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Retail - Outdoor
Land Rover
One of the world's most recognisable brands, Land Rover has extended its
reach into footwear and lifestyle accessories through licensee Bosland Fashion
BV of Holland. Pieter Gommans, Brand Manager at Bosland for Land Rover
spoke to SGB about what the brand means, and their efforts to break into
outdoor stores in the UK.
I
t's one of the best-known names to SGB: Looking forward and driving your growth, where are you targeting
come out of the British Isles in the next?
last century, and Land Rover will PG: I think the next step for us first of all are countries like Russia where also
forever be associated with rugged the brand Land Rover as a vehicle is doing very, very well and then later on
landscapes and the outdoors life. you get areas like the Far East for example, especially China, comes a
With this in mind it seems that big, big market for Land Rover as well but the business over there
footwear and lifestyle clothing is an has gone differently than in Europe. You have to monitor how
ideal extension of the brand, as the business is done in the market, in small brand shops
Pieter Gommans explained to SGB… or in multi-brand shops or whatever, so there’s a
big difference potentially.
SGB: Land Rover seems a natural brand name
choice to take into the outdoors market, because it’s such a SGB: Russia endures huge extremes of
famous name – was it as simple as that, the decision weather, as does China – do you tailor
to take it to market? product specifically for those countries?
Pieter Gommans: Not really… Land Rover is PG: In the future we’ll do that for sure. When
licensing their name, like many brands are you first start up, in the first seasons you try to drive in the middle a
doing, and they found us at the Bosgroep to be little and then later on you make some special ranges for different
the right partner for them as a licensee for countries. In the United States for example, they have a
their footwear and lifestyle accessories different collection than in Europe and this is not only
business; and that’s how we got involved concerning fashion but also concerning the weather
with each other, it's that simple. and everything. For Russia in the future there is a
big market there for the winter
SGB: Who is your target consumer for collections, big market for the
outdoor wear? extreme cold and everything,
PG: It’s not only outdoor wear that we are doing, but you also have other
it’s a part of it. With footwear we target our customer, countries, within Europe only,
and our target customer is 30- to 50-year-old men or like Italy or Spain and Greece,
women, though of course there will always be some of course Turkey where the
younger and some older people who like to wear our summers are the most important
products. From there we went to see what was possible in seasons, so you have to be very careful which direction
that market, what they need, what they’re wearing, what you’re heading.
are their habits and so on; of course, you look first at the
people who drive Land Rover or a Range Rover, then we SGB: Bosland has been doing this for more than a year now, what
divided our market into three parts: Active, Casual, and have you learned in that year?
City, which gives us a broad appeal across different PG: That the fashion industry is much faster than the car industry,
demographics. that’s for sure. In the car industry, they are thinking ten years
ahead and if you want to go along with them then it’s very
SGB: In terms of geography, where have you seen the difficult, because you have to think season by season and
biggest successes with the name and the lines, which you cannot change quickly like others in the fashion
countries? business are doing. You have to stay put a little
PG: At the moment of course we are based in Holland, bit, not change too much in your line
we have offices in seven countries in Europe, so Europe because as a licensee holder we
is a very important market for us, but we also decided we will never be able to change the
would open an office in the United States. The main markets for us brand awareness of Land Rover.
to start up now are in the European market and the United States.
8 SGB OUTDOOR JANUARY 2009
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