Tonight as I looked through my most popular blogs, in the top 3 was a story in my Pedigree Series about Orbitz.
At the time of the article, just a little over 2 years ago, their
market cap was just $233m and they were embroiled in a battle with
American.
The suit is now history and in checking
their market cap as of Friday, it was $1.03b. Bravo to Barney and the
management team for not only quadrupling the value for your
shareholders, but for achieving the recent stock growth against your
peers. Expedia and Priceline are strong competitors, so you should be
very proud of the growth curve shown below. Travelocity is not shown
in the peer comparison, as they are not a public company.
Sunday, September 08, 2013
Growth..... Just Do It
One of the greatest enemies of growth is status quo thinking.
Imagine what would have happened if Nike and Adidas had focused solely on athletes as the target for their shoes. Granted, pro athletes buy shoes many times per year and likely own multiple pairs of shoes, but they represent significantly less than 1% of the US population.
If they reached out to college and perhaps high school athletes and coaches, plus medical personnel, they might have reached 15%. And between the two companies, who are still the two largest producers of sport shoes, it is not a stretch to imagine that they would dominate those markets.
Now put yourself in the Board room of Nike and Adidas that day in the early 80s when some young [or old] renegade came in and suggested that moms and dads and kids of all ages could be their market and that they could even expand to clothing.
This is heresy. We are focused on athletes with our sports shoes. That is where the money is.
I look at the two companies today -- Nike, with its $57b market cap and Adidas with its $16.6b market cap and I think I know which board room the above statement came from.
While both companies are truly successful and Adidas did eventually branch out in 2006 with its Reebok brand to the aerobics set and later to the broader audience, their valuation still lags against industry leader Nike.
If you are from the travel industry and wondering why I'm telling this story, ask yourself how much of your US business comes from the sale of travel to the air traveler. Notice I didn't say the sale of air tickets. Overnight trips taken by air are only 15% of total trips.
Or ask yourself how much comes from vacation travel, which is just 8% of US travel.
Or ask yourself how much is from corporate travel which is just 25% of the total market (and just 48% of the 25% is by air).
Just think of the multiple you could achieve by not limiting yourself to such a small slice of the travel market.
What are you waiting for?
Just do it.....
and if you need some help, call me.
and if you need some help, call me.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Popular Posts
-
In reference to " Richard Anderson, Delta Air Lines (5Q Interview) " As a follow on to my earlier article last week about doing...
-
I am now going to shift gears away from online technology and the role that they play in the travel distribution ecosystem to a topic that I...
-
You fully understand that rung #1 of the ladder is spamming and you've gotten past rung #2, noise. You get it -- that in order to reall...
-
UPDATED - March 12, 2014 Well, in the world of travel distribution on the OTA side of the equation, if Travelocity was the "come...
-
Fail fast?
-
Part 2 of a 2 Part Series on Individual Relationship Management (IRM) versus Customer Relationship Management (CRM) which is flawed B...
-
This week, Bloomberg announced that Sabre raised $627 million in its IPO. Actually I don't think you should be allowed to call ...
-
If you are familiar with the game of dominos, there are dots on each domino and the placement of a domino on each turn requires that you mat...
-
Wow, in as many weeks, I have said goodbye to two amazing men in the travel industry. Yesterday afternoon I learned of the untimely deat...
-
This is Part 2 in a 3 part series about airline distribution. Here we will talk about the web and direct distribution parts of the airli...
