Timberland chief admires marketing spin of athletic brands
18/03/2010
The chief executive of outdoor footwear and clothing brand Timberland, Jeffrey Swartz, has said that the cultural phenomenon of athletic shoes will remain in the market for a long time and that he has learned a great deal from years of competing with athletic brands.
In an interview with UK-based newspaper The Guardian, Mr Swartz said: "There's a ton to learn from sneakers. Twenty years ago, if you went to Europe on business, you could tell an American because he was wearing sneakers. No European would ever wear sneakers in a piazza in Milan. Today you go into any part of the world, you go into a kid's closet, there's going to be Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, LeBron James. So sneakers as culture – there's no turning that page back."
The grandson of Nathan Swartz, the shoemaker from eastern Europe, who founded Timberland, Jeffrey Swartz emphasised that, in his opinion, athletic shoes are about marketing rather than manufacturing, but he said he admired the way companies in that segment spin a brand image into an experience rather than merely a shoe. "Sneakers, a lot more than shoes, have leveraged the idea of footwear as culture, as conversation," he said. "In Nike's case, the culture of sport is what people buy when they're buying–a sense of winning. That's helped me think hard. Am I selling shoes or am I selling an outdoor experience?"
Share this story:
