Niche-ification at Starbucks
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photo: Joshua Trujillo/Seattlepl.com
Last summer, a café called the 15th Ave Coffee & Tea opened in Seattle. A cozy, intimate gathering place, it featured not automated espresso machines but drip coffee made cup-by-cup, pastries from the local bakery, communal tables and mismatched chairs salvaged from other cafes. Nothing Starbucks about it. Except, well, it’s a Starbucks.
According to Arthur Rubinfeld, Starbuck's president of global development, this chain-camouflage strategy is all about feelings. "We hope customers will feel an enhanced sense of community, a deeper connection to our coffee heritage and a greater level of commitment to environmental consciousness."
Call it niche-ification.
In popularity contests, consumers have started migrating away from box stores and monolithic chains in favor of local, independent businesses. For the online user, this idea - the niche strategy - has been working wonders for years. Chris Anderson, in his landmark book, “The Long Tail,” was among the first to point out that digital distribution and search technologies created by the Internet greatly enhance the ability of a business to tap niche markets.
So it’s not surprising that 15th Avenue Coffee and Tea has taken its niche-ifying to their website. A website linked to the Starbuck's brand only through Starbuck's news page.
Thoroughly independent, 15th Ave has its own website with an oh-so-subtle subtitle: “inspired by Starbucks.” Everything about this site underscores the niche identity. The paper-bag brown canvas, the stripped down navigation, an entire page devoted to brewing methods, a collection of tasteful, clickable photographs and for a color scheme, earthtones throughout. The copy targets the foodie connoisseur: “a little flare of Italia with some heavenly gelato or affogato…” And the blog offers a calendar of music events, a personalized blog from the store manager and, in case you want to linger for more than coffee, a delectable list of available beers and wines. Oddly, there is no evidence of a social marketing campaign – no links to Facebook or Twitter.
Last week Starbucks posted a first-quarter profit that overshot analysts' estimates. No doubt, the more than 800 store closings has helped counter last year's string of quarterly sales declines. Niche-ing is probably only a minor contributing factor to this recent momentum, but you might note it as a growing mainstream trend as you review your start-of-the-year marketing strategies.
Is your website niche-ified? We'd like to hear about it and how you translate “local, independent” to online marketing.
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