Branded e-commerce and WhiskeyMillitia.com
In the past two days, two people close to me have sent me links to WhiskeyMilitia.com. It’s a slick e-commerce site site targeting the Shaun White generation that follows the woot.com promotional format of putting one heavily discounted item on sale at once until it “sells out.”
About a week and a half ago I wrote about the Liberty Media purchase of Backcountry.com. Backcountry.com runs the extremely successful SteepandCheap.com, which also employs the woot.com promotional format. Backcountry.com also operates several “branded” outdoor equipment ecommerce sites (see Tramdock.com and Dogfunk.com).
Well, it turns out WhiskeyMilitia is a Backcountry.com site too. These sites are great examples of effectively e-commerce branding. Kids who like to think they’re skier punks (of which their are a surprising number) want to buy stuff from a site that looks like WhiskeyMilitia…overgrown kids like myself like to think we’re big mountain skiers want to buy stuff from a site that looks like Tramdock. Burton Snowboards has always done extremely effective branding within this same consumer group. Burton, just like REI, EMS, LL Bean, Columbia, Patagonia, Arcteryx and many other outdoor brands before it, was super popular its early years. However as many brands tend to evolve, the first wave of popularity was quite strong but it quickly waned when the mavens started moving to less mainstream brands. Burton broke the mold in this group and was able to quickly create several affiliate brands (R.E.D., Anon, B by Burton, Gravis, and newly acquired Channel Islands) which have helped Burton retain market dominance…through brands intentionally segregated from the mother Burton brand.
Backcountry has taken the effective woot.com promotional strategy and combined it with effective branding that is 100% within website design. Equipment ordered from Tramdock, Dogfunk, and WhiskeyMilitia all come from the same warehouse outside of Salt Lake City and in many cases the equipment is the exact same stuff, but the design of the site on which it was purchased makes a huge impact on the buyer. This type of branded e-commerce is certainly not limited to outdoor equipment retail and will soon become the norm on the web.
In related recent news: Zappos bought 6pm.com from Ebags and plans to continue to operate it as a separate brand. This might suggest a new strategy for startups: start a niche-niche retailer and sell it to the industry leader. However, much of the work in etail is upfront and capital-intensive (especially vendor relationships and inventory in the absence of reliable drop-shipment).