SEYCHELLES: A BRAND NAME THAT SELLS WOMEN’S SHOES
The Seychelles Tourism Board and operators were meeting in earnest over the past week to devise a marketing strategy to attract more tourists to our shores next year. Perhaps they should take leaf out of the books of an intrepid marketing company in California. This company has decided that the name Seychelles can sell shoes to the ladies of America as a brand name.
Zappos.com is a web based department store. In other words it sells all kinds of personal products such as shoes and clothing directly to customers via the internet. And the Seychelles brand is given the star attraction on their website.
Currently the Seychelles brand of ladies shoes comprises 25 different styles and the web site claims 18 new styles of shoes will be introduced in January 2007 with a further 23 new styles being introduced in February.
The website also assists you to pronounce the name of the brand properly. All you have to do is click a particular icon and a ladies voice pronounces Seychelles the correct way. There are also comments from very satisfied customers though you don’t hear their voices. Regrettably very few people in Seychelles will be able to order these shoes even if they have a million rupees in the bank since our currency has no external value.
How did the promoter of the brand of Shoes come across the name Seychelles and even knowing the appropriate pronunciation? We do know, however, that where the company which owns the website is located, California, there has been a small colony of Seychellois – a majority of them ladies – who married US personnel from the tracking station. And most of them live in an area colloquially known as Silicon Valley – the birth place of the digital revolution that we know today. Is there a Seychellois behind Zappos dot com?
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