Is Kathmandu Ready For Live The Dream?

Kathmandu Holdings Limited (KMD) is a renowned specialist in quality clothing and equipment for travel and outdoor adventure in New Zealand and Australia, operating 97 stores across New Zealand, Australia and the United Kingdom. KMD commenced trading on the Australian and New Zealand Stock Exchanges in November 2009.

For instance, in the hospitality industry, the Hilton brand symbolises high-end properties, elevated quality of service and a unique guest experience. Brand name and brand image are essentially two factors that differentiate companies which operate in the same industry and market. Therefore, the brand name must be unique. Hotel companies like the Hilton have established strong national brands and seek to use them globally with an intention of increasing profits. Once its established as a global brand, the company has successfully created an international image that can lead to increased efficiency through branded marketing efforts and cost savings on a much larger scale. Nowadays with an increase in international travel, the competition among international hotel corporations is becoming a lot more competetive. Those tourists that travel to foreign countries tend to stay in one of the known hotel brands and their standardised quality of service. Hotel chains are motivated to maintain a high rate of global expansion as a key marketing strategy of creating brand loyalty (King,

It is easy to see that Etowah’s success is a result of their asset-based development strategy. Taking something old and unused and turning it into a unique asset that supports the town and local vendors. However, many rural communities lack adequate technology and/or connections to advertising. Available funds can really affect how well a small community is able to advertise the various amenities they have to offer. As previously noted, the Chamber of Commerce in Etowah became acutely aware of the town’s inability to market and advertise the downtown area and initiated the publishing of a shopping and dining guide (Lambe, 2008, p. 57). Will this shopping and dining guide be enough to draw in more visitors and tourists from other regions or states? The inability to adequately advertise could potentially affect the number of visitors and tourists going through Etowah, which could put a significant strain on the local economy. Many people depend on these amenities for jobs and if a small town like Etowah is unable to develop a strategy for allocating appropriate money for larger scale advertising, the rail excursions and downtown shops and restaurants will

REI carries a wide assortment of camping and hiking gear and equipment. Products include, amongst other, tents, sleeping bags, hammocks, and coolers. REI launched their ‘REI Co-op’ private label brand in 2014. It was an extremely successful launch with sales exceeding $1 million in less than 20 days (“NewsRoom”, 2015). REI also have private partnerships with several U.S. and overseas manufacturers through which they offer exclusive brands, like Novara and evrgrn. REI also carries several other well-known brands, including The North Face and Marmot, with which it competes with other retailers. Overall, the company offers buyers a selection of over 25,000 products from 1,300 different vendors (“REI Case Study”, n.d.).

The condition of Australian fashion retailers have been under-serviced and underwhelmed when it comes to fashion choice, especially in affordable variety (Wells 2013). There are only numerous fashion labels are available to dress 23 million people. In addition, the price cannot be compared to international brands’; the volumes produced by big international retailers like Zara and H&M are to service global market, unlike Sportsgirl or Country Road who produce much smaller volumes.

With an old-fashioned sensibility and a forward-looking embrace of networking and Internet technology, Recreational Equipment, Inc. (REI) occupies a distinctive position in the retail market. Selling gear and clothing for outdoor recreational activities, REI operates 82 stores throughout the United States, as well as 2 stores on the Web and an adventure-themed travel service. Together, these entities recorded over $1 billion in sales during 2005.

The availability of budget, experts, employee’s facilities from the ministry of tourism guarantee operational feasibility for this project. According to (Factors affecting marketing in travel and tourism). “In many cases government-run tourism boards are the sole source of funding for a travel and tourism marketing campaign”. Moreover, the government support for the

Skiing and Hiking is a well recognised apparel business that caters to the youth and young adults in the Brisbane community. The retail industry, including this particular business, is one of the fastest growing business sectors in the economy and Skiing and Hiking intends to capitalise on the success of this industry by taking advantages of the retail opportunities in the Brisbane region. The retail outlet is in the Brisbane region focuses exclusively on boards and footwear, and doing so will differentiate them from local competitors. Skiing and Hiking will exemplify the latest in cutting edge products and trends; their focus is to provide apparel and accessories to yield customers to their highest performance in any winter and climbing ventures.

The North Face is a rapidly growing brand that started out as a small shop in San Francisco, California. It was founded by two hikers as a small mountaineering retail shop, but has since taken off to become a world-renowned chain with high quality outdoor clothing and gear. The quality and variety of the brand has encouraged the extreme sport goers to continue to shop and spread the word of its reliability. This is important for a lot of the consumers because the Earth is nothing to mess with. They need reliable outerwear to keep them warm if they are climbing Mount Everest or even if they are just skiing down some easy bunny slopes in Colorado. The growth rate of the business alone shows the quality of the brand, but is not the only reason the brand has done so well. The logo plays a huge role in the spread of a business. All it takes is a glance at someone’s jacket for a new customer to discover the iconic brand.

The corporate branding strategy will create a sort of umbrella under which all the properties of the company will fall, thus sharing the same quality level in the customer’s perception. Moreover a strong corporate brand will ease the company identification and potentially increase the number of new guests through word of mouth, thus enabling the company to gain a bigger market share. Nevertheless the implementation of such a strategy will necessarily involve big costs and a structural change in the organization. Its culture, the way in which advertising is done, the facilities and supplies in each resorts, the way in which management operates will have to be adapted to the new branding strategy. Furthermore undertaking this action may let down some valuable customers who are particularly affectionate to a resort and may be afraid that it will lose its unique and individual features. Plus it might also disappoint some skilled hotel managers which may feel threatened in their autonomy and potentially leave the company. Retraining the whole body of employees to adapt to the new strategy may be expensive and time consuming as well.

Evaluate concepts and principles of strategic marketing and the application to the development of an appropriate marketing mix for Kathmandu.

Jeremy Moon founded Icebreaker out of Wellington, New Zealand in 1994 making a splash as the first company in the world to develop a layering system for the outdoors with merino wool. The apparel became popular among outdoor sports enthusiasts as well as people who were simply interested in or attracted to the outdoorsy lifestyle and image. Slowly after its conception, it became a brand that had customers buying its products to meet both functional and emotional needs. Icebreaker offered its customers light, breathable, non-itchy, durable, machine-washable fabric. Their unique, high quality clothes made from superfine merino fabric differentiated Icebreaker from every other outdoor apparel company making it possible for them to charge a premium price. In order to maintain a long-term competitive edge in the retail market, the company also emphasized having “kinship with nature.” Their successful positioning and exclusivity of their products made Icebreaker the go-to brand for New Zealanders who wanted the best-quality outdoor apparel and wanted to be a part of the outdoor sports culture.

However, globalization also brings challenges for New Zealand’s retailer of clothing. One of the challenge is the increasing global rivalries. Due to the strong competition with global retail companies, reducing

Faruqui, M. (2014, July). Nobody can beat Bangladesh in price and quality. Retrieved from http://www.textiletoday.com.bd/magazine/873

Through a review of recent literature covering the role of marketing (and branding) in affecting the artistic products and arts organisations, the proposed study explores the connection between the arts centres’ financial strength and their brands constructed therein. With particular emphasis on three arts centres in Singapore, namely The Substation, The Esplanade, and Goodman Arts Centre, five research questions are included to support the thesis. The initial investigation of the proposed study will attempt to 1) What is branding and its relationship with the arts in Singapore?; 2) What are the identified arts centres in Singapore?; 3) Do brand extension strategies for conventional goods and services succeed in the case of arts centres in Singapore? 4) Which type of