Work with the team
While Gohashi independently laid out the goals for the company before he arrived, he made sure that he took in information
from his team members to get their input as to how they were going to accomplish those goals.
“I sat down with the heads of each department and asked what would make them more effective, help increase sales and help
them meet the 555 plan,” says Gohashi.
What he found was that some departments were understaffed, relying on some support functions to be provided by the headquarters in Japan, which was cumbersome and inefficient.
Gohashi ramped up staffing in departments that were shorthanded and persuaded headquarters to give him more independent
control over the U.S. operations, something relatively easy for him to do as a long-term employee of ASICS.
“Allowing departments to staff up takes away some of the responsibility that we relied on the parent company to help us with,
making the U.S. office more effective,” says Gohashi.
Gohashi continues to meet with his team regularly, reviewing what they need to stay on track with the 555 plan. Gohashi says
that because the overall revenue numbers don’t reflect what the individual departments need, he has to stay in close touch with
each to make sure it has the resources it needs.
“Since our growth has come so quickly, each department is struggling with how to react to the growth — the demand for more
product, more marketing, more promotions, more categories, and so forth,” says Gohashi.
By talking to his team, he also found that not enough money was being spent on marketing and promotions.
Before Gohashi arrived, most of ASICS America’s advertising had been in magazines such as Runners World and Running Times, publications that reached the company’s target audience but missed a segment of the consumer audience
interested in healthier life-styles, not necessarily strictly in running. Only about a quarter of those who buy running shoes purchase them for running.
To reach into the nonrunner group, Gohashi expanded the brand’s advertising, boosting its ad budget by 22 percent and moving it into magazines with wider circulation that reached bigger target audiences.
“We’re not just talking to the running geek, which we were with Runner’s World or Running Times,” says
Gohashi. “We still maintain magazine advertising, but now it’s going to a broader audience in publications like
Oprah or Cooking Light, so it’s out to a broader consumer in hope that sales will increase when more people know
about the brand instead of just runners.”
While he attempted to widen the marketplace to reach buyers beyond the runners segment, Gohashi didn’t desert
ASICS America’s core market, where it had built its reputation for running shoes. Gohashi says that to reinforce
its stature among runners and build its overall visibility, ASICS America struck a sponsorship deal with the New
York City Marathon, where about 37,000 runners compete, and half wear ASICS brand shoes.