Sketchers Marketing Strategy

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Marketing Strategy

 

  1. 1. Target Customers

Skechers’ mean customers are men, woman and children who enjoy wearing casual or sporty outfits, especially fans of comfortable athletic shoes. Demographics are including 12-24 years old plus 50+ age people. The company is doing very well at targeting customers at 50+ age group because of it had a lot of campaigns with celebrities from the Baby Boomer generation. Company targets different category of customers by developing different product lines (Skechers: Capturing Right Audience, 2015).

  1. 2. Promotions

Sketchers uses traditional print and television advertising and also they collaborate with celebrities in their advertisements to make a positive image. Online websites and trade shows are useful to their customers. The company budgets its advertising as a strategy to save cost (Profile: Skechers USA Inc).

  1. 3. Licensing Agreements

Skechers selects certain amount of manufacturers to be its licensees. By using this way the company can save huge amount of financial investment and extra operating costs. In addition, it does not have to be responsible for all of the manufacturers and labors, and have more time and energy to focus on product development. The company has 23 distributors and 15 of the licensees have opened total 374 distributor-licensed or -owned Skechers stores and 118 of licensee-owned Skechers retail stores are in over 60 countries by the end of year 2014 (SKECHERS FOURTH QUARTER, 2015).

  1. 4. Apparel Product Lines and Prices Ranges

Skechers offers a various range of Skechers-branded product lines targeting men, women and kids. Within the product lines, there are also many categories, many of them have even developed into famous names. Most of the categories are packaged and marketed with its unique shoe boxes, labels and in-store support. Management evaluates each segment performance based primarily on its sales and gross margins. Followings are the Skechers-branded product lines: Skechers USA, Skechers Sport, Skechers Active and Skechers Sport Active, BOBS from Skechers, Mark Nason, Skechers Performance, Skechers Kids, and Skechers Work. Each of these brands targets different customers and the price point is also different from each other (Profile: Skechers USA Inc).

  1. 5. Global Sourcing Strategies

Most of the products are manufactured in either China or Vietnam. It is adopting an independent manufacturer strategy to increase its liquidity and decrease a lot of production cost. It is also efficient to use previously co-operated footwear producers to save production cost. The company is sourcing its footwear from at least 5 different producers and the strategy creates less trouble at the production process (SKECHERS FOURTH QUARTER, 2015).

  1. 6. Production Planning and Strategies

Base on the customers demand on certain collection or styles, Skechers creates new collection, and less appealing collection or styles can be discontinued after limited productions. Usually the concept stores of Skechers can help them forecast sales in domestic retail stores while other wholesalers and retail stores can provide information such as past and recent sales to help the company make wise decisions in managing manufacturing and inventories. This strategy prevents the company from over producing and other loss, and be more affectively profitable in having the right amount of merchandises (SKECHERS FOURTH QUARTER, 2015).

  1. 7. Quality Control Procedures

Sketchers believe in one thought that quality control means everything to the company. Quality control helps it keep good quality of products and also give it reputation. The quality control staffs have a series of inspection procedures to test raw materials before manufacturing; the U.S. office will also send staffs to overseas manufacturers to insure the production quality. Samples and materials of production and final products prior to shipment (SKECHERS FOURTH QUARTER, 2015).

  1. 8. Overall Conclusion

As a two-billion-dollar worth footwear company, Skechers is dedicated to design, develop and producing quality products to its customers including men, woman and children. It out sources to China and Vietnam for manufacturing and licenses its name to many distributors in different countries. The company pays attention to its product quality. It advertise the products through traditional print advertisements and celebrity campaigns in order to create its stylish and healthy image. Its strategies helps it recently become the second largest athlete foot wear company in the United States (Nazario, 2015).

 

 

 

References

SKECHERS Affiliate Program. Retrieved April 15, 2016, from

https://skechers.affiliatetechnology.com/

SKECHERS FOURTH QUARTER AND FISCAL YEAR 2015 FINANCIALRESULTS (Rep. No. 2015). Retrieved from https://www.last10k.com/sec-filings/skx

Profile: Skechers USA Inc (SKX). Retrieved April 30, 2016, from http://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/companyProfile?symbol=SKX

Skechers: Capturing Right Audience, Set For Further Growth. (2015). Retrieved April 30, 2016, from http://seekingalpha.com/article/3338555-skechers-capturing-right-audience-set-for-further-growth

Nazario, M. (2015, September 29). An underdog is taking over the sneaker market. Retrieved April 30, 2016, from http://www.businessinsider.com/skechers-sales-are-on-fire-2015-9