C&A Brings Polaroid Accessory License Into Growing Interchangeable-Lens Market

By Lisa Johnston On Feb 7 2011 - 6:01am

RIDGEFIELD PARK, N.J. — When C&A Marketing first acquired the Polaroid accessory group license in May 2009, the company knew one thing — they weren’t about to just slap the brand on anything and everything.

TWICE spoke with Sam Ash, the brand’s chief marketing officer and product strategist, shortly after International CES about the organization’s plans for the license and how it’s been faring since the acquisition. C&A is a distributor of digital cameras, camcorders and related accessories based in New Jersey.

“The first thing was that we didn’t want to fall into a knee-jerk reaction and slap a brand on everything that moves,” Ash said. “The Polaroid brand — there’s a heritage, a legacy and an opportunity there. To make the most of it, we wanted to take a step back and see what the market was about.”

This lead to the brand being divided in two parts, he explained: the mass-market commodity products segment — which includes such items as cases and card readers — and the interchangeable lens and step-up parts segment.

According to Ash, 70 percent of camera sales are trending toward the latter category. Beyond simply targeting the interchangeable-lens consumer, Ash said, “Everything we did targeting that quasi-prosumer hobbyist, we tried to add value on other levels.” Their line of performance grips, for example, feature models that include IR remotes, and some of the models also have intervalometers.

“We’re really targeting everything up to the full-frame user. If you’re investing in full frame, you’re going to want to stick to OEM stuff,” said Ash.

This is not to say that C&A doesn’t plan to leverage the Polaroid name — far from it. Although Ash agreed that “you can only ride the name so far,” the Polaroid brand is so steeped in consumer consciousness that “I think [consumers] are going to walk in and see our line next to even wellknown brands, and the name is going to resonate with them,” he said. “Recognition-wise, we’re up there with McDonald’s, Disney [and] Coke.”

The advantage of this is that when consumers see the products placed next to such brands as Vivitar, Targus and Digipower, Ash said, “I think they’ll gravitate toward us because we have the added value of ‘I know those guys.’ ”

When asked about the brand’s retail plans, he said they aren’t discounting any possibilities. “We have interest across the board, [including] FredMeyers [and other] regional chains. A lot of the interest we’re getting is coming from the fact that the regional guys and the specialty stores both see an opportunity to offer a brand that’s not been totally beaten up by the nationals. At the same time, it’s a real name.

“Are we looking to get into the big box? Yeah. Are we speaking to the warehouses? Yes, 100 percent. Attraction is coming across the board … Given the nature of what we’re doing in having products that obviously reflect the shift toward d-SLRs, obviously that resonates a lot through the specialty stores.”

At this year’s CES, the group was on hand to show some of the most recent additions to its 500-plus SKUs, many of which are geared toward the interchangeable- lens consumer. These products include the Dua flash, which enables users to shoot in Flash mode, with a four-step zoom and true TTL metering, and Video mode, with a full 3 watts of “daylight white” illumination from its color-corrected LEDs for up to 60 minutes. Pricing will be in the $149 to $199 range.

“The Dua flash is like the multifunction printer/fax/ phone for flashes,” Ash explained. “LED is the way to go, so we used that as a light source … The flash will adjust based on what the LED is putting out. The Dua flash is the first product we can look at buyers and say, ‘This product was designed to address that shift [toward interchangeable lenses].’ We’re going to have a whole series of LED light bar, hybrids and multipurpose lighting solutions.”

A second new product, the ATT (All Terrain Tripod), features leg tips with a four-way interchangeable system and industrial-grade magnetic disks for metal surfaces, heavy-duty suction tips for glass and smooth surfaces, spiked tips for use on outdoor surfaces, and rubber tips for carpeted or porous surfaces. Pricing for this will be in the $49 to $79 range.

Ash called this year’s CES response “interesting.” He said the big-box stores “liked the ‘major name’ one-stop shop accessory solution for every part of their digital imaging business” while the “vertical /regional/ specialty retailers were at first more casually interested, but then they saw we were doing more with the brand than just leveraging the name ... the fact we give them access to a major name and competitive pricing/thinking really got their attention.”