Sports stores targeting women
By Anne d'Innocenzio
Associated Press
NEW YORK — Sporting goods makers and retailers, who long underserved the needs of their female shoppers, are making a more aggressive play for this hot segment.
Associated Press
The Sports Authority Inc., the nation's No. 1 sporting goods retailer, is working to attract more women by sprucing up its fashions, brightening its interiors and carving out separate women's shops at the front of the store — a change from the merchandise relegated to the back corners. The chain hopes these changes will help revive its lagging sales.
Keri Collins of Wading River, N.Y., shops for a workout video at The Sports Authority in Sayville, N.Y. Sporting goods makers and retailers, which for years have underserved female consumers, are now focusing on this market.
Reebok International Ltd., which jump-started the aerobics trend in the 1980s but then lost its way, is now trying to win back the female customers it lost. It's overhauling its women's business, and is playing up women in its advertising.
Nike Inc. has two women-only boutiques in California called Nike Goddess that are serving as a laboratory to test new merchandising concepts.
These moves show that the industry is finally realizing that merely stocking up on jogging bras and biking shorts isn't enough to woo women consumers, who tend to be harder to please than men. Unlike men, who are more loyal to their stores, women tend to shop at a wider variety of stores, from Saks Fifth Avenue to Target, analysts said. They also demand more from the products they buy.
Still, critics believe there is still a lot of room for improvement.
"Companies just don't have a good understanding of the female athlete's psychology relative to her body," said Jose Rose, a professor of marketing at Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University.
Like men, women want a product that will better their performance, but they also want something extra — a product that will be in tune to their bodies, he said. Retailers must worker hard to convey that message to women.
Cynthia Cohen, president of Strategic Mindshare, a retail consulting firm in Menlo Park, Calif., and a board member of The Sports Authority, believes companies have to do more than appeal to women's fashion sense — they need to educate women, particularly active consumers in their 50s and 60s, about the functional side of athletic clothes and gear.
Clearly, sporting goods companies' ability to understand what women want will give them a competitive edge in the $46 billion industry, whose sales have leveled off over the past five years.
Although the sports apparel market has been relatively stable, spending for women's sports apparel has grown at a greater clip than spending for men's, according to the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association, an industry trade organization, and NPD Fashionworld, a market research company.
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That increase is a natural outgrowth of women's greater participation in activities including golf, yoga, and weightlifting as well as extreme sports like inline skating, Cohen said.
Women are also a big factor in influencing apparel spending, making about 60 percent of all sports apparel purchases. The women's category accounts for about 45 percent of total spending, according to the trade association.
Nike plans to use its Nike Goddess stores — one in Newport Beach, Calif., the other in Los Angeles — as a way of determining how to approach the women's business, according to Mindy Grossman, vice president of global apparel, who joined Nike a little more than a year ago.
The company hasn't determined a rollout strategy for the retail concept, but it has already fine-tuned its women's business at its Niketown store in Chicago, and plans to borrow elements from Nike Goddess in revamping its women's area at other Niketown stores.
The stores, which have a softer decor than Niketown, concentrate on what the trade calls cross-merchandising — pairing a yoga top with jogging pants, for example. The strategy reflects how women buy athletic wear compared to men.
"We feel we want to use this as an example of how women shop for their active-wear products," said Grossman, noting that the company wants to create new wardrobe options that will take consumers from the street to the gym.
Reebok wants to better connect with the consumer by offering her three different levels of product for its sneakers and apparel. They are: fashions such as sneakers designed more for style than performance, products intended for a specific sport and more expensive merchandise aimed at the serious athlete.
Martin Hanaka, chief executive of The Sports Authority, acknowledges that the 199-store chain has been "behind the curve" in reaching out to women. But he believes the changes he is overseeing are working.
"We are recognizing the importance of the female," said Hanaka, who aims to have women account for 50 percent of sales, up from 40 percent. The segment had accounted for only 30 percent of the business five years ago.
Two years ago, The Sports Authority remodeled its Clifton, N.J., store to reflect the new focus on women, and redesigned eight stores based on that prototype last year. This year, it will redesign 33 stores and plans to retool another 40 next year.
But Hanaka added, "The turnaround is not going to happen quickly. It will take us a few years."
