For surfwear makers, those little hanging tags on their clothing are a way to catch the eye of brand-conscious consumers. Toes on the Nose is looking to get even more mileage out of them.
The Costa Mesa-based surfwear maker is putting miniature compact discs in its hang tags as a way to promote the company’s team riders, surf contests and to market its product line and direct users to online sites such as Swell.com, which has offices in San Juan Capistrano and San Francisco.
Toes on the Nose plans to put the CD tags on about 125,000 garments in its spring 2001 line.
Customers who buy the products with the hang tag CDs will be able to judge clips of surfers riding waves, play other videos and download screen savers for their computers.
“It’s good for Toes on the Nose because they are able to tell a more involved story in an interactive way,” said branding consultant Gary Szenderski of Szenderski/Rohani Worldwide in Irvine. “Their audience is in a comfort zone with new technology, so it gives them an advantage if the customer chooses to open it.”
The 3.35-inch CDs are a product of TagCD, a division of Trellion Technologies in San Diego. The company, which launched the hang tags at the apparel trade show MAGIC in February, sells the CDs to apparel companies and others for between 49 cents to 75 cents each, depending on a customer’s volume, said Brad Keiller, corporate communications and investor relations manager.
Toes on the Nose is the first surfwear company to use the discs as hang tags, he said. Companies typically pay anywhere between 8 cents and $1 for hang tags that range from those bearing company logos and price and bar codes to those with specialized material such as rubber or metal, Keiller said.
The CDs are loaded with marketing messages such as videos, music, commercials, electronic coupons and links to online companies, he said.
Other local companies have used hang tags in different ways. Costa Mesa-based Volcom Board Wear attaches its signature stone to its garments, and Irvine-based Billabong USA helped promote the Surfrider Foundation with its tags.
Toes on the Nose, which doubled its space with a move last year from Irvine to Costa Mesa, has roughly $10 million in annual sales and 15 employees.
