Building on success
Fashion is undoubtedly boosting its presence in travel-retail/duty-free, which now provides exciting opportunities for many brands. Marek Kolasinski talks to Puma about its plans for the channel
CREATED 60 years ago by the brother of another wellknown sports label’s initiator, Puma has become an icon in sportswear and is a favoured choice for many athletes. Puma sports footwear is renowned for its quality and performance, and the brand’s presence and positioning is global.
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It might seem strange that such a global brand should have shunned travel-retail for so long, but to arrive at such an observation would be to overlook the meticulous development plan set up by the company’s current chairman and chief executive officer, Jochen Zeitz. This strategy is now in its fourth phase, which is one of expansion, and travel-retail forms an integral part of this process. “Travel-retail plays an important role in our long-term corporate strategy,” Thomas Henningsen, global travel retail manager for Puma, tells Frontier. “We view travel-retail as a revenue generator, but also as a window to the world where we can showcase our products.”
Building a travel-retail presence from scratch is never easy, particularly with the eternal challenge of finding the necessary space in the retail environment. Moreover, fashion is still a relatively underrepresented category in the channel, with few brands having a real international and renowned presence.
However, things are changing, and they are changing fast, with more and more brands eager to establish an outlet at one or more airports to boost their travel-retail credentials. “Over the past decade, the fashion, accessories and lifestyle category has grown in importance,” Henningsen explains. “This is partly fuelled by retailers and airport authorities working closely with brands and developing this category, as well as travelling customers demanding a wider brand and product assortment. As a result, the travelling customer has more choice in terms of brands, and this has taken us one step closer to creating full-scale shopping malls in airports. This trend will continue over the coming years as new brands see the potential travel-retail represents.”
There is an increasing desire throughout the industry to bring some freshness and newness to the array of goods on display at airports. Consumer research undertaken by a wide range of companies – both suppliers and retailers – shows that travellers are not particularly excited about the duty-free offer.
Most of them will buy the usual perfume, tobacco or spirit product with no further thought, save for the occasional gift they want to bring back with them. The airport might be looking more like a shopping mall, but it is still very much an airport – a place through which people pass, not because they want to, but because they have to.
And it is this aspect of travel-retail that Puma is targeting. However, bringing novelty requires welcoming retailers and interested customers, with both groups entailing their own sets of challenges. “The biggest challenge with retailers and airport authorities is to make them see how diversified Puma as a brand has become,” says Henningsen. “Today, we are all about SportLifestyle: a unique combination of sport, fashion and lifestyle.”
The uniqueness of the product offer will certainly appeal to customers who may already know the brand but who have little notion of its evolution in recent years towards a more lifestyle-conscious approach to its apparel and footwear. Crucially, Henningsen is acutely aware that travellers are at the airport primarily to travel. “They are not there to shop,” he says. “We need to bear that in mind when putting together brands and products, which are intended to convert travellers into customers. At Puma, we employ a number of mechanics to achieve this. We believe in creating synergies between core elements such as product, visual merchandising, fixture concepts, customer service and in-store promotions.”
The Puma approach certainly seems to be convincing enough for several airports to give the brand an opportunity. With 12 stores (ten of which are wholesale and franchise-based, with the remaining two directly operated by Puma) – including one apiece at Madrid (164sqm), Düsseldorf (145sqm) and Copenhagen airports (79sqm) – Henningsen is slowly but surely growing the travel-retail presence of the brand, ensuring that its partners clearly understand the potential rewards in this venture.
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“We aim to build mutually beneficial relationships with our stakeholders,” Henningsen explains. “With our retail partners we aim to create unique value for the travelling customers. We go to great lengths to achieve this. Just to mention a few, we rotate merchandise on a weekly basis to ensure that the mix remains exciting and desirable; we introduce merchandise which is specifically made for travellers; we train and motivate staff to create an authentic Puma shopping environment; and we work on in-store promotions which engage customers. These actions combined with many more create synergies which drive customer satisfaction and, in return, we are rewarded with higher sales.”
Particularly successful are the partnerships developed between Puma and well-known designers and brands such as Alexander McQueen, Evisu and Ferrari, to name but a few. Each store will see its offer modulated depending on size and location. Smaller stores will feature accessories and footwear only while larger ones (such as Madrid, Düsseldorf and Copenhagen) will offer apparel, footwear and accessories for men, women and children.
Adaptability is key in this channel where space is at a premium and untried propositions are sometimes viewed askance. But for travel-retail to retain the ‘wow’ factor it had when it first began more than 50 years ago, there needs to be something new, something different to make the travellers’ jaws drop in awe and wonder. Next to the core categories, which will always appeal to the great majority of travellers, there needs to be that extra dimension which makes them want to come back again and again to see what has changed, what is new and what they can get there that they cannot get anywhere else. Fashion could be the ideal category in which to achieve this goal, and Puma certainly seems to have what it takes to offer something different wherever travellers may go.
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