Fortunate are the executives of a company which controls a major brand. All they have to do is count the profits as they roll in. If those profits are huge then they pay themselves huge bonuses. If the profits start to fall off a predator will buy the company, when they will sell their stock and retire to the Cotswolds or the Bahamas according to taste.
The predator will be a major corporation whose massive resources will enable the brand to prosper and achieve even greater things than its originators dreamed of, but whoever has got their hands on the brand will be sure they have one thing - a cash cow. All they have to do is bring out new products from time to time and make sure the brand gets adequate amounts of exposure in the media. Even the latter is not essential if the product is good enough to sell itself. Well, sort of, perhaps and maybe.
These thoughts are prompted by the announcement of the demise of Ravel. A text book case if ever there was one.
Ravel when it started in the 60s was a spin-off from a Bond Street shop. It rapidly became synonymous with zingy fashion at slightly premium prices and opened branches throughout the country due partly to that and partly through what were then thought to be tough commercial practices which today are accepted as standard. Ravel were the whiz-kids, the boys who went where others feared to tread.
In due course the business was bought by Clarks, no doubt with the thought of synergy in mind. Clarks resources applied to Ravel would give it greater financial clout and Ravel's fashion expertise would rub off onto Clarks' middle of the road offerings, giving them a bit more street appeal.
Which happened for a while but synergy works both ways, a fact not universally acknowledged. Ravel's cut and thrust management style, its finely honed ability to nip in and seize opportunities its competitors had not noticed or were too slow to grab became blunted because they were influenced by Clarks' well proven management systems, designed by back office accountants rather than Ravel's corsairs who spent their days at the sharp end buying and selling shoes reputed to be the toughest cookies in a tough market.
At the same time Ravel's fashion zip and go bounced off the designers in Street and so had little effect on the main Clarks' ranges. They tried, but with the best will in the world, could not get themselves to think the unthinkable every day of the week. Somerset was a long way from the world of style. In these electronic days you can run an business based on intangibles like shoe design from a croft on a remote Scottish Isle, if that takes your fancy, but in those days you really did need to be where the action was - Paris, Milan, London, if you were going to understand and keep up with the trends and in turn influence them yourself.
But the shops went on returning respectable figures and the brand had a loyal following so there was no need to worry. And then someone - a marketing man maybe or possibly an accountant - did a very silly thing. They did a deal with a mail order catalogue to stock Ravel shoes on an exclusive basis. Nothing dreadful about that I hear you mutter, but there was. In order to accommodate the catalogue firm's markup which had to cover their agents' commission, instalment payments and other expenses, the ordinary Ravel stock would have been too expensive for the typical catalogue buyer. What did they do? They degraded the product. There are several expressions for this course of action which I don't propose to include in this article because it could fall into the hands of young and impressionable people, who most likely know even worse, but there you are.
The set-up worked like this: the mail order buyer went to factories that supplied Ravel, selected styles for the catalogue which were then made and delivered under the Ravel brand, with a royalty to Ravel on every pair. It was a great success. The mail order customers were tickled pink to find they could buy premium branded shoes at reasonable prices and pay over nine months. Sales boomed. Drinks all round. Brilliant idea.
I hope you've spotted the snag. The mail order Ravel shoes weren't Ravel shoes. They had as much to do with Bond Street as Euston Station. Which would not have mattered if it there been a clear difference between the economy line and the prestige line, difficult but not impossible, and I believe they did try to make one, but inevitably the cheap infects the dear. Economists call it Gresham's Law.
At the same time the original founders of the business with spikes on their running shoes and fire in their bellies had been replaced by company men, too busy writing reports to have time to zapp the competition by whatever means. That's not to criticise them - it's what only too often what happens in large organisations.
In the end Ravel became just another middle range brand, unable to take advantage of the new market which had emerged of young people with money to spend, who were prepared to invest it in shoes bought from new shops, single and chain, which were able to move quickly to give them what they wanted.
I suppose in a way it was inevitable. Brands, like empires and people and cars, get old. Sometimes they go on for years and years, but in the end they decay and come to dust. They spread their net too widely. They expand beyond their capability. The original emperors seem to get everything right, their successors appear to make nothing but mistakes.
It has been know to happen that new management comes in, refurbishes the brand and changes everything, as the recent history of Marks and Spencer proves, but more often, sadly, it doesn't.
How do you keep up-to-date with the latest news from the Footwear sector?
