Marketing strategy: North Face aims to become the “Nike of outdoors”

The Guardian has an excellent article describing the growth strategy of outdoor equipment & clothing brand North Face. The article features some excellent teaching material and should resonate well with students who are familiar with clothing brands that do the business during the recent cold snap!

The aim of North Face is stated by one of the firm’s senior management to be the “Nike of outdoors”. With annual sales of around £900m, North Face is still some way behind the scale of Nike ($19bn of revenues in 2010), so it has set itself an ambitious objective. However, North Face seems to be growing strongly (17% sales growth in the last quarter) and it has a similarly upmarket brand positioning. The article describes how North Face has focused on providing high-performance garments and equipment which justify their premium pricing. A distribution problem the firm has faced in the UK has been the persistent discounting pricing tactics of the major sports and outdoor clothing retailers - not the best approach for a premium brand to sustain its positioning. The article explains how North Face has responded to this problem in the UK, demonstrating that building a premium brand is very much about long-term positioning rather than chasing short-term sales volumes.