Market Entry Research — Eddie Bauer
Eddie Bauer was entering Russia through retail partner Sportmaster. Before positioning the brand, we had to understand how Russians actually think about the outdoors — which turned out to be nothing like the American brand assumed.
Eddie Bauer was launching in Russia via Sportmaster, and the starting position was humbling: Columbia had 100% brand awareness in the market. Eddie Bauer had 55%. Entering with the standard American outdoor-heritage playbook would mean competing for a story a rival already owned.
The program combined a quantitative survey of 1,058 respondents with on-the-ground ethnography in Moscow and St. Petersburg — home visits, wardrobe walkthroughs, and conversations about what "outdoors" actually means in Russian life.
The ethnography produced the kind of texture surveys can't: unwritten dress codes for a walk in the park, a mental model that sorts outerwear into three distinct tiers, and an outdoor life organized around the dacha weekend rather than the summit push.
And the quantitative data delivered the strategic key: the strongest purchase driver wasn't technical performance or heritage — it was whether a brand "feels like your brand."
Position Eddie Bauer as the everyday-adventure value brand: approachable, warm, built for the outdoor life Russians actually live. Meet the market where its weekends actually happen.
1,058
Survey respondents
2
Cities of in-home ethnography
55%
Starting brand awareness (vs. Columbia's 100%)