Karbon

Building a Brand: The Story of Karbon.
The Karbon Karbonbrand is known worldwide for performance oriented technical wear for national ski teams and Olympic athletes as well as avid non-competitive skiiers and athletes. Schure Sports Inc., designers of the Karbon line commissioned Overdrive to design and build their corporate website in 2003.

The work on the first major release of their website proved to be a springboard into other marketing and identity related initiatives at Schure. As their agency of record, Overdrive has collaborated with Schure over the past three years to build on its already formidable product line by increasing sales and consumer recognition via their annual product catalog, hangtags, point-of-sale displays, advertisements, packaging, website and peripherals.

Client Mandate
The sports garment industry is a highly competitive one. Karbon annually creates an extensive collection of technical wear that primarily address their core market of winter sports, with some of the highest value/price relationships in the industry. Over the last few years, athletic wear has also become important part of their product mix. Despite the high quality of their garments and a successful business based on a solid customer base, Schure felt that the Karbon brand was lacking a readily definable character in the marketplace. Nevertheless one thing that has always been clear with Schure about their brand, is that Karbon is about SPORT.

The Challenge
The main challenge was how to respect Karbon brand equity, while helping it to evolve. This can be a difficult line to walk, particularly when the client has made both substantial investments in the current brand and has been successful at it. To their credit, Schure Sports recognized the importance of not resting on one's laurels.

The Objectives
The main objectives have been to move the Karbon brand forward in a calculated, one step at a time, effort. Their are no gigantic leaps forward but many small victories. Karbon long ago recognized that technical athletic wear is no longer simply in the realm of athletes. As with most things in the garment industry there is a blurring of lines between form, function and demographic. Overdrive understands this complex relationship and is helping leverage the quality and technical aspects of their clothing without compromise to sport with those seeking to make a more fashion oriented statement in a multipurpose environment outside of sport.

Design Solution Connection
We started by assessing and reworking the Karbon logotype. Subtle enhancements to the existing Karbon mark were implemented, which, while barely perceptible to the layperson, corrected important technical deficiencies in the typography to make the logotype not only unique but “perfect” in form. This was followed by standards for the identity, which up until that time, did not exist. This was our collective starting point.

Design Solution Contribution
As mentioned Karbon has long relied on the quality of its garments and commitment to sport through high level endorsements to build it's brand. Karbon has done very little advertising through traditional means. For instance their product catalogue, which is sales force, rather than consumer oriented has been their main tool. To this end one of the most important and successful initiatives Overdrive has implemented with Karbon is a complete revitalization of their hangtag program. These are attached to every Karbon garment and carry information relating to that particular piece of clothing. Previously all their garments carried the same hangtag with a medley of secondary tags varying in size, composition and colour. Overdrive spearheaded and developed their current approach that uses a unique colour-coded, multi-layered booklet system which provides an at-a-glance overview of the most poignant details of the garment and company. It has also helped differentiate Karbon's various lines (Mens. Womens, Juniors, Athletics, and so on) for a clearer understanding of the larger product offering. The final result was extremely well received by everyone from Karbon's sales staff to end users and as a result has begun to reverse engineer it's approach into many other items in the marketing/sales mix.

Exceeded Project Objectives
Karbon's apparel was worn by an impressive number of teams at the 2006 Olympics including Australia, Chile, Costa Rica, Madagascar, Latvia, US Virgin Islands and New Zealand and 2005 marked a turning point in Karbon's marketing approach. Sales are good and Schure Sports purchased and expanded their operations into a custom built 40,000 square foot facility. Based on past successes, 2006 is already seeing a renewed commitment by Karbon to expand their marketing efforts with Overdrive with an eye towards positioning Karbon as a pre-eminent brand in their industry.

Competitive Edge
Overdrive brought the competitive edge to Schure Sports through our ability to work expertly across a wide range of mediums in a boutique environment. Overdrive provides a one-stop design and implementation solution for Karbon by being able to work on a large variety of projects from their corporate website to designing new zipper pulls while maintaining passion for the work and clarity of vision for the Karbon brand.