As I was watching the Pete Sell vs Matt Brown fight UFC 96, I noticed a nice looking shirt Pete Sell and his entourage was wearing. I did what everyone who thought the same thing, Google Tokyo Five. The 1st 3 results are a band, photo blog, and a fashion blog (that has some screenshots). After tying a different keywords, I finally get to the official Tokyo Five site. Upon entering, I get an overlay pop-up showing their UFC 96 sponsored fighters Pete Sell & Gabriel Gonzaga (who both lost).

Once I “X” out of the advertisement, I’m taking to an under construction site. No photos of their products. Nothing! What a wasted opportunity. I’m sure it wasn’t cheap to sponsor two UFC fighters. People are perhaps looking to buy your products. There’s no excuse for not being prepared after a major media campaign.

Here are some basic things Tokyo Five Jeans should have done to better prepare even if they would still be under construction.

  • A special landing page or microsite for visitors coming to the site with UFC, Pete Sell, or Gabriel Gonzaga in the keywords.
  • Have some photos of your products or a fashion editorial to tease the customer.
  • Have contact info and a mailform.
  • Have an about us section.
  • Have a Youtube video showing a commercial
  • Have a blog. They are easy to setup.
  • Link to your myspace, facebook, or twitter page.
  • Most importantly, a newsletter to collect email address and other basic information so that you can notify them once the site is launched.

Filed under: Business, Tips | Tags: , , , , , , | Christian Cabuay | March 8, 2009 Comments

  • JeffreyJ
    Why don't you start a strand and call it:

    Living Room CEO fails to capitalize on a successful career.
  • averyamaya
    Good points. I ran across your posting after watching the re-run of UFC 105 tonight on VS and doing exactly what you did, Googled Tokyo Five. Well they finally showed up toward the top, in fact they had two organic listings above the link to your blog and there was also a paid spot by MMAOverload.com. As I said, you made some great points and here are a few of my own thoughts. They do have an "About Us" section now, but there's literally still nothing in it. There's no excuse for not being able to simply tell the story behind the brand, because people do want to know. Tokyo Five should have taken some of that UFC sponsorship money and bought the tokyofive.com and tokyo5.com URL's to complement their current tokyo5jeans URL's, especially when you consider that we (as consumers watching UFC) can't possibly know that they are a denim company when we see all these fighters rockin the t-shirts). And last, they should consider doing some Pay Per Click advertising. If nothing else, they should buy their own name. Maybe they are being respectful to their wholesale customers like MMAOverload, but they can still grab the #2 or #3 spot if nothing else. Going back to your original point, "why spend all this money marketing the brand if you're going to make it so tough to find you?".
  • Sam
    Thanks for posting this, big help in developing a business plan for my own designs, I can't believe this company would pay out ad money for a huge exposure event and then not have the proper tools in place for possible customers. Anyway, I saved this to my favorites for future reference, Thanks.
  • Nice post
  • Gabriel is a good fighter!
  • Jacob
    You are a Duesh Bag
  • Nick
    Would be nice if they shipped outside of the US.
  • Pete
    http://www.tokyo5jeans.com/ they now have T's and Jeans available for sale at their website. Check it out. I just ordered a few things a couple days ago, suppose to arrive soon.
  • Mirick
    haha, pretty funny, the hivemind thing. thanks for this post, at least we're helping them get some exposure now. :)
  • Scott
    Dude. Gotta agree with you. Just got around to watching UFC 96 today and I, lik eyou, googled "Tokyo Five" afterwards. Pretty said when your blog about it hits my top 5 results after a search. Huge missed opportunity/ What was the point of the sponsorship?
  • I agree the only contact info is on 360fashion which is another blog. Christian posted the link.

    Millions of eyes will see those fights live YouTube and I googles during the fight and was disappointed. A wasted opportunity!
  • schizosmurf
    and now the #1 result for "tokyo five jeans" is this page, lol
  • I've seen many companies make this mistake. Not even a contact phone number. Sad.
  • CookieMonster
    I couldn't have said it myself.....
    Big upset cuz the shirts are tight!!!
  • nummybrownie
    wanna put a link up to that site...? i thought the shirts look tight as hell and i wanna buy one whenever i can... i too ran into this problem and i was pissed off.. thanks for the write up...!!
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