Blue Tomato is the retailer of choice for those who want to embrace their hobbies. The brand offers opportunities to grow, experience unique moments and enjoy new sensations. To learn more about the company we sat down with CEO Adam Ellis to discuss the origins of the business and how it has grown into a leading European organisation.
The founder of Blue Tomato, Gerfried Schuller, had a love for snowboarding and wanted to bring the scene to life across Europe by creating a pathway to the products. What began life as a small garage shop quickly grew to a couple of physical locations and an online shop and it has continued to connect with like-minded employees and customers ever since.
“As you would imagine, our story has had lots of twists and turns along the way, but the cool thing about our story is the people behind it. I come to work every day happy because I work with people that share my passion for what we do, each other and our customers,” explains Adam Ellis, CEO of Blue Tomato.
Today the company operates 73 stores across Austria, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland with its most recent opening taking place on 7 August in Gothenburg, Sweden. Situated at Vallgatan 34 and at 300sq m in size, this is the first of what the company hopes will be quite a number of stores in Sweden over the coming years.
Speaking about the new store, Ellis explains that they chose the city because of the high population of young people, the affinity of market for their goods and their online volume per capita. He continues by saying that the brand believe they have successful stores when they open them in locations where they already have customers. By opening in this latest country, they offer another touch point for Blue Tomato and empower the consumers in the region to shop how and where they want.
Following this site launch in Sweden, the group has plans for further units in Sweden as well as wanting to open in Italy and Belgium. In total they have 15 stores in the pipeline for next year.
“We work to align our strategies around the consumer and we believe our customer is more self-expressive than their peer group. Our strategies focus on speed and convenience, localised experiences, human-to-human connection, and extending our values while we grow the business,” comments Ellis.
In practice this means they offer all the iterations of buying wherever and receiving the merchandise wherever. They feel their customer is empowered by technology to get what they want, where they want it, so they have to be fast and convenient for them.
Social media is pivotal for Blue Tomato and is one of the main ways they can engage with their customer. Since the beginning, their teams have worked to build their presence across relevant social channels. Early adopters of this technology and opportunity to connect with consumers, they now have huge follower bases across the channels related to their niche, and they remain committed to having engaging conversations with their customers.
“We knew this would be relevant back in the infancy of Facebook, the growth of Instagram, and now the emergence of TikTok. We wanted to be where our customers are located and this is another way to interact with them,” Ellis highlights.
The topic of sustainability is now more prominent than ever for retailers, and Blue Tomato has always worked to do the right thing and create a positive impact on the environment. They have partnered with Protect our Winters and other causes that have both an environmental and social impact. In addition, they have worked to create greater visibility to products that are more ecologically sound in terms of production. A key role for the company as a seller of third-party brands is to work to tell the stories and support their important brand partners.
Rider: Flo Zebisch
When discussing the important factors behind the success the business has enjoyed in the last few decades, Ellis explains that their people are a major contributing factor, because it is their commitment to the cause which is manifested via their passion and dedication to what the company is doing that has driven this success.
“At every touchpoint with Blue Tomato, there is a person, someone internally designed the sign, posted to social, greeted you at the door, sent the stock to the store, all these people live our values which are commitment, respect, development, empowerment, competition, and recognition,” Ellis explains.
“As we continue to move forward we are focused on growing our communities, creating opportunities and living our passions. This requires us to develop one another, commit to what we believe in and focus intently on our customers. Our challenge is to be better tomorrow than we were today, and we work to this motto each and every day,” Ellis concludes.
