Hi fritz,
(Remember, this is all Oslo/Norway-centric, it might not be like this
anywhere else in the world.)
Post by motorbladeI was just curious...hey salomon has disappeared around here and K2
seems to be shrinking as well...Rollerblade is definitely smaller.
These companies don't sponsor as much and have been downsizing
steadily...I was just curious if you had hard numbers.
Not really, RB & Salomon sell about 5000 skates each the last few years
here in Norway, the rest maybe 3-4-5000 together, population is 4 -5
million people, about 0,3-0,4 % of the population. We generally think
that 250 000 skates totally have been sold in Norway, about 5-6 % of the
population. I was invited by a competitor to the summer sports expo for
2005 (where importers show off next years goods and the shops/chains
order) and both RB & Salomon downplayed their skates. The RB rep was
rather despondant and Salomon never answered my emails or calls.
Everybody is making their money from clothes it seems, and shoes.
A lot of shops got burnt by ordering lots of skates a few years ago and
have been selling old skates for a couple of seasons. Nobody was buying
or looking at skates at the expo, either at my contact who had the only
skate specific stall or RB/Salomon.
I heard today that the RB guy was very happy when a friend of mine
called him to talk about skates, which is good. I also hear that Salomon
is very busy with their winter collection/sales, they just don't have
the time or manpower to think about the summer now, not before March/April.
One of our distributors dropped one line of skates, not sure if it was
K2 or Crazy Creek, they folded or were bought out. Hasn't RB been bought
by Tecnica too? And Benneton is mixed up in it too? I don't follow that
kind of stuff much and have a bad memory. :-)
The Fila distributor is sitting on the fence, I am not sure they know
what to do.
Powerslide is new in Norway and I'll probably buy a Powerslide boot this
spring, with Fila as my number two choice, I haven't decided yet. A
Powerslide boot would be nice, to go with my existing Salomon 5x80
frame, but Fila with 5x90 might be a better buy. RB & Salomon are not
really up to it I think, at least not the models we get here.
There are a lot of Chinese no-name skates being sold through Toys'R'Us
and another reseller, I don't have any numbers here, but I think they
are offloading skates as fast as they get them. They could easily be
selling 5-10 000 together.
Post by motorbladeRollerblade is definitely not the top choice in this newsgroup but this
is a high end crowd generally and Rollerblade seems more often the
choice of first time buyers because of price and availability.
Same experience here, but the oldest/largest sports chain in Norway had
just 3 skates in their catalogue last year, no-name half the price of
RB. I must say I thought RBs summer 2005 collection shown here in Oslo
last year wasn't very good. They were very large and clumpy skates,
design-wise I'd rather buy a Salomon, smaller & sleeker skates.
There is a new sports store here that sells everything, even
bear-killing trips to Romania or wildebeest-shooting in South Africa,
but they do have the best selection so far. Usually low to mid-price, I
never see top-of-the-line skates here in Oslo, but they have
RB/Salomon/CC so people can try different boots. I would say that
Salomon is better represented here.
It does seem though that people will buy more expensive skates, so
speciality stores/web shops might do good. One of our largest skateboard
stores in Oslo folded, but I think there are too many here so it was
inevitable.
Post by motorbladeI did think you had good observations about RB's business decisions
though in choosing flash.
The problem is that one is asking people to make decisions in fields
they don't have any knowledge about. One is asking for a internet-smart,
business-savvy skater, it's like the old adage: three requirements -
choose any two.
Flash is ok I think, if it is split up with seperate urls. There are two
main reasons for wanting to fiddle with a website, printing and linking.
Splitting up the flash to seperate url-unique pages allows users that
possibility. Unfortunately thats a level of more complexity.
br Franklin
-phew, still friends with fritz... :-)