Staid" and "unadventurous" hardly de-scribe Fremont, so it comes as no surprise that some small businesses here already incorporate an innovative business technique. Lifestyle branding, or lifestyle brands, the latest trend in marketing, is gaining use by retailers and manufacturers everywhere.
According to Bob Schuessler, coordinator of the Communication program at North Seattle Community College (NSCC), modern marketing revolves around the idea that "we're being sold back to ourselves."
Using demographics and psycho-graphics that take into account psychological and sociological factors, marketing involves a scientific study of consumers.
Stores create a niche, an identity and a familiarity for their customers to automatically associate with their business name, or brand, and products. Nike started with running shoes and now offers a full line of sporting gear and clothes, identifiable to anyone who craves the healthy lifestyle image Nike has built into its brand name.
LIFESTYLE SHOPPING
Retailers also sell lifestyle brands. In Fremont, Sound Speed Scooters and Sonic Boom General Store offer "lifestyle" items.
Grace Kim, store manager of Evo, located on the far west end of the Fremont business district, answers questions about where she works by saying, "It's a lifestyle shop."
Evo currently sells everything to do with skiing, snowboarding and wakeboarding, and then some.
"We're trying to support the lifestyle," she explained, as they offer the "hard goods" of the sports, as well as art, music, fashion and even occasional concerts that interest their customers.
Even their altruism goes toward local initiatives and environmental causes related to customers' interests. "As much as we focus on the actual sport, we focus on what the lifestyle demands," Kim clarified.
SYNERGETIC SELLING
In teaching about lifestyle brands at NSCC, Schuessler has instructed on how "the phenomenon of the Internet has changed the look of the brick-and-mortar store." Internet sites use links to lead consumers to similar, associated and familiar products, while keeping them connected to a common source for those products. Stores now attempt to make those links a reality within their locations.
For Evo, the evolutionary process actually went in reverse. Begun as an on-line niche business, evogear.com, it sold only "hard goods" - skiis, snowboards and wakeboards. "When we opened this retail location," Kim explained, "we modified the website making it so the two can run in parallel."
In the store they saw "a lot of crossover" to skateboarding, so they're now adding that line, as well. In Evo's case, brick-and-mortar affected technology and turned evogear. com into a lifestyle site.
Specialization can backfire. "Media allows us to be more connected," Schuessler stated, "But, also, we tend to have our behavior reflected back at us, reinforcing what we already like." This can lead to boredom, overexposure or lack of adaptation as we grow, or grow older.
Kim admitted, "We think about it all the time." Continual study and effort remain necessary for Kim to keep the focus of Evo. Wakeboarders may cross over into inflatables, she explained, but Evo won't. Instead, they "keep it focused with the brands and the products" of four sports and what those participants want.
"The irony of having all this media is to be connected to one another," Schuessler mused, "but to have to e-mail a colleague down the hall...."
People have grown desperate for a sense of community in which to belong to and fit in, and marketing responds. Stores and products that connect our interests build community, easily identifiable images and a sense of ownership.
CONSUMER-ORIENTED
Some refer to the lifestyle brand strategy as a holistic approach, by providing consumers everything under one umbrella, or name brand. Kim resisted the idea of references to one-stop shopping that might give the impression Evo is "like Wal-Mart."
Schuessler quoted marketing pioneer Tony Schwartz, who suggested marketing is about "turning the attention to the consumer instead of the product." The professor explained, "In a way, the product and the service become irrelevant." Instead, stores become a mirror, a reflective surface that shows us who we are and who we'd like to be.
"Definitely," Kim said, as products Evo carries focus "more on the athlete than the sport." Evo vendors designate the store as an "image account" -- manufacturers can stock a broader spectrum of products in Evo than in a sporting-goods store and reach a wider market of consumers than in a specialty boutique.
This "image" may extend beyond Evo's doors. In many ways, the Fremont business district - with its wide selection of complementary stores, restaurants and entertainment - carries a certain lifestyle brand. The only piece missing is a defined demographic and psycho-graphic of the people who fit this lifestyle.
For the time being, it remains all things to all customers who shop here and want to be a part.
Kirby Lindsay explores Fremont in free moments away from her life and work here. She welcomes your questions at fremont@oz.net.[[In-content Ad]]
