North Face 2011 Annual Report Download - page 11

selling jeans with water-repellent and other features
to meet the needs of India’s large, rapidly growing
—and mobile—youth market. (Support for this
project came from the VF Innovation Fund, which
you can read more about beginning on page .)
To Salzburger, these successes are a direct result
of the strength and longevity of VF’s Asia platform.
“We started in China in the mid-s with our
jeans brands, so we have more experience than
many other Western companies,” he explains.
“Since then, we’ve added e North Face ®, Vans®
and Kipling® brands, leveraging our existing
platform with additional talent and resources
to support our growth. Now, we’re looking to
further leverage this platform to support our
newly acquired Timberland® brand.”
In China, VF seeks to shape and dene categories,
not just lead them. e Lee® brand was one
of the rst international jeans brands to be
launched there, and is a leader in premium
denim. e Vans® brand is using a fusion of art,
music and action sports to tap into a tremendous
demand by young consumers for self-expression.
e North Face® brand is attempting to create
an outdoor category in China by understanding
Chinese consumers’ attitudes toward the outdoors,
encouraging outdoor participation through
events and providing online resources about
outdoor activities. In India, VF launched its
jeans brands via a majority-owned joint venture
in . In  VF acquired full ownership of
the business, and is taking the rst steps to launch
its Vans® brand because, according to Salzburger,
“as a country that adds the equivalent of the
population of Australia every year, India’s long-
term potential is huge.”
 , ’    
of  brands have continued to grow, despite the
nancial turmoil there. e company has honed
In Chinese slang, “finding north” means gaining a
clear understanding of an issue or the direction of your
life. The North Face® brand’s 2011 campaign, “Going
True North,” connected with this part of Chinese culture,
communicating the brand’s message of outdoor
exploration and the spirit of self-exploration. 171
local outdoor clubs participated in events sponsored
by the brand, exploring nine Chinese cities and the
outdoor areas along China’s northern border.
  | 
This marketing campaign integrated social
media, key creative influencers and the hip
youth sub-culture of fixed-gear bikers to
highlight city hot spots across the Asian
market. Consumers were inspired to share
the passion for their respective cities,
which resulted in deep engagement in the
campaign and more than 200,000 new Lee®
fans—over twice the capacity of Beijing’s
Olympic Bird’s Nest stadium—in under
four months.
Organic revenue growth
in Asia in 
operate platforms in our most important markets
of the Americas, Europe, China and now India,
each of which can be leveraged as we continue
to grow and add new brands.” ese platforms
also enable VF’s brands to learn from each other,
sharing talent and expertise within each region and
around the world. “In Asia, we benet from the
knowledge we have gained building our platform
in Europe, and vice versa,” says Salzburger. “And
we’re now taking lessons we learned in China
and applying them to India.”
VF’s international platforms share a common
goal—to understand local consumers better than
anyone else. VF’s scale and resources allow it to
invest in gaining deep local consumer insights in a
wide range of markets. is is a signicant strategic
advantage, especially in fast-growing markets with
increasingly empowered and demanding consumers.
Smart localization driven by consumer insights
was the key to VF’s international success in .
  ’   
market and the strongest example of the power
of consumer insights to build brands and grow
businesses. For example, most people in the world
travel on two wheels rather than four. In , two
of VF’s jeanswear brands looked at the unmet needs
of cycling cultures in the region’s two largest
countries and found a big opportunity. Across
Asia, Lee tapped into the growing xed-gear bike
youth sub-culture and launched the Urban Riders
Collection. eses riders know their city inside out.
Waterproof zippers, reective printing on the
fabric and new pockets are just some of the details
of the collection, which was conceived as a new
interpretation of the original “Lee Riders” who
rode on horseback in the American West. In India,
the Wrangler ® brand conducted ethnographic
research into the attitudes and behaviors of
motorcycle riders to see if the brand could stretch
its Western riding heritage to India’s motorcycle-
riding consumers. Today, the Wrangler ® brand is
Just north of the Italian border
and just south of the Alps sits
a picturesque medieval town
on the shores of a glassy
mountain lake. Lugano is
sometimes called the “Monte
Carlo of Switzerland,” but inside
VF it’s called a growth platform.
Here, VF associates from more
than 30 local markets share
the expertise, insights, and
resources that VF needs to win.
In India, the “True Wanderers” initiative
selected 10 riders from over 1,500
entrants for weeklong solo road
trips. Each rider created his own
“worn across the country” denim
documentary through blogs and live
radio segments. The Wrangler® brand’s
Facebook® fan base in India grew from
600 to 35,000 in just one month.
Lugano
 |  
Revenue growth
in India in 
laces like Lugano, Switzerland,
and Bornem, Belgium, are key to
understanding VF’s international
growth strategy. ese two cities,
which together house all of VF’s
European businesses, are part
of a small group of cities such as Hong Kong,
Shanghai and Bangalore that serve as hubs for
the company’s expansion in Europe and Asia.
Inside the company, these hubs are known as
platforms, a term that simultaneously means the
place, the people, the brands and the experience
required to win. In a growth-driven company,
a platform is the combination of ingredients
needed as a launching pad for future growth.
“To win internationally, you need a combination
of local market knowledge to grow sales and build
brands, together with strong, enabling support
functions such as nance, operations, legal and
human resources,” says Salzburger. “We own and