Case11 Fleet of Foot

Umut Ates

Case11 Fleet of Foot

Brief Summary

Navado is 42 and an ex-runner.

She started Fleet of Foot in 1992 and had a boom in first 10 years.

$5-7 returns per premium Nike shoes.

Focused on jogging and running shoes.

Later on she added varied Nike shoes such as walking, basketball shoes.

Challenges:

Her customers then started to complain about how jogging is hard. She was confused.

She was facing competition against discount and regular shoe stores. They had lower prices and profit margins. (Local retail stores, Walmart, Foot Locker)

Experiment:

Personal customized high-performance shoes.

Costs about $170.

But the producer company went out of the business soon.

She found a new company that offers custom shoes.

They had some criteria.

1) More promotion investment

2) Detailed web site

3) 2-3 day training programs for the clerks.

This program costs several thousand dollars to Navado.

Worries:

Runner shoes market is shrinking and her moves wouldn’t change the dynamics.

Lose the loyalty of repeat customers when changing the store image running niche to fashionable shoes.

Evaluation:

Fleet of Foot’s target market is serious runners and from 1992 to today they are offering high variety of high-performance shoes.

Fleet of Foods 4P:

Product is Shoes for advanced and expert levels

Place is the store and web-site (online store)

Price is based on the shoes’ facility.

Promotion is connected to Nike. Because they are selling Nike shoes and Nike have some great promotion strategies.

Options:

1) Increase the variety of shoes in her store:

She can add some other brands and shoe styles to get the customer attention and satisfy the customer needs and wants. When the variety increases in her store, she can create different store parts such as running, jogging, advanced level products, mountain shoes and casual shoes. This option will increase her sales, because she can catch up with her rivals such as Walmart and local retail chains. However...