Officials from White Sierra are pleased to announce that over 40 new specialty accounts have joined its base of dealers nationwide. This is in addition to the over 70 that joined for the fall 2004 season.

The addition of the new accounts proves that the company’s strategy of focusing on being the ideal vendor for specialty outdoor retailers is working. As a result of the growth, White Sierra officials have several announcements to make which demonstrate its commitment to being one of the best vendors in the outdoor market for specialty retailers.

The announcements range from key new hires to an innovative direct mail/ POP combo announcing a tight collection of styles designed and manufactured especially for Holiday, 2004.

The first announcement involves a new hire. White Sierra officials announce that Peter Zavertnik will be its new sales and customer service manager. Zavertnik’s chief responsibility is to champion the needs of the White Sierra dealer base and to promote attentive, proactive, and outgoing customer service to White Sierra dealers and sales representatives.

“Hiring Peter is important for us because this new position represents a proactive and outward focus to our customer relationships,” said Andy Howe, vice president for business development for White Sierra.

Zavertnik has excellent experience in outdoor specialty having started in the industry with San Francisco’s Lombardi Sports and working up to an assistant manager post at Any Mountain in Berkeley. On the vendor side, Zavertnik worked as a sales coordinator for the Western region for The North Face as well as coordinating the company’s national accounts customer service.

On another front, White Sierra announced a new approach to getting key products to market a season early with a collection of styles designed especially for holiday gift giving. The men and women’s offerings include White Sierra’s wind resistant Kaze™ fleece, the Fiordland™ sweater fleece, and plush Chenille sweaters. This offering will inspire consumers with fantastic silhouettes in rich holiday-inspired color ways, while excellent gift giving retail prices and high initial mark ups will bring cheer to White Sierra dealers.

While the outdoor industry normally has two product introduction and sales cycles per year, White Sierra is testing this new approach and communicating to dealers via a direct mail piece containing ten cards with a gift-like-wrapping. The cards, which double as ready to use POP signage, have high-quality images of the new products, gift giving quotations, and product specs.

To bolster its ability to meet consumer demand for its products White Sierra also re-launched www.whitesierra.com, for Fall 2004 which now provides a direct sales option through specialty retailer Bob Wards.

To help consumers find retailers and help retailers sell-thru White Sierra products, White Sierra is the first vendor to take advantage of national magazines, Backpacker and Outside’s newly developed regional capabilities. White Sierra devoted a section of its expanded advertising to feature the names of key White Sierra retailers, with the intention of increasing the visibility of both the retailers’ stores and the White Sierra brand name.

“Using White Sierra’s National Ad campaign to highlight our dealers is a great way to partner. Retailers benefit by getting their business in front of a broader audience, and our customers appreciate the opportunity to find White Sierra’s products in specialty stores near them.” Said Al Whitworth, White Sierra’s Director of Marketing.

“Specialty retailers also like having an award winning set of creative that they can use in their own advertising.” said Whitworth. To this end, the company is also making its creative materials available to retailers for use in their own advertising through the use of ads that have been customized to highlight the retailers, White Sierra, and individual product.

Over the past three years, White Sierra has completely focused its business model on being more relevant to outdoor specialty retailers. That focus extends into product and top-notch customer care. To that end, White Sierra’s apparel is now segmented it into five collections (see below). All of the collections are designed to be merchandised together, and to appeal to a consumer who is looking for apparel that’s versatile enough to work equally well for outdoor and everyday metropolitan use.

Howe notes the basics of White Sierra’s formula to differentiate itself in the marketplace:


(1)	Design and manufacture clothing that appeals to people who live the urban- outdoor life
(2)	Create products with high initial mark ups
(3)	Employ a carefully measured distribution plan

“This formula makes White Sierra an excellent companion for specialty outdoor retailers,” Howe said.