  
유니클로의 `울트라 라이트 다운점퍼`. 무게 199ｇ, 다운 혼용률 90%인 이 제품은 가격이 9만9900원이다. 유니클로는 `울트라 라이트 다운점퍼`가 `가볍고 따뜻한` 제품이라는 점을 내세우고 있다.
반면 몽벨이 다음달부터 판매하는 `아이더 다운점퍼` 가격은 150만원. 아이더 오리의 솜털로 만들어 보온성이 높고 발수ㆍ방풍ㆍ투습 기능이 뛰어난 소재를 사용한 고기능 제품이라는 게 회사 측 설명이다. 27일 매일경제신문이 시중에 판매되는 주요 다운점퍼 브랜드를 분석해 본 결과 다운점퍼는 다운 무게와 브랜드, 원부자재, 기능 등에 따라 가격이 천차만별이었다. 최고가 제품이 최저가에 비해 약 15배나 비싼 것. 최저 9만9900원부터 최고 150만원까지 큰 격차를 보였다. 겨울을 앞두고 쏟아지는 다운점퍼에 고가 마케팅 논란이 불붙고 있다. 업계 관계자는 "국내 기후와 생활방식 등을 고려했을 때 필요 이상으로 기능을 높인 고사양 제품들이 잇달아 출시되고 있다"며 "일반인들은 다운점퍼의 기능과 품질 등의 정보를 잘 알지 못하기 때문에 고가 마케팅 논란이 일고 있다"고 말했다. 일반적으로 다운점퍼를 고를 때는 △다운의 종류 △무게 △필파워 △솜털과 깃털의 비율(솜털 비중이 높을수록 고급) △방수ㆍ투습ㆍ방풍 기능 등이 기준이 된다. 무게에 따라 슬림다운과 헤비다운으로 구분되는데 슬림다운은 140ｇ 이내, 헤비다운은 300ｇ 이상으로 분류된다. 무거울수록 다운 충전재가 많이 들어 있어 보온성이 높다. 필파워는 다운의 복원력을 뜻하는데, 일반적으로 600 이상은 고급, 800 이상은 최고급 다운으로 분류한다. 다운점퍼는 브랜드에 따라 가격이 큰 차이를 보였다. 특히 헤비다운의 경우 최대 100만원 가까이 가격이 벌어지는 것으로 나타났다. 노스페이스의 대표 헤비다운 `히말라얀파카`는 69만원인 데 비해 전문가 라인 `뮤어 재킷`은 135만원에 이른다. 코오롱스포츠는 대표 제품 `벤텀` 가격을 59만원, 11월 출시 예정인 `우모`는 75만원에 책정했다. K2는 `클라이밍 윈드스토퍼`가 48만원, `볼케이노`는 98만원에 선보인다. 몽벨의 `아이더 다운`은 150만원이다. 이에 대해 몽벨 관계자는 "아이더 다운은 일반 제품과 달리 아이슬랜드와 그린란드 해안에서만 자라는 아이더 오리 털을 자연친화적인 방식으로 채취해 만들어 희소가치가 높다"며 "전 세계적으로 연간 채취량이 2000㎏에 불과해 원가 자체가 매우 비쌀 수밖에 없다"고 해명했다. 필파워의 기준도 논란이 되고 있다. 일상생활에서는 필파워가 600~700 이상이면 충분하다는 게 업계 전문가들 설명이다. 유통업계 아웃도어 담당 바이어는 "일상생활에서는 필파워 600~700 이상이면 보온 기능이 충분하고 그 이상은 큰 의미가 없다"며 "국내에서는 필파워가 일종의 마케팅 수단으로 변질돼 사용되는 것 같다"고 말했다. 또 다른 업계 관계자도 "첨단 소재와 다양한 기능들은 일반 소비자들에게는 크게 필요가 없다"며 "오히려 아웃도어 가격 상승 요인으로 꼽힌다"고 꼬집었다. 
실제 유통 매장에서 만난 소비자들은 다운점퍼의 기능에 대해서는 잘 알지 못했다.
지난 25일 명동의 한 유통매장에서 만난 대학생 김한석 씨(29ㆍ가명)는 "브랜드와 가격을 중심으로 제품을 고르고 있다"며 "기능적인 측면은 너무 복잡해서 잘 알지 못한다"고 말했다. 매장 직원에게도 필파워, 다운 무게 등 다운점퍼 기능에 대해 문의했으나 돌아오는 대답은 "모르겠다"였다. 한국소비자원에 접수된 다운점퍼 관련 상담 건수는 2007년 165건, 2008년 221건, 2009년 293건으로 지속적으로 증가하는 추세다. 특히 외관과 내구성 등 품질 불만에 상담이 집중된 것으로 나타났다. ■<용어설명> 필파워(Fill Power) : 다운 1온스(약 28ｇ)가 차지하는 부피를 나타낸 수치. 24시간 압축한 후 압축을 풀었을 때 밀려 올라오는 부피로 수치가 높을수록 공기를 함유하는 층이 두꺼워 보온력이 높아진다. 필파워가 800이라고 하면 1온스의 다운이 800세제곱인치(13.1ℓ)까지 부풀어오를 수 있음을 의미한다. [유주연 기자] | |||||||||
Friday, October 28, 2011
9만 9900원 vs 150만원, 다운점퍼 가격의 진실은
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Amazon's Smart Innovation Strategy
Amazon's Smart Innovation Strategy
Amazon shows how it is possible to build a business with the capability to transform itself
STORY TOOLS
Building a great business and operating it well no longer guarantees you'll be around in 100 years, or even 20. In 1958, the average length of time a company remained on the S&P 500 was 57 years; by 1983, it had dropped to 30 years; in 2008, it was just 18.
Shorter business life cycles require a new sort of management discipline capable of leading an organization through an ongoing process of transformation and renewal. To thrive in today's marketplace, to be built to last, every business now must be built to transform.
Consider Amazon (AMZN), which emerged from the dot-com bubble one of the few winners and continued to blaze a trail of impressive growth (from about $4 billion in 2002 to nearly $20 billion in 2008). One of the most unexamine facets of Amazon's high-profile success is its unabashed embrace of transformational growth in its white space. Amazon survived the dot-com bust because it had a viable and innovative business model built around a market-changing customer value proposition and a radical profit formula, which upended the staid book industry. Then it quickly expanded beyond books to include all sorts of easily shippable consumer goods, growing from its core into near adjacencies. But Amazon didn't stop there.
A few years later, the company seized its white space when it devised a new value proposition, offering a commission-based brokerage service to buyers and sellers of used books. Then it moved into its white space again by developing a model to serve an entirely different customer: third-party sellers. By opening up its storefront to other retailers that were essentially competitors, Amazon transformed its business from direct sales to a sales-and-service model, aggregating many sellers under one virtual roof and receiving commissions from the other companies' sales.
Then Amazon did it yet again, identifying a new area of potential growth by finding another new customer—the IT community. Serving this new customer's needs required different processes, different resources, and a different profit formula—in short, another new business model. In 2002 Amazon launched a web services platform. Perhaps it was risky for a young company that had only reached profitability in that same year to invest its innovation resources in new business models rather than stick to its core, but within five years the site used by Amazon's web-services platform had grown into the seventh-largest in the world. And Amazon kept going. In late 2007, it set up Lab126, whose first product, the Kindle e-book reader, came to market wrapped in a business model not only foreign to Amazon's DNA but also potentially disruptive to the entire publishing industry.
To launch this high-margin, product-based offering, Amazon had to become an original equipment manufacturer (OEM). It wrapped this technology in a seamlessly integrated iTunes-type digital media platform that combined both transaction- and subscription-based content delivery. It partnered with content producers in innovative ways and created an open back-end that allowed independent publishers to generate new content for the Kindle. In its first year, Amazon sold an estimated 500,000 Kindles. Amazon has greatly expanded the market for e-books and positioned itself for success not only in this market but in newspaper and periodical distribution as well.
Amazon at its roots is built to transform. When it finds opportunities to serve new customers, or existing customers in new ways, it conceives and builds new business models to exploit them. Amazon has the unique ability to launch and run entirely new types of businesses while simultaneously extracting value from existing businesses.
Amazon's journey forward will likely be marked by a series of transformations, as it continues to pursue its vision unafraid of white space, business model innovation, or renewal.
To be built to transform requires the courage to focus on delivering value for the customer first. Identifying value begins by thinking of an important unserved or underserved job that customers want done and then coming up with a well-defined value proposition to address that job, however foreign to your current offerings that may be. "If you want to continuously revitalize the service that you offer to your customers, you cannot stop at what you are good at," says CEO Jeff Bezos. "You have to ask what your customers need and want, and then, no matter how hard it is, you better get good at those things." With a well-defined customer value proposition serving a focused, well-articulated job, business leaders and project teams can work together to design the appropriate profit formulas, key resources, and key processes the company needs to thrive.
To do this, business leaders need to become business model thinkers, to understand that both the current model underpinning their existing business and any new models they may devise are complex systems with interdependent elements that must work together to deliver real value. To build these systems, they must think like architects or engineers, to begin with blueprints, build prototypes, and develop working structures that can deliver on new areas of opportunity. Although they can't devise all the answers up front, they can ask the right questions. Then they must pursue those answers like an artist would, exploring with a process of structured creativity that allows everyone involved to freely imagine the possible, not just the easily done.
Business model innovation thrives in cultures of inquiry, environments in which new value propositions, new ways to turn a profit, and ideas for new business models are met with interest and encouragement. In built-to-transform companies, managers recognize that becoming is part of being, and that the road to the next big thing can be traveled only by those with open minds.
This article is excerpted from Seizing the White Space: Business Model Innovation for Growth and Renewal by Mark W. Johnson (Harvard Business Press, February 2010).
Provided by Strategy and Innovation—published twice-monthly by Innosight, an innovation consultancy. Innosight's approach and proprietary tools facilitate the discovery of new, high-growth markets and the rapid creation of breakthrough products and services.
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