W.C. Russell Moccasin Company - Article Example

The company runs ads in high-end hunting magazines and relies mainly on word-of-mouth. However, it will be sending monthly email newsletters to a list of 8,000 people owning a pair of its boots. The firm traces beginnings to founder Will Russell when he began selling hand-sewn boots in 1898. A company bought the firm in 1927 only to sell it a year later to Bill Gustin. Gustin’s son-in-law Ralph Fabricius joined the company in 1957 and became company president in 1970. Today, the firm employs 35 people that produced 13,000 pairs of shoes and boots last year.

One of the company’s significant markets is Japan where orders are up by 15%. The company started selling in the country 28 years ago through a single wholesaler but there are now 15 wholesalers in that country. Despite the reputation for embracing tradition, Coster (2009) reports that the Japanese customers wear the boots for fashion. Japanese magazines have started to feature the company’s products since four years ago. The company introduces a new boot yearly to maintain consumer interests.

Customers express devotion for Russell boots in the testimonials section of the Russell website, some of them next to newly killed animals.For market analysis, we use a modified version of the David Aaker perspective as described by NetMBA Business Knowledge Center. We infer that the niche of W.C. Russell Moccasin Company is in hand-sewn boots from animal hides. Both market size and market growth of the product niche of W.C. Russell Moccasin Company has been small. After 111 years, annual sales reached only $3 million in 2008.

This size is very small compared to total consumer spending of several trillion in the U.S. and tens of trillions of dollars worldwide. Firm profitability, however, may be above the market level or acceptable given more than a century of existence. The same, however, is not necessarily true for the industry. The firm relies on word of mouth for promotions.