Given that I work in the New England area, I have the opportunity to meet with plenty of interesting shoe companies.  What is it about Maine, NH and MA with all these cool brands ( Converse, Timberland, New Balance....even the Anti Shoe is coming to Portsmouth)?

So this morning I met with the team behind the Xterra Footwear brand.  From their site:



-We are a mix of humankind's beastly gut instinct and nature's cold shoulder of indifference. We are complex harmony. We are complete simplicity. We are beautiful machines. We are as big as mountains. We are as small as sand. We are friends with death. We are life.

Needless to say I liked their style.  But more importantly, as usual, the team understood online media.  Like on a scale of 1-10, I'd give them an 8.5 ( my parents were teachers so I don't just hand out all 10's ).  Rather than having me explain the whole online world to them, for the last 3 years this has been their world.  Why?

Because they are an early growth company, working through PR reviews, ramping up production and really do not need a $50,000 media buy to focus on branding.  But what they do need, the Outdoor Channel will deliver in spades. 

So I have a toolkit I keep in my head about the most efficient ways for new brands to break into new markets without breaking the bank.  Xterra signed up for every one of them.  They also understood the difference between slick online media and engaging promotions that pull deep inside our pool of Super Active and Elite Outdoor enthusiasts.

Everything is still under wraps for now, but give it a few weeks and watch what happens to their brand when I put their product on 45 of the most popular outdoor websites and expose them to 2.7 million unqiue outdoor enthusiasts.  I'm also goign to put them in areas where they have a "hunch" new Trail Runners are hanging out and for those buys they will be the only trail running brand on the entire site.  Thinking outside the box, New England style.

Yeah...they lit the match.  They are also going to be early with this media buy and place themselves in front of two other brands who are delaying their Spring Campaigns around trail running shoes to the fall. 

Do you hear that sucking sound?  That is the market share now moving to Xterra because they know a good thing when they see it and know that timing is everything.