Week 4:The Marketing Environment

     
            Converse target market is not so black and white as it once was in their early days of business. Their intended market has expanded from just ball players to more athletes and just about everyone in between producing different sneakers to appeal to the different audience. Converse development during the years and longevity in the business continues to strengthen their brand and shoes. With the state of the economy Converse continues to appeal to customers with their wallet friendly prices making them more willing to buy oppose to pricey sneakers.With families disposable incomes facing cuts due to the recession converse understands the importance of each customer. Converse gives customers different methods to shop in stores,partnered stores and online. Online might be more convenient to stay at home parents, disabled clients or simply busy clients.To keep clients up to date with the different promotions and products made Converse offers RSS feeds (really simple syndication).RSS feeds enables automated seamless delivery of updated news content or  marketing to blog sites or mobile phones. Converse understanding of the diversity in the market environment now and makes changes accordingly continues to keep brand loyalty.

Corporate Iresponsibility_NIKE (OWNERS OF CONVERSE)

             With Nike net worth estimate at nearly 9.6 billion (in 2009) it's mind bottling why the hell they can't pay decent wages.With the competitive markets over seas like many companies Nike brought originally American jobs over seas in third world countries such as Pakistan, Vietnam, China, Indonesia ,Bangladesh and India . Nike sure took things to a brand new level of low.No longer fooling the public with majority of their equipments being made in developing countries.Developing countries having cheaper wages making it easy for Nike to get away with illegal practices allowing the sporting good giant to avoid human rights appeals and union movements.        

             Labor laws concerning overtime are constantly being violated.The different wages for night shits and Sundays go constantly ignored. They're paying wages lower than minimum wage making it hard to provide their selves with basic needs like food,water and shelter(maybe shelter should be replaced with clothes they pretty much live in the sweat shop anyway) and not to forget the caring of their families.More than 50% of the world soccer balls are made in Pakistan produced by productions involved in child labor.Nike seeing the horrible living condition didn't extend a helping hand but instead thought to $$$$profit$$$$. .Using 200 kids in their production line making soccer balls some children as young as 4 & 5 yrs old earning 60¢ a day.Average Pakistanis lives off of $5 a day excluding taking care of family(a traditional Pakistanis family can range up to 10 children).

             In Indonesia 12 year old girls was forced to work in sweat shops for 70 hours making Nike shoes in unhealthy plants.Thank god labor organizers in Indonesia have been put behind bars.In Vietnam Supervisors in a plant beat workers paid 20¢ per hour denying them the right to leave their work post .In 1996 many workers were forced to work more than 200 hours of overtime in a one year period. Worsening in 1997 many of their workers had approached 200 hours overtime in a two month period.Higher demand of products produce by kids in child labor +higher birth rate +increasing sweat shops = discouraging education and kids being bought and sold as slaves.

          Amazed and disgusted with the findings just makes me curious as to how many companies in total are going about running their business like this.And how do they sleep at night doing this.They know better to pull a mess like that in the United States but its horrible they take advantage of these developing countries.

Week 3 - Ethics and Socail Responsibilities

Nike now has ownership over Converse so their  ethics and responsibilities are no different for Converse inc. Nike's feels its their greatest responsibility as a global/international company to set the tone in bringing positive systemic change for workers and in the industry. Nike also recognizies the impact of natural resources decline and believes we as citizens of planet earth should move to a low carbon economy. Nike has been  making some changes in efforts to become more enviromentally friendly. In efforts of doing so Nike use more recycled materails on their products so they can be contiuously reused to create no pre or post consumer waiste.

week 2 continued

Recently Nike/Jordan/Converse had their Fall 2010 Basketball Showcase.Converse having strong knowledge on the sport gave a brief history lesson of the sport and of their legendary shoes reinforcing their relivance to pop culture.The show case event featured a museum exhibit vibe, showcasing an all-new collection of Converse footwear that featured “Balls” technology in its performance shoes and revamped silhouettes of classic models.

Week 2- Strategic Planning

       

From selling 1.1 billion pairs of shoes from 04/2008 plus more by now and 60% of American clamming to have owned a pair of Chuck Taylor All Star sneakers Converse Inc. is definitely doing something very very right exceeding their objectives of selling shoes. Continuing to honoring their company heritage and staying true to its original ways the brand is stronger than ever becoming a key competitive advantage the company continues to have in footwear.Continues to focus on market development by adjusting giving a great variety of styles, color ,becoming more creative and marketing to more groups.Originally a basketball sneaker converse now attract baseball with there Leather Pro,skateboarders with  Rune Allston just to name a few ways their reaching out to more consumers helping to keep Converse ahead of their competitors like Adidas,K-Swiss and Vans.

      Chuck Taylor All Stars come in original canvas and rubber but the other Converse come in a variety such as brocade, corduroy, denim, flannel, fleece, hemp, lamé, leather, Mylar, metalized fabric, nubuck, suede, velour, velvet, vinyl, and wool.The company has under gone many changes since being bought by Nike in 2003. One of the drastic changes was production of the sneaker in the United States moving to Asia.

Converse continues to keeps its popularity and reaching new customers by using many methods of promoting its self like advertisement through various magazines,websites.Seasonal promotions like summer clearance,back to school marketing more towards kids and college students between 18-24.The Internet has become a great tool for many company's to reach new customers and making shopping convenient.Converse using social networks like Facebook and Twitter to promote upcoming release and offer promotional offer such as codes and discount coupons.Converse original site is amazing ,it even give shoppers the opportunity to be creative and artistic by creating their own very unique pair of Converse using a designer tool.

         The all American classic has gone global  with 511 stores world wide and in 13 countries United states,France,Spain,Germany,Hungary,Benelux,Czech Republic,Mexico,Argentina,Australia,Singapore and South Korea.Making partnership with several companies such as Target selling for lower prices and Gap works in their advantage by making the products more available and gaining loyal customers above all.Chuck Taylor All star in original(what ever color) normally run for roughly $40 more depending on sub brand/shoe ranging from $50-$150.

History and Mission Statement

Company Mission Statment: To give people a shoe that makes a statement alone. Hopes are to provide the same shoe their owner father wore for cross counry runing 1965 and that his father wore in 1930's playin stickball in the streets of philly.To continue honoring their company heritage and staying true to its original ways.But also to continuing to adust with time giving a great variety of styles, color ,becoming more creative evolving to what they will become.

History on Converse
         Marquis Mills Converse founded the rubber shoe company better known as "Converse" in 1908.From the very start they wanted to be like no other company.In 1913 Coverse created their catologe in it stating "....a rubber shoe company that would be independent in enough not to follow every other company in everything they do. And indeed they did just that becoming trend setter and not following trends and becoming part of different cultures remaining rebels that they were and still are today.1918 Chuck Taylor joins forces with converse becoming a salesman for the company.His partnership made the shoe appeal to the young sport of basketball(young at the time).Converse was around for the birth of the national basketball association in 1946 becoming the leading brand in the association.Around the same time it was their for the birth of rock n roll.Chuck Taylors high tops along with leather and American blue jeans becomes part of the culture.All stars finally came in color sometime after 1966 giving more variety to its consumers.1974 the shoe was remade with colorful suede and with big stars on each side of the shoe it was built for baseball.The sneaker appealed to rockers,skaters and rebels due to its brashness and brightness.1976 the pro leather busted on to the sceen of baseball giving the sport a new vibe.1996 converse created a new baseball shoe called the All Star 2000 an attemp to replicate chuck taylors All Stars sneaker.During the years the company continues to reinvent itself cant wait to see what the future holds.