North Face Case

The North Face: Company Analysis The North Face, Inc. is an American outdoor product company that outfits professional and amateur athletes and enthusiasts with high-quality, technical outwear. The company was founded in 1968 by Douglas Tompkins. Headquartered in Alameda, California, North Face is a subsidiary of VF Corporation; a global apparel and footwear company founded in 1899. Now days, The North Face is internationally recognized as one of the leaders in the outdoor outfitting industry, but the company has not always been perceived as such. In fact, initially the company only offered highly selected merchandise targeted to climbers and backpackers. Eventually, skiwear was added and through the year a vast array of new products has

The success of a company does not only depend on the quality of the products; success partially depends on the development of a marketing campaign that helps solidify the image of commitment the company has to portray to its target audience. With Regard to this, The North Face has done an excellent job at identifying and targeting an appropriate customer base with the objective to equip them with the products and features that suit their needs and expectations. In the past, The North Face has focused on targeting people who are outdoors enthusiast, but recently the company has made a shift to focus on the less-extreme booming active-apparel market (Jeff Beer). In 2013, Alina Tugend wrote on New York Times’ on how the North Faces advertising campaigns targeted outdoor enthusiast but did not “really focus on the rest of us, who wear the jackets as we commute to work or take a stroll in the city park” (Tugend NYT). Now, the company is successfully making changes to address that issue. As the president of the company recognizes “Whether it is the epic or the every day, we want to inspire people to find the thing they love, and relentlessly pursue it” (Yahoo Finace). The company’s focus is aligning with the demands of the market and that responsiveness to demand is a key feature that will result in the company maintaining its leadership in the industry. For example, in 2013, North Face accounted for 33.5 percent of the outdoor apparel market in the United States, according to SportsOneSouce, a market research firm, and 20-point lead from its main competitor Columbia, who controlled 12 percent in that same