Business news : Can Dropping Brands Increase Margins?

The blaze of color, blur of graphics and wide range of lengths and widths on a ski shop sales floor can be dizzying. Add various renditions of rocker, core materials, constructions, sidewalls, year-over-year changes and ski-to-ski comparisons, and instead of a beautiful display, customers can get the perfect storm of ski-shop confusion.

“If you have too many brands, the problem is you give the customer too many choices, and it’s hard for him to make a decision,” says Peter Boyer, owner of Alpine Base and Edge in Boulder, Colo. “If you give them too many choices, you just prolong the buying decision for them, and it makes them uncomfortable.”

That’s one reason why some specialty shop owners throughout the country are doing away with the be-everything-to-everyone mentality and narrowing down their product selection to become more specialized.

“It is a tough decision to make in the very beginning,” says Gov Carrigan, operations manager at Pepi Stiegler Sports in Jackson Hole, Wyo., who halved the number of hardgoods brands in his shop.
“We have four real, legitimate, solid brands right now, and I bet we had eight before,” Carrigan says.
Like most shops, he initially questioned whether carrying fewer brands could, in any way, help the shop’s bottom line. But instead of worrying about dollars, he scrutinized his end-of-season inventory.

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By Ryan Dionne through skiingbusiness.com