evo is the sort of company yesterday’s businessmen might not appreciate – or even understand. On the “About Us” page at evogear.com there is a YouTube-style video from company president Bryce “AKA Poster Child” Phillips and fun bios of other crewmembers with Polaroid snapshots displaying mohawks and “rad” hand signs of the kind you see in music videos. It’s as if their photos were taken in high school, when life was fun and the promise of youth was more important than balance sheets and cost analysis.

Then again, if evo’s employees were stiff, suit-wearing number crunchers, the company’s target audience probably wouldn’t give them the time of day.

The approach “is a natural expression of who we are,” says director of e-commerce Nathan “Web Slinger” Decker. “It stems from one of our core values – authenticity. If we happen to come across as ‘hip’ or ‘youthful,’ it’s a clear reflection of who we are. I do think many of our customers strongly identify with our identity and this fuels our business and, hopefully, the sports we represent.”

evo has a single store in Seattle; 90 percent of total sales come from the web – 65 percent from evogear.com, and the rest from eBay and the company’s call center.

The company’s audience – almost entirely young and male – is looking for snowboards, skis and outdoor apparel. And it’s willing to spend. During the 2007 holiday season, evo’s top-selling items included a Burton T-6 Snowboard for $799.95 and a Liquid Force Trip LTD Wakeboard + Alpha Boot 2007 for $349.90.

During some weeks last year the company experienced triple-digit comparable-sales increases from the same periods in 2006. evo faces strong competition from bigger retailers like REI, Dick’s Sporting Goods and BackCountry.com, but Decker says his company is “more lifestyle oriented” and that, by focusing solely on winter sports (and, to a certain extent, skateboarders), it is securing a growing niche in the marketplace.

Thanks in part to the rising profiles of Olympic gold medalist Shaun White and X-Games gold medalist Hannah Teter, the snowboard culture is growing, according to Label Networks, a company that studies the impact of cultural trends on advertising, marketing and sales.

Based on results in the Snowboarding Profile Report, 61.7 percent of “non-snowboarders” and 77.5 percent of snowboarders within the 13-to-24 demographic watched snowboarding during coverage of the Torino Olympics in February 2006 – among the highest for all events at the Winter Games.

This, of course, equates to great opportunity for evo, which believes it offers the best combination of a “lifestyle component, good deals and the best selection overall” in its niche.

Inventory timing
The majority of evo’s customers reside in California, New York and the state of Washington. With snow being such a strong factor in its core offerings, it would seem that the appeal would be limited, but “we find that in states like Kentucky there really aren’t any ski shops, so people buy online from us,” Decker says.

Among the company’s biggest challenges are distribution, fulfillment and logistics at “both ends for the entire life cycle of the inventory,” Decker says. “On the receiving end, it’s been a challenge to receive the quantity of product in a timely manner. We are a very seasonal business and our seasonality introduces a whole host of issues with regard to timing of inventory.” Additionally, the scaling of its marketing efforts “has been difficult to do … in an effective way.”

Still, evogear.com has become an interactive platform, driving customers to the site with frequent targeted e-mails. “If a customer has demonstrated an interest in a particular product category, we will bring relevant messages to him or her about that product category,” Decker says.

Another way evo is attempting to improve customer experience is by using Mercado On-Demand, an e-commerce search and merchandising solution from Mercado Software that has boosted search power and provided more accurate information by making it easier for vendors to update product data.

“Our merchandisers can now go in on any results page and dynamically change the meta title and meta description for a particular page … to see if we gain a higher click-through rate and a higher ranking,” Decker says. For example, evo had previously been receiving about 20 to 30 clicks a day on the Burton’s Snow Boards page. After marketers added promotional text to the title tag and switched the meta description, “the click through-rate doubled,” he says.

Mercado On-Demand’s merchandising console enables evo’s online merchandisers to create, develop and publish customized product and promotional landing pages. This feature can save merchandisers 30 to 40 hours in labor, Decker says.

For the 2006 holiday selling season, evo had a top gift promotion and created a custom html page. You have to decide all the inventory that goes on that page, design it, html-code it and advertise,” Decker says.

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