jeff | Jeff Harbaugh

Skullcandy’s Quarter and Year: Good Results, Same Strategic Issues and Opportunities

You recall that Skullcandy found itself in turnaround mode when it sold too much poor quality product in low priced distribution that wasn’t consistent with its preferred branding and market positioning. I suppose that happened when the newly public company tried to meet Wall Street growth expectations. CEO Hoby Darling came in and put a

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Globe’s Half Year; The Plan Seems to be Coming Together

Globe

Back in 2002, Globe bought Kubic Marketing, the holding company for World Industries and Dwindle. It turned out that their timing couldn’t have been worse in terms of the skateboarding industry cycle. Just about the time they dug their way out of that glitch, the Great Recession hit and had the same kind of impact

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Interview with Blue Montgomery

Snowboarding

Some people up in Canada decided, for whatever reason, to start an action sports industry news magazine called The BoardPress. Their sanity in trying to do this can be questioned, but they sent me a copy of their first print magazine, which came out some months ago. Probably hoping I’d write something about them. It

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SPY’s Results for the Year and Some Thoughts on Their Market Position

Spy

As I’ve written before, I have a lot of respect for how SPY has restructured and repositioned itself. There seems to be an alignment of their corporate culture and market positioning that not only has the potential to differentiate the brand (in their market), but to save money and increase the efficiency of the organization.

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Billabong Turns a Profit; But There’s More Work to Do

Billabong

Wow, this is going to be way shorter than most of my previous Billabong articles. Where’s the drama, the kind of hard to get your head around accounting, the recapitalizations and explanations thereof, the endless list of “significant items” I always complain about? Gone. Mostly. Well, not all the significant items. Billabong is implementing their

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Berrics Consumer Report

Skateboarding

You know, I always assumed/took for granted that skateboards you bought at Walmart or other large discount chains were not too good. I have to admit though that sometimes I thought to myself that maybe they weren’t a bad idea for a first deck if somebody was starting out. To be clear, I’m way too

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Kering’s Annual Report and Some Thoughts on Volcom’s Role.

Kering (Volcom)

Kering, the owner of Volcom and Electric, presented its annual results for 2014 last week and held the usual conference call. As regular readers know, I was impressed at the job Volcom did selling itself to Kering (then PPR) both in terms of the price they achieved and their timing. The deal happened almost four

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The Abercrombie & Fitch Story. What Went Wrong?

Abercrombie & Fitch (Hollister)

You have heard me say from time to time that companies get into trouble due to denial and perseverance in a period of change. I’ve also noted that it’s typically not the founder or executive who’s been in charge for a long time who can fix the problems. Their perception of the organization, relationships with

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Deckers Has a Pretty Good Quarter. Sanuk, Not So Much.

Deckers (Sanuk)

The overall numbers for Deckers for the quarter look pretty good. But some of the comments left me a bit perplexed. Meanwhile, Sanuk is still not performing the way Deckers must have expected when they bought it. Overall Results In the quarter ended December 31, Deckers’ revenue rose 6.6% from $736 to $785 million. The

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Mobile! Mobile! Mobile!

Ecommerce

In some recent speeches and articles, I’ve been highlighting the growing importance of mobile to brands and retailers. I thought I’d been pretty aggressive in suggesting how important it has become (and is increasingly becoming), but I think I’ve probably been understating the case. Now, I’ve stumbled (thank you fabled research department) on an article/presentation

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