most of you are average

Not an uncommon story….Dr. Dre did it first. This time with his premium headphones and soon everyone will be on the bandwagon. Nixon, a company best known for well designed watches, t-shirts, and accessories is now making the foray into the consumer electronics field with a product positioned at the $250 pricepoint. I would think that I would need a bit more than a braided cord, real leather details, and a ‘patent pending ball and socket construction’ before I spent this much cash on a product without legacy or proven track record.

From their site apparently they are attempting a nice tiered approach to releasing these and trying to build a family of product underneath the ‘Master Blaster.’ If you ask me I think naming them something more mature than what cheap/trendy headphone manufacturer Skullcandy would use might just help. Personally I like the all white $120 ‘Nomadic’ product, but it’s not as if I have the cash to burn. Looking forward to seeing a tech site unbox them and put them through the paces vs. some of their competition.

To be honest the Dre’s are a surprisingly good product from a comfort/fit/performance standpoint but kind of look like expensive molded plastic whereas these have a really nice modern look to them, although that could be due to the materials.  Should be interesting to see what distribution channel they move forward with given their fairly aggressive rollout since Nixon has no stand-alone stores and minimal in store retail approach other than stand-alone fixtures and occasional display case real estate. I think the big question is: Is this brand elastic enough to move this far from it’s core competency?

This isn’t such an easy question when it comes to the skate/suf/snowboarding scene and the companies there. You have to look no further than Burton’s forays into adjacent industries….they had no issues in softgoods but this was a measured attack. Brand recognition had to be built up before moving away from bindings and boards. As a whole this segment of (what I can only call) extreme sporting equipment benefits from a few strengths that their mainstream cohorts benefit from, but in a different way.

Sponsorship. For Nike, Reebok, and Addidas you can see the same theory but with Nixon you see a different application. The larger athletic powerhouses sponsor individuals and pay them insane amounts of money which in most cases far outweigh their gains solely from their sport. This is mutually beneficial because the athlete benefits from this, as well as their franchise. With snowboarding and skating you see individuals being treated as part of a ‘team’ of competitors, which is advertised on the companies websites.  This is most valuable when you recognize the Nascar approach to the on screen real estate as the pro wears their logo as they competes.  Outside of the mainstream space Nixon and other companies share the same problem.

With no true ‘core’ competencies other than making accessories who/what is Nixon? What enables them to move into this space, other than the margins on their watches (which I am sure have nicely platformed components) and their ‘exclusive’ Barneys limited editions (little other than Color/Material/Finish upgrades)? Could they leverage the same offshore ODM manufacturers for this hardware? Maybe for most of the metal and leather components but they most likely had to find someone new for the wiring and speaker drivers. All in all an interesting move.

Some companies find partners. Nixon’s is a ‘go it alone’ effort, which would seem to carry both more risk and more reward. After seeing Oakley’s fugly ‘Razorwire’ product with a certain consumer electronics manufacturer can you really blame them?