As some of you will remember, last week, we've attended the local even of the Canyon Graffiti Limited Edition roadshow, and during the respective event, we've had the chance to go for a quick chat with Mrs. Catherine Lazure-Guinard, Communications Manager for Canyon and its higher-end products – oriented sister company, Prestigio.

During this short conversation, we've asked Canyon's rep a few questions about their current endeavor, regarding the Graffiti Limited Edition series, but also about the company in general and how they've managed to go through this rather bleak economic period.

Softpedia Gadgets: Bucharest is the last stop after a long tour of south-east and central Europe. What was the overall reception for the Graffiti Limited Edition products in all the countries you've visited?

Catherine Lazure-Guinard, Canyon: So far, it's been very good.

We've started shipping the products on the 1'st of September.

In fact, the goods arrived exactly on the 1'st of September and they almost immediately sold out in every country, so everyone's waiting now for the new shipment to arrive, since the products were very, very well received.

The Graffiti limited edition are new, are exciting, they're something people have never seen before, so both retailers and consumers received them very, very well.

In fact, we are very, very pleased with how well they did, and they're actually so successful that we're considering the possibility that, in December, when the Limited Edition goes out, we'll turn them into a permanent thing.

We'll also searching for more ways to integrate the Limited Edition, since school is coming, Christmas is coming, and we'll probably offer some bundles as well, grouping together more products for those people who want to have more Graffiti Limited Edition accessories.

Softpedia Gadgets: With the Grafitti Limited Edition, you're targeting mostly young, creative people. Do you think other categories will like them as well?

Catherine Lazure-Guinard, Canyon: Canyon targets mostly people with ages from 12 to 25, more or less, since there people of many ages who like our products, but that's the category we're particularly interested in.

With the Graffiti Limited Edition, customers in this age segment can actually accessorize themselves, show off, because these things look so cool, with the drawings and the paint.

In fact, they're so unique that a colleague of mine, who had to do a presentation, was walking through an airport with one of the notebook bags in the collection, and everyone was looking and the bag and saying “Look how cool that is”, even people who were older and a part of a whole different demographic.

The thing here is that with the Graffiti Limited Edition, we're targeting more segments, like early adopters, but also the later, the mass.

We think that by targeting the early ones, who are really the trendy ones, the it will for sure become popular with the larger mass of consumers as well, because the products will actually become a hot trend.

Softpedia Gadgets: Do you think that your Graffiti Limited Edition will make graffiti, as a form of art, more popular?

Catherine Lazure-Guinard, Canyon: First of all, let me make one thing clear.

We, at Canyon, don't want kids to go on destroying property in order to make graffiti.

What we want to do is stimulate their creativity, to find new and innovative ways of expressing themselves, their personality, their beliefs.

We think that Graffiti will become a trend, one that will influence young people, but in a positive way, helping them better express themselves.

Softpedia Gadgets: What is the "engine" behind Canyon? Are you banking more on the design of the products, the features they provide or is it more like a mix of the two?

Catherine Lazure-Guinard, Canyon: What really matters for us, here at Canyon, is the design, the quality, and the price.

We really focus on the design of the product rather than on the specs.

I'll have to admit that we're not spectacular as far as the specs of a product are concerned, but we're not entry-level, either.

We make sure that we provide specs that meet the needs of mainstream consumers in the 12-25 years segment, which, as mentioned before, is our main target segment.

However, if you're looking for more advanced products, higher-end, those are provided by our sister-brand, Prestigio.

Canyon is more about the design and the very strict uality control at our factories in Asia, they make tests every day, the crushing, the burning, the whole thing.

And if they find just a few products in a batch to be defective, the whole batch is scrapped, is discarded.

And another thing we did was to keep it simple, we have only a couple of products for sale (webcams, headphones, mice), but the quality is really good and we've also tried to keep them affordable.

Because we have factories in China and we can negotiate directly with the components' supplied, we can obtain a much better pricing for our customers.

Softpedia Gadgets: This wasn't the best possible year for the world's and Europe's economy. How did Canyon do in these bleak times and which were the products that proved the most popular?

Catherine Lazure-Guinard, Canyon: I think the most popular product for Canyon was the webcam, and that's been going on for quite a few years now.

Another popular product was the “chat pack”.

Actually, we think nobody had this idea before us, since we bundled together a webcam and a headset, and we sold them as a “chat pack”, which made Canyon quite popular.

During these hard economic times, we focus most the products that bring the bulk of sales, but we also have to be very creative, since we're getting an increased competition our our traditional markets and it's now a bit more difficult to sell our products, our partners in retail also recording some losses (since end customers have less money to spend).

But we have to go on, to continue, since we're confident that, at some point, the market will go back up after going trough this rough patch, and when it does, we'll be there, increasing even more our market-share and breaking more records than we did up until now. 


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