Retailing in a recession
Monday, April 20th, 2009Rowperfect has long tried to deliver three things to its customers:
- High quality products
- Value for money
- Excellent customer service
Like many firms the slowdown in the economy is expected to affect our business. In addition, we buy some of our products from Australia and America and so there are changes in the currency exchange rates to consider as well.
The Economist magazine says
The downturn will accelerate the use of social media, such as blogs and social networking sites, by consumers looking for intelligence on firms and their products. As trust in brands is eroded, people will place more value on recommendations from friends. Social media make it harder for brands to pull the wool over consumers' eyes, but they also offer canny companies a powerful new channel through which to promote their wares and test new products and pricing strategies.
Marketers ignore the messages that emanate from these groups at their peril. For one thing is clear: this recession has triggered a wholesale reapppraisal by shoppers of the value that their habitual brands deliver. The winners will be those that adapt intellligently to the new reality. The losers will be those who think they can win simply by telling consumers to "Want it!"
We are trying to offer you products across the range of athlete and coach needs from beginners to Olympians and so we want to tell you a bit about how we've adjusted our prices and our products to try and enable you, our customers, to get good quality rowing and sculling equipment at a fair price that will suit your needs.
Dreher
We have worked with Dreher to build a new type of sculling oar that fits between the fixed length scull (£270) and the carbon adjustable (£399). This is called the "Club Scull" (£350) and is both adjustable and will suit most athletes after they have learnt to scull and are training in club crew boats. The range of spoon / handle options is limited. The blade design is the same as the carbon adjustables. The club sculls are made in 100% carbon with no fibreglass. The price is also very competitive at £349. And at the top of the range the Aero scull is a new aerofoil shaft design for elite and veteran athletes seeking incremental boat speed from an aerodynamic design.
Coxmate
Taking advantage of the Australian dollar exchange rate not having changed much against the Pound, we are trying to keep the price of all Coxmates unchanged. The range now includes coxless boat speed / rate / time measurement with Coxmate HC (£167) as well as the coxed boat range of AA (voice) £196, SRT (time / rate) £270 and SCT (speed ) £588. We are shortly going to reveal an improved SRT with a larger display screen - at the same price as the old model.
Additionally we've added the rate-only Cadence watch (£59.99) which is a lower price product for rowers and scullers who want to know ratings in an easy-to-use model that isn't tied to use in a boat with wires.
Please take time to read the customer reviews that are on our shop. Each product has at the bottom of the page a button "Write Review" and if you want to add your views to the ones already there, please do.
We are already getting increased enquiries from clubs who've never bought our products before. They have used internet search to research prices for rowing and sculling equipment. We offer a demonstration trial to those who want to check how these brands work in practice and we find that around 90% of people who try Dreher and Coxmate buy the trial unit.
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