glb & billabong, page-9

Actually, a few brands have done this, ie moved from distributing to specialty surf stores to department stores, usually after the brand was bought out by the dept. store chain. A couple that spring to mind are Lightning Bolt (many years ago) and more recently Piping Hot.
Suffice to say that this went down like a lead balloon among the image-driven schoolkids market. eg "Piping Hot? That's from K-Mart mate!", thus destroying the credibility of the brand. You would think that the dept. stores would know this by now but they seem to make the same mistakes over and over again.

On billabong: My thoughts are that in the most established markets for surfwear ie Australia, US, Billabong as a brand is on its way out. It is so big now and seen everywhere that is has become too 'corporate' and the kids will move on to new brands that are less 'commercial'. Billabong can maintain sales and profits by expanding to new markets, particularly europe, or develop a new brand in its established markets. This is obviously pretty tough to gain credibility amongst the image generation, so I can see billabong in decline unless they can come up with something new.

I don't hold BBG any more.

cheers
Toscanunan