Will Finish Line Master the Opportunity in Women’s Fitness Apparel and Shoes?
Brandweek just announced that Finish Line will soon launch five stores, with hopes of growing that to 200, which will be very specifically focused on serving women. Their market will be consumers ages 25-40 who exercise at least weekly and have a household income of $80,000-plus.
If you are an athlete or fitness-oriented woman yourself, or if you got up to speed recently by reading the well-researched Imago Creative newsletter on women’s fitness/athletics, you know how big the opportunity is for such a retail chain.
Interestingly, as if retailers were still waiting to see if the women’s market were a fad or "real," the choices for shopping for women’s fitness apparel have not kept up with demand. And so, a lot of women have gone online to stores/catalogs like Lucy, Title 9 Sports or Athleta to get their Pilates, yoga, walking and climbing wear. Those companies have done a great job and are becoming known/successful largely due to passionate word-of-mouth by their core customer evangelists.
Can Finish Line’s new store (as-yet-unnamed) compete and deliver relevant and high quality products in a way that will get women buzzing and into a mall or downtown store? We’ll see. The key is less WHAT they sell than HOW they plan to reflect their relevance to customers via customer experience and marketing messages. I know of one independent store in Boulder (which recently went online as well) that they could learn from.
Never fear. This is one launch I’ll be watching closely and reporting back on.
September 30th, 2005 at 2:12 pm
Andrea I thought it was interesting that you suggest that the customer experience and marketing message could trump the product mix for Finish Line’s new store. I have to say, that a great retail experience and exceptional marketing will still not make the register ring if the in-store product mix isn’t dead on. But I think what you point out is that crafting the right formula for selling to women is a multi-tiered, complex, and unscientific process that requires enormous insight.
Another aspect of women’s fitness that I wasn’t able to tackle in Imago’s recent FemailFocus article was the phenomenon of active adventure travel that includes trekking, bike tours, cruises and eco-tourism to name a few. Boomer Women are at the head of the pack and yet, without the apparel and gear they’d like to have ( Product Mix!).
Activewomen.com is an online portal that educates, informs, offers trusted resources and product reviews for women interested in leading an active healthy life. I interviewed the founder, Kathy Dragon, and she said, “There is a movement around getting women into different physical activities, but it’s still intimidating to baby boomers.” Kathy applauds companies like Contour Wear who are really starting to design active travel product for the multiple purposes a woman may want to use them for including dinner, yoga at sunrise and a dayhike.
I look forward to following the evolution of the Finish Line Retail concept. In the meantime, wish me luck at my half marathon this weekend!