In December Jack Wolfskin announced that they were expanding their retail operations in the UK.
Yesterday there was a full page article about their growth expectations for this year. Manfred Hell stated quit confidently that they expect 15% growth in 2009! Without the crisis it would have been 32%. FT Germany puts it down to a trend towards wearing functional outdoor clothing, making it an exception in leisure and discretionary spending.
As all their friends in the industry are not telling the same story, and traditional sports brands are increasingly competing in the outdoor market, I thought there may be more to it. In 2005 they invested quite vigorously to improve the efficiency of their IT backbone, giving them more control of their operations and data. With 15% of turnover invested in marketing this year (when others are cutting back) you can expect Jack Wolfskin to do really well. With both operations and marketing set up perfectly to take advantage of weakened competition, the iconic Wolf will show teeth as well as claws.
The intent of this blog is to grow a new idea called "The Values Proposition". An economy where businesses are build around what people care about and not just what people will pay money for.
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