Low & Bonar is a publicly traded, global technical woven and nonwoven textiles manufacturer headquartered in London, England with country offices and manufacturing plants located all over the world. The Company has high brand awareness in Europe but very little brand awareness in North America due to changing the NA company name several times over the last ten years. With a new Board in place and an aggressive new growth goal for NA business, Low & Bonar decided to relaunch its shelved Sports & Recreation Product Line.
the challenge
relaunch and grow a sports and recreation product line in North America
Relaunch the Sports & Recreation product line in North America. L&B needed a strategic and tactical marketing plan that would outline the steps needed to introduce and deploy a customer-centric approach to once again establish and grow its Sports & Recreation product line in North America.
the solution
develop and implement a new customer-centric approach
Judy Willis, a Windup Collaborative Partner, was hired as an outsourced, Fractional Chief Marketing Officer for Low & Bonar. In this capacity, Judy kicked off the engagement with a two-day offsite brainstorming meeting with key Sports & Recreation constituents and executives to better understand the history of the product team. She had the group participate in several group sessions to understand current versus future state, target audience hot buttons and to diagram an “idea map.” Once the due diligence was completed, she developed a detailed Sports & Recreation strategic marketing plan with implementation tactics, timelines, and proposed budgets.
the result
signed new contracts with the largest artificial turf companies in North America
Judy completed the detailed Strategic Marketing Plan within three months and presented to the Low & Bonar executives. One of her recommendations was to spin off the Sports & Recreation Product Line into its own division, which the client did. The new Sports & Recreation Division has signed new contracts with a few of the largest artificial turf companies in North America and the Low & Bonar technical textiles are being incorporated into the artificial turf companies’ end products sold to the NFL, MLB, Professional & Collegiate sports fields and many other owners and managers of sports fields in North America.