DMNews talks with Chad Hartvigson, CEO of Prep Sportswear

Tag : sportswear

Chad Hartvigson, CEO of customizable sports gear company PrepSportswear, talks about how a strategic online partnership helpedbroaden the company's consumer base quickly.

Q: Why did you decide to partner with Active Network?
A: Active Network built a good platform in sporting goods with itsWeb hosting property, Eteamz.com. Teams can upload communicationssuch as schedules and maps to games, as well as exchange e-mails.After building a technology [where] stores [can] take theirdatabase and load it onto our platform, we part­nered with them inSeptember 2007 as their official gear partner.
Q: Why did you think this would be a successful partnership?
A: Before, we mostly had schools on our site. We wanted to get intothe team sport marketplace, and Eteamz did a really great job ofaggregating that market over the years. We thought it would befitting for Eteamz to add a commerce sec­tion with our platform.
Q: How did you use e-mail market­ing as part of the campaign?
A: Eteamz has a strong database of users on their side. One of thekey objectives of partnership was com­municating the program, sothey sent out e-mail newsletters present­ing each team with theirlogo on cus­tomized products. The Web today has so muchinformation and so many features and services that it's easy to getlost in the shuffle. I felt we had a really strong and uniqueoffering and we communicated it very well to their base.
Q: How has the partnership grown since its inception?
A: When we launched, Eteamz had 300,000 teams, so we instantly hadthat many additional stores. Since then, we've added another200,000, so today, there's 500,000 total stores just with Eteamz.Active Networks was also able to provide a value-added service totheir user base and we were able to jump into new space and on dayone have a very strong ROI.
Q: Why do you think this partner­ship was so successful?
A: Our technology allowed us to target individual users based ontheir preferences. A lot of companies are building largedistribution on the Internet, but not targeting people based onpreferences. When you get a basic understanding what people likedoing, it's easier to target prod­ucts to them. You need to beable to target at the right moment to the right person.