The team at Salomon wants to make sure that their consumers aren’t forgetting about the importance of getting outside and having fun, and their specialty retailers help them tell this story. Salomon looks for authenticity in everything they do, and they strive to relay this through maintaining a omni-channel experience, whether the consumer is in-store or online.
Hannah Fleming, Digital Marketing Associate at Amer Sports
Hannah Fleming, a Digital Marketing Associate with Amer Sports, parent company of Salomon, works on the implementation and use of digital platforms, supporting Salomon’s retailers, and trafficking and monitoring campaigns. Hannah spoke with Promoboxx about the initiatives that Salomon is implementing to stay authentic and true to their core story. A main initiative for Salomon is ensuring that consumers have a consistent omni-channel experience, and providing their specialty retailers with easy access to brand content is one of the ways that they are working to address this.
We have so many smaller specialty accounts and we want each one to get the attention that they deserve, but each request requires time and coordination between teams. When you have 600 retailers who all need access to campaign content and images, there is a lot of back and forth and it gets to be a scalability issue.
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We’re seeing a definite shift from consumer reliance on large box stores that don’t really have a differentiating factor to smaller specialty stores. The specialty stores that are winning are the ones that have an online presence and are engaging in social campaigns. Smaller stores that can provide expertise and specific product knowledge build a level of trust with their consumers and become an authentic source of reference. That’s where Promoboxx comes in. It allows local retailers to position themselves as experts online and share the Salomon story with ease.
We have a team of two digital marketers working across multiple brands, so we depend on retailers to help tell our story, as retailers are an important connection to our consumers. We want consumers to understand that our passion is our products and the outdoors, and our local retailers can authentically tell that story and look to our products to satisfy their needs. Salomon has the brand story and product knowledge, and local retailers are familiar with their local market and consumers, so being able to work together is incredibly beneficial. In addition, the products we create often need tuning, adjustments, and can benefit from in-person knowledge and demonstration that our retailers can provide.
These retailers face online competition primarily. Many of them do not have a dedicated marketing manager so they struggle to create a solid online presence and differentiating themselves amongst other retailers.
In addition to Promoboxx, we are putting a big focus on our field support initiative. We have a field support team made up of tech and sales representatives who travel and educate retailers about our technology and products, encouraging the omni-channel experience in-store and online. In addition to in-store training, our reps organize running clubs at the retailer locations, and get to know the community the shop serves. This drives business back to the store locations and builds a connection.
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Retailers were previously using an online brand center and receiving digital tool kits full of six months worth of prepared social sized images and digital content. As you can imagine, this was overwhelming for many retailers and we were receiving a lot of questions and one-off requests, which was challenging with a small team.
We were looking for a scalable tool our retailers could use to win online. Promoboxx is that solution. We can’t wait to see what comes in the fall and winter as we see the transition and increased use of retailers. Its great because we can create and share campaigns for all of our retailers, not just our top retailers.
How specialty retailers view Salomon content on the Promoboxx platform
Promoboxx has made my life easier. The support team has surpassed my expectations. The team at Promoboxx has been with us every step of the way leading up to the launch and supporting us and our retailers. Overall our team has saved approximately five to eight hours per week just by using Promoboxx. We have been highlighting Promoboxx to our reps and we want all of our retailers to be engaging and sharing through the platform.
We’ve heard from our tech reps in the field that our retailers love the automated share feature. This feature allows retailers to automatically share brand content without needing to log in and out of the platform. This helps to level the playing field and allows retailers to focus on in-store service to their customers.
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