In April 2022, Nik Jackson became Blundstone’s first-ever chief brand officer. He had stepped into the bootmaker business after a one-year stint at P.E Nation and a 15-year career at Nike.
Jackson’s new role was the culmination of a two-decade boom in international sales for Blundstone, which now represent 70 per cent of its total revenue compared to the Australian market which sits at 30 per cent.
For a business that has spent the vast majority of its 154-year lifespan focusing on the Australian market, the explosion internationally meant Blundstone had to map a whole smorgasbord of new customer data coming in from nearly 10,000 retail doors across 70 countries, all managed by 19 distributors.
“All of a sudden, that international business forces us to think, ‘Is this still going to be relevant for people in other parts of the world?’,” Jackson tells Ragtrader.
“We've opened up our aperture from being just solely focused domestically, to learning globally and learning through our distributors, our retailers, learning about work and safety, learning about lifestyle. There are so many data points coming back in.
“So our organisation needed to shift and change from being locally focused to actually looking back and realising ‘Wow, there's a lot more we can do to bring this brand to people's feet around the world.’”
Nik Jackson
Indeed, while Blundstone has had brand leads before, Jackson is the first person to look after a wider remit compared to just brand and marketing. He also covers product and range development, digital and environmental social governance (ESG).
“At a surface level, that's a really different group of people doing different functional work. However, we all have the consumer in common. We make products for the consumers, we tell stories through brands, we serve those consumers directly through our sites or our partner sites, and then we have a responsibility around ESG through people, product and planet.
“What I focused on was making sure the consumer was at the centre of each one of those functions. And when you do that, you start to stitch that team together and realise that although we're coming from different functional lenses, we're all here every day to serve that consumer.
“That was the connective tissue that I think was missing before. I wanted to make sure I had a team that was set up to be able to actually serve those needs for those consumers.”
Speaking on the ESG team in particular, Jackson says it was more of an accreditation team when he entered the business - essentially ensuring Blundstone was abiding by local laws and policies. Since then, the team has expanded, including the addition of James Burke who heads up the ESG department. Burke joined the business after several years at global alcohol brand Asahi. His key task now is finalising the execution of Blundstone’s first-ever ESG roadmap to be released to market soon.
Shortly after joining, Burke was given two extra people to work with - a Blundstone veteran who’s been with the business for 26 years and a newbie.
“So he has someone new with new thinking, and someone who has been to all our factories around the world, been to all our distributors, and has such a tenure. It was just such a great pairing between the two of them.”
Alongside the shifts in head office teams, Blundstone has also been tapping into its distributors and retailers globally in a bid to learn more about its international consumers.
In one interesting fact, Jackson says its Australian business is predominantly in the work and safety sector, with nearly 80-85 per cent of its products sold here being worn for its technical aspects, with just 10-15 per cent wearing Blundstone for lifestyle.
“Whereas internationally, we're mostly all lifestyle, with a little bit of work and safety,” Jackson says.
“So the contrast in the business is the one brand has the elasticity of being a technical, functional work and safety boot to also being on the feet of David Beckham.
“Internationally, we've really been seen as a lifestyle, high street, fashionable, stylish product, whereas here, you'd probably ask most people and they would see it as a utilitarian, hard-working brand on farmer's feet or on mechanic’s feet or in the mines.
“And it’s not like we've taken our work and safety boots and turned it into lifestyle fashion. It’s all the same technology.”
Jackson says a similar thing happened to US workwear brand Carhartt, with its boots selling in moderately priced department stores across America, but which can also be seen on feet in high streets overseas.
Jackson indicates that part of the reason international consumers wear Blundstone more for lifestyle is because it takes time to establish the work and safety element.
“If you want to sell the work and safety boot to Canada, you have to go through a lot of regulations. In the end, you can get there and make some great products, but then it's a different process compared to a lifestyle product being sold as that doesn't need to go through the same accreditations and regulations.”
This is also despite minimal shifts across the product ranges every year. Jackson says his previous employer Nike had four seasons a year, as well as quickstrike launches and collaborations, resulting in four to six seasons a year. However, Blundstone only has one season a year.
“And that one season is pretty much the same range we have with some subtle twist to it. So we might go from a suede to a wax suede, we may go from a soft brown to a clay brown, we may go from a stout brown to a newer version of that. They're all just subtle variations, which we do once a year.”
In recent years, Blundstone has been pushing into women's booting, driven by the growth of women in blue-collar work. Within Blundstone’s lifestyle ranges, women’s product make up 25 per cent. However, in some markets globally, she makes up to 50 per cent of the Blundstone business.
In work and safety, Jackson says Blundstone has about seven SKUs dedicated to women.
“What we know is, yes, those women's products are landing for her,” he says. “But we also make a unisex product, which is exactly what she wants from us, too.
“She doesn't want us to shrink it and pink it, we don't want to feminise our product or anything like that. What we already produce in our range - provided we've got the size, curve that suits him and her - is we've got a really healthy women’s business.
“In some markets, up to half of our business is in women's even though the SKUs there don't support half the business.”
So far, Jackson says he and his team have undertaken market research across 12 of its markets internationally. The project took around six months to complete, garnering a significant body of consumer data.
“First, we look at the overall boot market,” Jackon explains. “In Canada, for example, what is the addressable boot market? And then they come back and say, It looks like this. And then we ask who's participating in that market, and then they break it down into consumer personas and behaviours.”
Within those segments, Blundstone works out if it can authentically service and focus down to a subset of those segments.
“And then we ask: what do they need from a boot brand? So there's characteristics like they want to be authentic, they want the leather to be durable and long-lasting, but they want to have a patina, they want a heel, but they want to make sure it's comfortable.
“So we take all of these insights and go, Okay, our current range can service that - or sometimes it's in gaps.”
For the women’s booting in particular, Blundstone’s global range manager Joe Carfora looked at the data and decided to craft a heel, which ended up turning into multiple options.
“So the research led us to that, but also just refining that craft down with our manufacturing partners is something that we've done over the last couple of years, and will continue to do as well.”
Armed with his revamped team and growing consumer data, Jackson says Blundstone is ready to continue the international reach.
The continued push includes driving sales in the United States, which Jackson says is fast-becoming the largest country by revenue for Blundstone, just behind Canada.
“The awareness that we have is still so low,” Jackson confirms. “Our brand awareness internationally is in the low single digits.
“So our opportunity doesn't come from brand new product development - building all these new ranges to try to suit international demand - but simply through introducing people to the Blundstone brand.”
Later this year, Blundstone is preparing to launch a global brand campaign, intended to drive brand awareness. Jackson says the bootmaker also has collaborations in the pipeline with other product partners.
“And we have this really cool ESG roadmap, which is going to tell people what we're doing around people, product and planet. So the future is so exciting, because it's not like we need to build new products to actually tap into markets in Asia, Europe or the Americas. It's literally introducing them into the brand - the brand that we know here in Australia.
“We have a chance to say, here's this little brand from Tasmania, Australia - here's how we think we can be authentic and relevant to you - whether in the US, Canada, Italy, South Korea, or Japan.”