Foothill Ranch-based Oakley Inc.’s tweaks are starting to play out in stores.
There are new displays and packaging for women’s sunglasses and plans for more sports shades. Oakley’s clothing line has been streamlined. In some stores, sunglasses have replaced shoes.
Behind it all: stepped up advertising.
So far so good, said analyst Eric Beder at Brean Murray Carret & Co.
The company is “highly focused on even further shifting its operational and marketing message” to sunglasses, Beder said in a June report.
“Oakley management has never been more strategic in how to maximize the company’s key strengths,” he said.
The moves are part of a strategy by Chief Executive Scott Olivet to play up sunglasses,Oakley’s bread and butter,while tweaking the company’s smaller, and sometimes struggling, clothes and shoes.
Olivet and other executives recently briefed analysts on changes the company planned to make to boost sales of sunglasses. In the first quarter, sunglasses made up 71% of Oakley’s $152 million in sales, up from 68% a year earlier.
“Optics is our greatest competitive strength and our most underutilized asset,” Olivet told analysts.
Olivet, who joined Oakley in October, made two quick moves early this year to boost glasses, buying Los Angeles-based Oliver Peoples Inc. and Aliso Viejo-based Optical Shop of Aspen, two upscale glasses sellers.
Now the company is turning to marketing.
For more on this story, see the July 3 issue of the
Business Journal
.
