Lighting a different path

Editor’s note: Cara Woodland is innovation project manager at Innovation Focus Inc., a Lancaster, Pa., consulting firm.

The Coleman lantern is one of the staples of American culture. It is passed down from generation to generation, bringing with it memories of the time the lights went out during the big storm or camping with the family. In the early ’90s, Coleman was well-established as a provider of supplies for the family camping experience. In 1998, Sunbeam, which owns Coleman, had just been through an extraordinary reorganization and shift in leadership, and had hired Bill Phillips to become president of Coleman and point the company in a new direction.

In parallel with a declining market for outdoor camping, Coleman’s market share was shrinking. Coleman needed a radical shift to help it survive in the short term and in the long term. It needed to find new products and develop a plan for future growth. Phillips turned to Innovation Focus to design and manage a search for new business opportunities, a process that Innovation Focus calls Hunting for Hunting Grounds.

New areas of business

Every product or service in the mature marketplace begins to decline on the S-curve of the product life cycle. The goal is to find new areas of business and revenue before the decline becomes critical. The smart company is continuously looking for new areas of opportunity to fill its new product pipeline. Coleman had realized this need to redefine its brand positioning at the right time and was looking for new opportunities.

Phillips called together a core team to do just that. They were to gather as much information as possible in a limited period of time and evaluate where to go next. The net was cast wide using a number of qualitative techniques such as:

  • Delphi interviews: Experts related and unrelated to the industry were consulted to gain their perspective about trends, technology affecting their business and how it might apply to Coleman. This was a participatory exercise with Coleman team members, a moderator, and the expert interviewee. After each interview, the Coleman team analyzed the information, with the emphasis on determining implications for their product line.
  • Day-in-the-life research: Ethnographic research was conducted in which Coleman team members participated in immersion experiences in the environment of the company’s consumers. While they were participating in the experience, they were also interviewing consumers and taking notes on what they learned. This included site visits to tailgating parties, fly fishing sites, and outdoor barbeques.
  • Problem-solving sessions with kids: Multiple creative sessions were conducted with cohort groups of children to discover what would make outdoor activities more enjoyable. Children do not have the boundaries or assumptions that adults have, which allows for more creative thinking. Coleman team members observed the sessions and then debriefed as a team to analyze the findings.
  • Journaling: Throughout the process, each Coleman team member was encouraged to think about areas of opportunity for Coleman to pursue. This involved being attuned to the task at hand as they went about their daily activities - reading the newspaper in the morning, watching television, listening to a presentation, reviewing recent research. It involved keeping track of nuggets, facts, and other related and non-related material from secondary data (magazines, research reports, meetings, television). These journals were then individually mined for Hunting Grounds in a debriefing session.

The Coleman core team reported their findings and developed a database of Hunting Grounds. The team then spent time going through a model-building session to sort through all the data and determine which areas were most feasible for Coleman. A model-building session is structured as follows:

1. Debrief - report back what has been discovered during the information-gathering time; mine the research notes and journal entries.

2. Qualitative cluster analysis - a clustering and sorting exercise to determine themes from the data gathering.

3. Feasibility analysis - a qualitative look at the themes generated to determine which are robust enough to produce large numbers of ideas and product concepts.

4. Decision-making - from the feasibility analysis, the company’s strategic direction, and the excitement of the team, a number of themes are chosen for further study.

5. Story-building - creating stories to bring to life the Hunting Ground and its target market.

The core team put together a series of innovation sessions around each selected Hunting Ground area. The participants in the sessions were diverse. They included outside experts in related and unrelated industries, consumers, and cross-functional teams from within Coleman.

Product ideas and concepts were generated using large- and small-group exercises. Then the core team spent time sorting through each product concept based on criteria they developed at the beginning of the project. A portfolio of product opportunities was then built based on whether the concept was a fast-track product (meaning it could be produced quickly and was potentially a high-impact item in the market) or a concept for future development.

The Coleman core team had just been through a rigorous brainstorming and decision-making process, but their work was not done. They now created a path for each Hunting Ground. A path is a planning process in which the core team determines a killer application or product platform and from that point moves backward to determine what products and technologies are necessary to develop that killer application. This is not an easy task and it required the core team to do some serious focused thinking about their strategic direction and future plan.

Three areas

During this process, Coleman determined three Hunting Ground areas to pursue: emergency preparedness, outdoor events, and indoor/outdoors. Each of these areas was populated with products or a new strategic direction for Coleman.

The first to hit the market was emergency preparedness. Consumers had always used Coleman products after a hurricane or storm came through and shut down the power. The research was conducted during the pre-Y2K hysteria, which saw people rushing to the store to be sure they had extra water, stoves, generators, and other emergency items. Coleman saw this as a perfect time to roll out its repositioning of the Coleman brand for emergency preparedness.

As it turned out, Y2K passed with hardly a murmur, but Coleman had helped people feel prepared for any emergency. This was the quick hit for Coleman, and the surge of sales leading up to Y2K helped it regain market share.

The second Hunting Ground to hit the market was outdoor events. Coleman found that during tailgating parties or while attending auto racing or outdoor concert events, people often run out of necessities and are forced to visit a local convenience store. In those situations, most people are in an unfamiliar place and don’t particularly want to leave the excitement of the event they are attending - a fact which Coleman saw as an opportunity.

As a result, Coleman trailers now follow the NASCAR circuit and set up camp, providing a convenient location for people to buy much-needed supplies. The company has also sponsored other outdoor events like the FLW Bass Fishing Tour, and partnered with professionals, experts, and celebrities.

The final Hunting Ground Coleman chose to pursue was bringing the indoors outdoors, to the backyard. Through its research Coleman found that the backyard was turning into a gathering place. The cocooning trend of staying home for entertainment was and still is flourishing, and as a result people are spending more time in the backyard grilling, camping, and entertaining.

In response, Coleman has just introduced BackHome, an integrated backyard product line of furniture, grills, accessories, and lighting. Since its introduction in February 2001, BackHome has been very popular with consumers who entertain outdoors and is expected to bring in at least $250 million to Coleman throughout its five-year plan.

Redefined itself

Throughout the last few years, Coleman has successfully redefined itself and is no longer positioned as a brand focused only on family camping. The company has gained back market share and Phillips expects that the three Hunting Grounds concepts will help Coleman reach sales of over $1 billion by 2004.