20% of my dealers. That's where the floor decals and the wall decals come in."EJ Footwear puts "20 to 25%" of its advertising budget into in-store pieces and looks to concepts like its branded "Open/Closed" sign to gain a foothold, Petry says. "Everyone has the generic banners and signs, which we do, too," she says. "But if you have those extra little things, like the 'Open/Closed' sign -- that's something that a lot of them were posting on a piece of paper. So we found that little niche. It takes a lot of going to different stores to see what's there."You're really stealing space; you're not fitting into a new space," she adds. "It's more who's going to get bumped out for someone else to get put in."Brown Shoe Co., St. Louis, used corrugate to put together an endcap for Wal-Mart to promote its Dr. Scholl's brand, says Caren Vredenburgh, director of environmental design. "We sell every channel out there, from mass to fairly high-end department stores," she says. "They give us the parameters of what we can do."Brown Shoe works ahead of time with department stores' corporate visual planning departments to make sure they're on the same page in designing displays. "They will give us the floor space, we will do the layout and planning, and work through them to get approval of what we design," Vredenburgh says. "It's definitely a partnership." She adds that P-O-P is central to the company's marketing efforts. "We don't do any television. We do very little print."Goleta, CA-based Deckers Corp., makers of Simple Shoes, is rolling out a display for its Green Toe line that consists of a small, wire basket with a flower sprouting out of it, in which sits a poster board with a hand-lettered statement about the company's earthy philosophy. "P-O-P people get into a groove: They say you need to have a slatwall, and you need to have a shoe tower, and you need to have a sign," says Anders Bergstrom, communications coordinator of Simple and Ugg Shoes, another Deckers brand. "Get outside the box: What can we do to make this product pop? This [flower pot concept] came to us from out of the ether."P-O-P is "extremely important" to Simple Shoes, Bergstrom says, but the company definitely does not abide by the "bigger is better" philosophy. "We are going to take up as little space as possible," he says. "This [wire flower pot] product is going to function perfectly in a tiny space. We're not going to bother with the big, bulky, gigantic tower of molten lava and steel and lead because we don't need to be in a huge space."Built for ChangeFor those who do use the larger, heavier displays, modularity is a watchword. Although keeping a display up for a year or more might make budgetary sense and reinforce an image of quality, shoe companies need to change out shelving, signage and other features of the display as seasons pass and new launches take wing.Owens of Footwear News says the Dillard's department store chain redesigned its footwear departments with a slotted wall that allows them to change brands and lines as needed. "They can do these easy switch-outs," she says. "They're up for a long period of time, but they have elements that can change. The seasons change so fast now that you need something you can change out quickly."Asics has a seasonal program that switches out every six months. It recently introduced slatwall displays that retailers can install in 4-, 8- and 12-foot sections, allowing for varying degrees of modularity, Scott says. The company alternates between its footwear and apparel lines in rolling out new displays, she adds.Skechers equips its displays with shelves that are adjustable to fit different heights of products and are removable so that they can be replaced with hooks when it comes time to showcase sandals in the winter and early spring, Rosumny says. "We don't have to change out an entire display. We can change from the hooks to the shelves."Dr. Martens, which was switching to sandals and other warm-weather shoes in mid-March, has used the same slatwall shelves for two years but rotates graphics to signal that something new is afoot, Drew says."We try to come up with a graphic that can be attached to or placed near the slatwall shelves, to once again catch the consumer's attention and say, 'Hey, we've got some new stuff you should come take a look at,' " he says.Brown Shoe Co., which uses white lacquered shelving and tables for its displays, has found department stores will not accept anything disposable, and that mom-and-pops also like the company's "clean, contemporary" look, Vredenburgh says. She adds that the company's biggest program right now is a store-within-a-store focus shop for Naturalizer that includes a wall with lighted graphics and shelving and a tabletop display, depending on what stores accept. "We want to keep the shop there as long as we can," Vredenburgh says. "We go back and do maintenance so they look good and don't get worn-out." Seasonal graphics update the look, she adds.P-O-P Displays for Different StylesFootwear companies walk down divergent paths when it comes to segmenting their P-O-P by type of shoe. Some believe that an integrated look works best for their brands while others follow a philosophy of different moods for different lines.Dutter of Footwear Plus sees a spectrum: Fashion shoes have almost no P-O-P; flip-flops and other impulse footwear are hung at the register; work shoes have relatively modest hangtags and smaller pieces, and "techier" athletic and comfort shoes require more information and rely more on image."Nothing's more logo-driven than athletic, so you'll probably see a bolder display," he says. "When you look at fashionable boutiques, there are not a lot of signs there. It's all about product, and it should be." He adds, "They run up against what's effective and what's not, what's too busy and what's not. Price-driven retailers want louder. The comfort or techie guy probably does want some information there.""Companies that have technical features within their shoes, whether it be Gore-Tex, walking features or foot beds, have a tendency to do more P-O-P," agrees Boettge. "They've used a certain kind of pour-on, or they have five layers of cushioning."While branded stores like Steve Madden or Cole-Haan want a unified look, department stores do sometimes work to segment, Owens says, citing Dillard's use of different carpeting colors and furniture to try on shoes within different segments."You're basically taking the shopper by the hand and saying to them, 'Let me tell you where you are now,' " she says.But most shoe makers interviewed say they don't try to segment within their own displays. Skechers, which encompasses 13 different brands, has been working to streamline its offerings to adults' and kids' lines when it comes to P-O-P, Rosumny says."It used to be really broad," she says. "We now have logo blocks and other callouts, but not floorstands and things like that, which we used to have. It wasn't cost-effective, and we looked too chopped-up in the store. Now it's more consistent, which helps with budget purposes, as well." Asics separates out only its "retro casual" Onitsuka Tiger line because of its differing color scheme and more boutique-like flair, Scott says. "It's a little more fashion-forward, [and] not so much focusing on the technology aspect, which is our main push on the athletic footwear side," she says.Similarly, Earth segments out only its vegan sub-brand from the rest of its line, Aisner says. "That's done through separate point-of-purchase properties," he says. "It requires further differentiation."The specialty store initiative of Brown Shoe lends itself to a unified look and feel, Vredenburgh says. "The pieces that we've designed accommodate different kinds of shoes, tailored, dress and casual," she says.Ultimately, though, the bottom line for shoe companies is finding a way to get up -- and stay up -- in the retailers of their choice."The best way to describe a retailer is: They're putting on a show every day," Dutter says. "You have to be entertaining and exciting and interesting. There are 50,000 ways to do that, but it involves creating a theme and atmosphere."It also involves selling well, he says. "If you're a hot-selling brand, you tend to get better treatment. That's a never-ending give-and-take I've heard for years: 'Gee, the product probably would have sold better if it wasn't under the cash register covered in dust.' But it might have been there in the first place because it didn't sell."

Shoe Companies Run Hard to Get Feet in Doors

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