Stride Rite: Striving for Consistency

Upon entering the international headquarters of The Stride Rite Corp. in Lexington, Mass., one thought is immediate -- this is a kid-friendly place. The lobby rug has a sketch of a house and a smiling sun; there's comfy leather furniture trimmed in primary colors; visitors watch a steady stream of children heading to the on-site daycare center. This is a place with a strong focus on kids. Kids shoes, that is.In fact, Stride Rite is so kid-oriented that after a recent corporate reorganization, a new division called Stride Rite Children's Group Inc. was created as an integrated marketing group devoted exclusively to marketing children's footwear in well over a thousand retail locations.How It All BeganIn 1919, two shoe industry veterans, Philip Green and Jacob A. Slosberg, opened a shoe factory called the Green Shoe Manufacturing Co. Both men felt there was a market need for fine footwear for children. They were right -- the company took off quickly.In 1929, Slosberg and his family bought out Green Shoe from the Green family and, in 1933, the brand name "Stride Rite" was adopted. The company continued to grow, expanding its product line, adding to its brand roster (with lines such as Keds and Sperry Top-Sider) and enhancing manufacturing capabilities.In 1970, Stride Rite officials, realizing the critical role that retail played in the growth of the business, opened the first of what would become 195 company-owned retail stores. But part of Stride Rite's success has been that the company has never limited its marketing vision to one distribution channel. Stride Rite shoes are also offered through dealer stores, which are operations that are similar to franchises; trade accounts, independent stores with a significant offering of Stride Rite product; key accounts, which are department stores such as JCPenney and Nordstrom; lease departments located in department stores that are staffed by Stride Rite employees; and independent footwear stores that have some Stride Rite presence. Company growth continues and today Stride Rite has approximately 600 company-owned and licensed children's concept stores across the country, including major department stores.After the recent reorganization, the Lexington facility is now home to all six of The Stride Rite Corp.'s divisions: Stride Rite Children's Group Inc.; Keds; Sperry Top-Sider; Tommy Hilfiger Footwear; International; and Footwear Licensed Brands (that includes Levi's Footwear and Nine West Kids.)New Children's Group Steps UpOne of the biggest benefits of the recent reorganization at Stride Rite has been improved coordination of marketing efforts, says Tracy Zaslow, director of retail identity and construction. "Prior to the merge we used to have a Corporate Retail Division that managed all of the company-owned stores," she says. "It operated separately from the Stride Rite Brand Division, which was really a footwear manufacturing group with its own marketing group. They defined and developed the brand image for Stride Rite by handling all the media and P-O-P that went out to most dealer accounts and all other channels of distribution."With the merge came changes to everyone's roles. "I now have responsibility for all visual merchandising and P-O-P across all channels," Zaslow says."Anything from a visual 3-D stand-point -- whether it's signage, graphics, P-O-P displays or the interior of the stores -- has to pass through me. It's really responsibility for the retail identity of all our children's brands and, in particular, the Stride Rite brand at retail."Others in the Children's Group have had to adjust to new job roles as well. "The people in marketing that used to handle the development and delivery of point-of-purchase materials to all the other channels of distribution have had to give up some of that in terms of the creative process, but what they've gained in its place is certainly significant," Zaslow says. "They've taken on responsibility for retail marketing for all of our retail stores."Zaslow, assisted by Robert Thomson, manager of visual merchandising, oversees the store design and construction-maintenance staff for the Children's Group. Tracy Van Hoven, director of marketing, manages the brand image, the marketing of the brand, national advertising and retail marketing for the Children's Group. She is assisted by Vernon Aisner, retail marketing manager, and a small staff. Zaslow and Van Hoven both report to Madison Riley, president of the newly formed division."The goal under this new structure is to affect a change in our visual presentation across all channels," says Zaslow. "We want to gain a consistency so that the point-of-purchase components that we are providing to a JCPenney, for example, look and feel just the same as what we're providing to a Stride Rite dealer. And we want the components to be consistent with what we're doing in our company-owned stores."Zaslow thinks significant changes will be in place prior to the back-to-school selling season, which starts in July. "It's aggressive, but we have a bunch of things in the design phase now that are going to make a real difference," she says.From 2-D to 3-D"Improved execution is one of the things that makes the reorganization so exciting," says Van Hoven. "On the brand side, we were held mostly responsible for crafting the '2-dimensional brand voice.' By that I mean we shoot a lot of lifestyle imagery to be used in collateral, but most importantly in our advertising. What we struggled with when we were two divisions was taking that 2-dimensional voice and bringing it into 3-dimensions." Working with all the points of distribution, Van Hoven says, it was done in a way that wasn't as comprehensive as it could have been.Without a combined effort, one group would create a P-O-P element that it thought was great while the other group did the same. The problem was that there was no integration and there was too much duplication of effort."The new integration draws from everyone's experience," says Thomson. "Mine as a retailer, Tracy Van Hoven's as a marketing person. Putting all that together makes a much stronger statement."Taking the imagery and turning it into a unified voice, however, is a challenge. "It's wonderful that the product is readily available to the consumer across all points of distribution, but from a retail environment perspective, it's a lot to manage," Van Hoven says. "Our goal is to define our brand positioning -- we're the brand that expertly engineers and designs premium footwear specifically for children -- and then translate it into a 2-D visual, and then into a 3-D presence that makes sense."Van Hoven says she has spent a lot of time talking to upper management at Stride Rite about keeping the Children's Group marketing message fully integrated. "We want to make sure everyone is on the same page in terms of how we take the brand voice and translate it in-store," she says. "We can go from taking the brand from national advertising into what would translate into a potential window poster and then how it might be taken in-store."Adds Zaslow, "While Tracy Van Hoven's group is responsible for establishing the national advertising imagery and the whole brand essence from that standpoint, my group is really charged with creating the retail environment. So we want to rely on her group to do the photo shoots and come up with the right images and verbiage that are consistent with where she's taking the brand advertising. And then we translate that into a size and scale and actual produced piece that feels right to communicate with the consumer."Advantage Stride RiteThe Children's Group has something significant working in its favor when it comes to dealing with vendors. "We do a bulk of our display construction in January and February and that's typically a slow time in their industry." Stride Rite's strong selling period is not the typical November-December season. It's Spring and Easter season and then leads into the back-to-school season. "Our selling season works out well in dealing with vendors," Zaslow says. "It's typically a very slow time for them when we're in our busy season."Two of the vendors that Zaslow says she depends on are Cleveland-based Custom Surroundings and Providence, R.I.-based Flair Industries. Most design work is done in-house, she explains, but even when outside designers are used for a display plan, "we often end up doing an in-house design evolution of it.""A successful display really drives home a message about a product. It tells a story," Zaslow says. "It's supported by signage that doesn't steal the show from the product. The product needs to be the hero."There are additional considerations that need to be taken into account for Stride Rite displays. "They must be quality pieces that are also safe," Zaslow says. "Safety is always a concern for us with kids being our primary customers."Displays are designed with rounded corners and no sharp edges. Safety peghooks are made of plastic with a lot of bend to them. If someone falls against a peghook, it will bend down instead of poking. All shelving is reinforced in case it gets climbed on or yanked on. Even the carpeted floor has a cushion beneath it to accommodate crawlers and tumblers.The Road to Concept ShopsStride Rite Children's Group is already beginning to see change happen. Over the last 18 months, the brand division staff had helped 300 JCPenney stores implement new merchandising focal areas. The P-O-P in these areas consisted primarily of header signs and shelves displaying a small number of Stride Rite shoes."Now, however, we're taking that idea to the next level and we're doing more of a 'concept shop,'" Zaslow says. "Hopefully, we're going to do 15 of these within the next few months in JCPenney stores."While the concept shops are going to be kid-friendly, they are truly designed to appeal to adults. From directional signs to question-and-answer information, the concept shops will be adult-friendly.The components for the concept shops are "basically fixtures lifted right from our prototype store design concept," Zaslow says. Included are "concept walls," which are maple gridwall panels with divider fins that separate sections, and Stride Rite header signs, some of which have the company logo with its simple sketch of the smiling faces of a boy and girl -- fondly nicknamed "Spike and Violet." The logo was launched in 1994 and stemmed from a redevelopment project that stressed the idea that "Stride Rite represents the pure joy of growing up," she says.There are also Stride Rite-specific shelves, self-merchandising floorstands and a maple Stride Rite-branded display table with risers. Black-and-white photo graphics in maple frames add to the mix. "While the photos tend to represent real moments between the parent and child," Zaslow says, "we're also adding in a more fashion-forward look." The styling of the shoes themselves has become more "trendy" to compete with other brands, she says.In addition, merchandising guidelines will be provided that outline how to visually set up the "shop." The guidelines will be quite simple, according to Aisner, because the new displays were specifically designed to require little assembly by retailers."This will create a really strong brand statement within the JCPenney children's shoe area," Zaslow says. "Getting the merchandising focal areas done was a huge step forward because we hadn't had that before, even though JCPenney is a big account. Once we took that step, we stood out from all the other footwear in the department. It came back to us in increased sales. The new concept shops are going to be a huge next step."The costs of such an endeavor are high. "There's an investment in fixturing going on right now -- in that we're buying the frames, the wooden shelves and the new graphics," explains Thomson. "But then we're establishing a rotation with the graphics. Once we invest in the fixtures, most changes will just happen with the graphics."There are other concept shop plans underway now, and the Children's Group is looking at other retail opportunities.Where Stride Rite is HeadedIs the reorganization solely responsible for driving these new merchandising efforts? According to Van Hoven, it is not. "I would say that 1998 was always going to be the year of visual merchandising, according to the corporation's leaders," she says. "I think as a corporation, people are realizing that the retail frontier is absolutely the fastest way to communicate about the brand. This year and next year are going to be big years for the Stride Rite brand in terms of cleaning up our presence at retail."To grow our share of the market, we must get our own retail stores to a point where we feel that they truly demonstrate what we want the brand to represent to the consumer," Van Hoven adds. "As separate divisions we weren't able to build retail environments that had integrated all of those considerations into one house. Now we're thrilled because we truly think that we'll be able to do it for the first time. To build a true brand concept, a brand experience -- those are the big ideas."

Stride Rite: Striving for Consistency

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