I agree with the branding thing. Not that this is about Crocs, but another barrier they have is that their initial branding catered to casual comfortable collage kid lounging around the dorm footwear.
When you think of Crocs that's what you think of. You don't think of professional occupational shoes you would wear to work or even a restaurant. It's more like something you wear to the beach or when gardening or wearing your pajamas.
Maybe Crocs is trying to brand towards those genres now, but it's hard to get past that original branding into something more serious. Skins branding is directed at the upper end serious but casual market. It's better to start high end and then come down than to start on the low end and work up like Crocs did.
You're right that marketing is key to a brand image. How can a company like Skins compete with Deckers (owner of Uggs and other brands) and Crocs when those companies have tens of millions (or in the case of Deckers, hundreds of millions) in cash, existing distribution channels, large sales and profitable (though not recently in the case of Crocs) operations? Viral marketing is a great idea and definitely can supplement a marketing campaign, but I'm not sure I'd want to rely on creating a brand image when I was issuing stock at 65% discounts to pay for basic expenses. I'm sure it's not from lack of trying, but lack of funds is a huge handicap to any company, IMO. Really interesting article attached to DECK (for whatever reason, I can't figure out) that speaks wisely to all investors, but particularly those considering micro-caps, IMHO. http://www.fool.com/investing/value/2009/05/06/the-market-is-not-a-casino.aspx (the link will not work, but cut and paste it into your browser).
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