Zppos Case Study

Zppos Case Study

1. The market for the footwear industry was definitely no walk in the park. It was a market that was extremely competitive and could easily change directions in a heartbeat. Most of the power lay with the consumers, who had the option to switch from style to style whenever they felt like it. This pushed companies in this business to invest heavily in optimization and new technologies. It almost forces companies to specialize in certain areas and carve out a strategic position and form a market niche that focuses on fashion, innovation, quality, or production capabilities.
Ecco has taken steps to make itself a strong player in this heavily competitive market field.   They noticed that the shoe market was quickly becoming a global market and made sure to provide their employees with the knowledge that would be required of them, such as mindsets and the ability to adapt. They even established a center that would allow their employees to get the best vocational training, career development, developmental conversations, and expatriation. By doing so, ECCO was able to put its own workers that were already well established with the company culture through training, therefore eliminating the need to hire new employees that would be strangers to the environment.
Another aspect that ECCO realized was important to be a competitive player was to be on the cutting edge of technology. Without it, ECCO would always be coming in second place on new technology and constantly a step behind trying to enter a market that had already been created. ECCO made sure that one of its principles was constant inventing as well and fine tuning cutting edge production technologies.
ECCO is constantly battling its main competitors, Geox, Clarks, and Timberland, in the footwear market. Any wrong step will put itself far behind its competitors.   In the casual shoe wear sector, Geox is quickly becoming a growing force, gaining a 250% percent increase on the market place, while ECCO only grew...