Marketing objectives and strategies

Marketing Objectives

The market objectives for the launch of Custom Snowboards Inc. will be to establish awareness of the brand and to capture 1.0% of the Colorado market. That market share will equate to $194,000 in sales, or approximately 100 boards, depending on where our price point settles. We feel that this is an achievable objective given our small size, lack of brand recognition and niche positioning. With a markup of 100%, these sales would give us a gross profit of $97,000. We hope to build our capacity within three years to the point where we can handle 2000 boards in a year. By that point, we hope to have expanded our distribution capabilities to include Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming, as we are uncertain that a 10% share is realistic given our niche status. We hope to be able to adapt our model to facilitate online ordering by that point as well, to help us move into the west coast markets.

Our other main objective is to build brand awareness. Through our store, marketing and aggressive word-of-mouth campaigning, we hope to attain 25% awareness amongst boarders in Colorado within the first year, approaching 100% by the end of the second year. One of the biggest differences between the years will be that we expect to operate in just one resort the first year, but hope to make our products available at others in the state in the second year. By the third year, we hope to have attained 50% knowledge amongst boarders in Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico to help with our entry into these markets.

We will conduct informal surveys within the community to help us determine the efficacy of our brand-building strategies. These will be conducted regularly, with the largest surveys towards the end of each season to provide the best possible information. We will use this information in the summer to help build and improve our strategies for the following season.

Contingency Plans

We expect little direct reaction from competitors. When we launch we will be below the radar of the big firms. The smaller companies are not expected to view us as a significant competitor, perhaps even as an oddity. The biggest concern we have with regards to our competitors is that they may appropriate our concept. Should one of the national competitors desire, they could take our idea and thus one of our main sources of competitive advantage. They could at the least undercut our pricing on the custom snowboard concept. Our plan to counteract this potentiality is to position ourselves as a grassroots firm, and build a cult following that cannot easily be eroded by a large national competitor. This still leaves us open to challenges from smaller competitors, but hope to be able to capture first mover advantages on them. Moreover, it is only the large companies who can flood the market; smaller firms are less able to put significant pressure on our business model.

We intend to plow our first-year profits back into the business. We also intend to retain our earnings from the retail operation as well. This will allow us to hire more artists and expand our facilities. We hope that our first year will provide us with enough money to secure additional industrial space, so that we are able to double or triple our capacity.