OR Daily – Trailblazer

Trailblazer Breaks Up the Box to Serve Diverse Market Segments
By: orshowdaily
Published: January 23rd, 2009

BY KRIS VERSTEEGEN

branfordTrailblazer has been an icon in the Connecticut outdoor community for over a decade. With three successful stores turning a profit, the management team and co-owners David Venable, Todd Raskin and Chris Howe decided last year to “deconstruct” their original 9,000-square-foot New Haven location into three separate entities.

These three new stores will still include a Trailblazer location, which will cater to the core outdoor enthusiasts in New Haven. The two new banners are called Denali, a shop dedicated to The North Face and Merrell, and a new concept shop called Enclave, catering to the surf and skate lifestyle customer. All three stores are within 100 yards of each other in the Broadway district of New Haven.

Howe said the move was over a year in the making, but has also been a natural evolution of the Trailblazer retail concept. The first Trailblazer opened in New Haven, Connecticut, the home to Yale University, in 1993. Five years later the business expanded to three locations across the state. However, the New Haven store was still the flagship location and attracted a wide variety of customers.

“We realized that we had three very different customers, particularly in this college town, where people tend to be very polarized about who they are. We felt that certain customers would shop more with us if we customized the store to that person,” Howe said.

“We had a lot of time to think about this, because the back and forth with the bank went on for about a year. The more we started thinking about it, the more we felt this was the right way to go. A lot of people think that you need to put as much stuff as possible under one roof. We felt we were confusing our customer,” Howe added.

All three new locations are open for business in New Haven, and so far, business has been good. However, the change brought some surprises.

Howe and his partners felt that Enclave would draw a crowd of primarily male skate and surf lifestyle customers. However, since it opened in September, more women have been frequenting the store.

“It’s funny, we thought Enclave would really cater to the core skater and surf lifestyle crowd, which is primarily men. But we put this women’s surf and skate boutique in the back and it became this cool little secret for a lot of our female customers. They liked the idea of walking through a skate hardgoods shop before they could shop the boutique,” Howe said.

The second curveball was the economy. Denali opened first early last March and then Trailblazer re-opened in mid-May. However, Enclave didn’t open until the beginning of September, right before the big economic meltdown. Opening three new retail stores weeks before a dramatic economic downturn has been far from easy.

“We are definitely feeling that the customer is concerned about the economic conditions. They want to purchase something of value, but they want to get the best price they can for it,” Howe said. “The issue is that the changes in the economic conditions have made it more challenging the later the store opened. So, Denali and Trailblazer are going gangbusters, and Enclave is doing well.”

In the face of these challenges, Howe and his partners have taken a hard look at their businesses, and they are using all of the tools at their disposal to counteract the impact of the economy.

“The biggest tool we have is inventory control. We are definitely buying less inventory than we did last year. We are keeping the business lean in that respect. On the personnel side, just the opposite is true. We are actually looking for good people to join our team here,” Howe said.

With the challenge of opening three new stores within months of each other and a major slowdown in the economy, many would assume that the team at Trailblazer has its hands full. But Howe said he’s already looking ahead at the next opportunity—Trailblazer’s growing online business.