Term Project

Repositioning of an existing product

Prepared by Anastasiia Caviston Prof. George Sanchez Class FM117 Unit 25E

04/29/2013

1 Product, Company and its Perception The product I chose for this project is a white mens Supima Cotton Non-Iron Traditional Fit Forward Point Collar Dress Shirt from Brooks Brothers (Appendix 1). In Brooks Brothers catalogue this shirt is described as following Pure Supima cotton made with pucker-free seams and specially treated to remain virtually wrinkle-free. Center back pleat. Signature shirring at barrel cuffs. Left chest pocket. Machine wash. Imported. Also available in Regular, Slim and Extra-Slim fit. On the companys website this shirt has customer rating of 4.7 out of 5. There are 104 reviews on this shirt from which I found out about its advantages and disadvantages. Some of the positive features of the shirt are great fit for barrel-chest men, durability, great value for money, do not shrink and optional monogram. As for the negative sides, many people have agreed that the tips of the collar turn brown when the shirt is home washed (not dry cleaned). Overall there are a lot of customers who claim that they have been buying and wearing this shirt for decades and they have no reason to try something else simply because it is perfect. Apparently this product is considered to be of high quality and high perceived value. It is popular in its current target market and this means that it can appeal to other markets.

As for the brand itself, Brooks Brothers is one of the oldest clothing retailers in the USA. As stated on the companys website, www.brooksbrothers.com, In 1818, Henry Sands Brooks founded Brooks Brothers, the first ready-to-wear fashion emporium in America. Since then, we are proud to have become an institution that has shaped the American style of dress through fashion innovation, fine quality, personal service, and exceptional value in our products. The website accentuates the brands long history highlighting that Presidents John F. Kennedy and Barak Obama both have been seen in Brooks Brothers clothes. According to the book Lifestyle marketing: reaching the new American consumer by Ronald D. Michman, Edward Mark Mazze, Alan James Greco p.71 Brooks Brothers suits were the uniform for those in high managerial positions and of those who aspired to reach this level. For a particular social class, it was the veil of respectability. Even today Brooks Brothers makes great suits for presidents and ambassadors. This brand associates in peoples mind with classic American design, luxury, authenticity and preppy style.

Demographic and Psychographic Portrait of Companys Customers Brooks Brothers is not a publicly traded company that is why official statistical data regarding demographics and psychographics of their customers is not available to general public. Nevertheless, there are many third party companies that have conducted research of Brooks Brothers online store. One of them www.quantcast.com (statistical tool that measures websites traffic) has been researching traffic on

www.brooksbrother.com for about a year now. It compared audience composition of the site to the entire Internet population. (The higher the index number, the more concentrated a site is in a particular demographic.) The data drawn from the research shows that on average 184,000 people visit companys website every month. Assuming that people that visit www.brooksbrother.com are more likely to buy its product whether online or in brick-and-mortar stores than those who do not visit the website we can see what audience the brand appeals to. As it can be seen from data in Appendixes 2-7 majority of people that visit the website are Caucasian, female, adult, have no kids, affluent, have college degree. Gender Although the primary Brooks Brothers customers are men, it is not surprising that 53% of websites visitors are female (which is even higher than Internet average) since even nowadays when majority of women have full-time jobs they are still responsible for family shopping. This means that female customers are interested in the brand and whether for themselves or for their husbands they visit companys online store. Age

As for the age groups 27% of visitors are 35-44 years old, 24% are in 25-34 age group, 18% are in 45-54 age group and 11% are in 55-64 age group. This means that 51% of Brooks Brothers potential customers are between ages 25 and 44. This is a high number considering that only about 36% of all Internet users fall into this age category. In comparison 29% of people who visit www.brooksbrother.com are between ages 45 and 64 and about 27% of all Internet users are in this age group. This fact is surprising since many people believe that Brooks Brothers is primarily oriented toward people in their forties and older. Apparently the company is doing a great job marketing its product to

3 younger people. Children in Household

70% of people visiting the online store have no children, although only 50% of Internet users have no children. If we consider that from the people that visit the website only 14% are under 24 years old this number seems to be even more surprising. This fact alone makes necessity of childrens line questionable. Household Income

43% of people visiting the web site have household income of $150k and more. This is 15% more than average number of people with this income. It is logical since Brooks Brothers clothes is quite expensive and is used primarily by professional people who usually make more money. Education Level

73% of visitors have Graduate or Post Graduate degree. Post Graduate degree holders are more than twice overrepresented in web site visitors mix. It also makes sense since statistically people with more education have higher-level positions and incomes. Ethnicity 76% of all the visitors are Caucasian; this number is similar to the Internet average. 13% of people visiting the web site are African Americans and this is 1.43 times higher than Internet average. This might seem unusual but we should not forget that Internet average considers all people in the world using Internet and Brooks Brothers is sold primarily in the USA where the average African American population is about 14%.

Besides demographic data www.quantcast.com also shows which other web sites visited people that were shopping on www.brooksbrothers.com. This way one can determine interests and lifestyle of potential Brooks Brothers customers. Among this categories are apparel, sports, politics and commentary, news/information, online trading and auto manufacturers. These topics indeed seem to interest affluent, educated, professional people who are more likely to buy Brooks Brothers product.

4 New Product and New Target Market Brooks Brothers had missed out on the trend for apparel to be worn on casual days or dress-down days, which even take place at banks and law firms. In order to enlarge the market Brooks Brothers had to change their image by adding some bright colors and more fitted cuts to their lines. After years of selling its famous button-down oxford shirts, purple gingham shirts and turquoise-striped ties were added to the product line. Once the average age of customers was fifty-five and now it is much lower. Although originally Brooks Brothers was a mens clothing brand, today they also have womens, kids and even home sections. The authors of Lifestyle marketing: reaching the new American consumer say that The challenge confronting Brooks Brothers is how to attract women and younger adults without losing loyal customers. This challenge goes in line with the objective of my project, which is to reposition the classic cut Brooks Brothers dress shirt to teenage and young adult women. I believe that currently this cut of the shirt is positioned to professional men from the age group forty and older. Although Brooks Brothers has managed to attract younger customers, most of them choose fitter cut.

To position this shirt to new target market Brooks Brothers will have to make people aware of new ways to wear a mans shirt. In the Appendix 8 I attach a step-bystep instructions for wearing this shirt. I want to note that although one of the first video tutorials for the ways a woman can wear mans shirt dates back to 08/27/2011 I have not found any brand that would market their shirts this way. The video tutorial I refer to can be found at www.youtube.com/watch?v=wR1weirgMTg&feature=share and at the moment there are over 1.4M people that have watched it. YouTube also has statistical data analysis of YouTube users that have watched the video (Appendix 9). Considering that this video had 1.4M viewers, this data has statistical significance. 13,019 (97%) of people who voted liked the video, 423 (3%) disliked it. Geographically, most of the viewers are from USA, Canada and Lithuania. Demographically, first three age/gender categories of the people that watched the video fall into these categories: 1) Female, 13-17 years old 2) Female, 18-24 years old

5 3) Female, 45-54 years old

It is interesting that one of the female age categories is missing in the sequence (25-44 years old). As for the 45-54-age category, I would not consider it as a potential target market because it is on the last place in top demographic categories and aside from statistics people of this age are more conservative and they are less likely to wear a shirt this way. 13-17-age category is very broad and while 13 and 14 year olds shop in childrens section, 15-17 year olds shop in adult section. Also considering that 70% of Brooks Brothers shoppers do not have kids and those who do probably would not want to put fathers shirts on daughters I think that 13 and 14 year olds is neither an appropriate market for this product. Summing it up, female, 15-24 years old would be target market for this repositioned product. These women are high school or college students; they live in urban areas and have some discretionary income. They are interested in fashion/style, DIY projects and they are not afraid to experiment.

Place In November 2011 Brooks Brothers opened a new concept store in New York called Flatiron. According to an article in WWD in September 2012 there were already 50 Flatiron stores in the USA and Japan. This store caters to college students and features the more trend-based sportswear pieces from their current range. The atmosphere feels much less formal than it is in a regular Brooks Brothers store; the shop exposes brickwork, has free Wi-Fi and vintage video games. Mens and womens products sit alongside each other to avoid the male/female segregation of most clothing stores. The atmosphere and vibe of the store are appropriate for the repositioned dress shirt. While among suits and office dresses or traditional Brooks Brothers store this piece would look out of place, in Flatiron store it would tie Brooks Brothers traditional product and reputation with trendy students sportswear. It could also serve as a threshold between womens and mens sections. It would invite people to check out the other section and perhaps buy something for their different sex partners.

6 Price Original price of Brooks Brothers Supima Cotton Non-Iron Traditional Fit Forward Point Collar Dress Shirt is $88 ($225 for three shirts). Although it seems to be a high price for a shirt the cheapest dress from Brooks Brothers costs $148. Since the quality and design of the product would not change neither should change the price. This will assure customers that the shirt they are getting in womens section of Flatiron store is the same as those in mens section of traditional stores. Brooks Brothers is a luxurious brand that can afford only small percentage of people that buy it because of high perceived value. Lowering the price may negatively influence not only the sales of the shirt-dresses but also change the perception of the brand.

Promotion To begin with, a lot of females in the chosen target market know about this way of wearing a shirt. Internet is full of tutorials on 5, 10 or 20 ways to wear a shirt; pictures of people wearing it as dresses, skirts and even pants; garments made out of one or multiple shirts; people do it in the USA, Germany and Japan. The idea has been developed and revised many times but we do not see women on the street wearing their husbands shirts. The problem with this idea is that it has not been conventionally accepted. In fashion only small percentage of people are innovators, the rest of us are fashion followers and there is nobody to follow in this field. The very fact of such a famous brand as Brooks Brothers marketing their shirts this way would encourage a lot of women to think outside of the box and be braver when it comes to fashion choices. Brooks Brothers has so much credibility that it seems that there is nothing one can do with their dress shirt to make it tacky. Besides putting the shirt on mannequin in their stores the company should make people aware of this new DIY dress. Since the target market are relatively young people I think that the main promotional tool that should be used is social networks. Brooks Brothers has over 350K Facebook followers, 34K Twitter followers, 14K Instagram followers and 4K Pinterest followers. All these people are not one-time store visitors but customers that know about all the news of the company including store openings, new lines and collaborations. The company could make its own video tutorial and perhaps

7 invite the girl that was in the original video. The most popular among all Brooks Brothers videos is their Christmas 2011 Singing Lambs commercial and it has almost the same number of viewers as a low budget shirt-dress tutorial. YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and other social networks are a cheap way to promote almost anything and at the same time in many cases it is more effective than mass media. Besides tutorials the company might develop a series of short commercials that address main events and problems in the life of a girl that makes her first steps from teenage years to her adulthood. This can be A Walk of Shame where the girl wears dress-shirt in the morning instead of little black dress she was seen in at a party last night. Be an Optimist where after a serious and tearful breakup with long time boyfriend a girl gets the whole left behind closet of his shirts. My Present to Me where a girl gives her boyfriend a shirt with later plans of wearing it herself. Another promotional tool I would use for this product are advertisements in magazines. Fashionistas from all over the world read and trust Vogue and Harpers Bazaar. Magazines oriented toward younger audience like Marie Claire and Teen Vogue can also be used. It is an expensive type of advertisement but it reaches target audience and adds credibility to the product. For this ad marketers can use teens and young adults that wear dress shirt in different situations always with slogan Dare to Wear as if saying that if these young women wear the shirts you can do it as well. Another slogan that might be used is Dress shirt is dress and shirt explaining that the very name of the product says that it can be worn as a dress.

SWOT Analysis Strength Brooks Brothers dress shirt is a high quality product The brand has high perceived value The brand has credibility The product is innovative and unique The product is unisex (if a style is Weakness Brooks Brothers is a business apparel brand and it has not established itself in casual clothes market yet Majority of Brooks Brothers

customers are older than target market for this product

8 not sold in mens section it can be sold in womens and vice versa) It is almost DIY project that can make women feel as if they are true designers Shirt can be worn as a dress only by women with certain body type (multiple reviews in social

networks suggest that this styling does not work for women with larger breast) The target market is relatively small Each woman that buys a shirt to wear it as a dress must be taught how to do it

Opportunity This product gives the company an opportunity to break into casual apparel and younger women

Threats Any dress shirts can be used for this styling. Once Brooks Brothers

educates consumers about the way to style shirts they may start buying shirts of competitors Women might stop buying dresses and just use their partners shirts which will result in decrease in sales

markets without designing anything new The product is versatile. There are many ways to style a shirt. In the future they may add tutorials for other ways of styling Some ways of styling require belts and other accessories. It creates opportunities for up-selling In the future could be marketed to children of 13-15 years and 45-54 year old females since these

categories expressed interest in the idea

9 Conclusion I believe that repositioning classic Brooks Brothers dress shirt to younger women might be very advantageous for the brand since the biggest challenge they are facing right now is how to attract younger customers without losing old ones. 50 plus year old men are bread and butter of the company but if Brooks Brothers wants to continue their almost 200 years history they need to make some changes and introduce new product that would appeal to those that will be their regular customers in 20 years.

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Works cited
1) www.brooksbrother.com 2) Ronald D. Michman, Edward Mark Mazze, Alan James Greco Lifestyle marketing: reaching the new American consumer, Praeger October 30, 2003, p.70-71 3) www.quantcast.com/brooksbrothers.com#!demo 4) Jean E. Palmieri Brooks Brothers Debuts New Flatiron Concept WWD, November 14, 2011 5) Jean E. Palmieri Brooks Brothers Expanding Black Fleece, Flatiron Concepts WWD, September 13, 2012 6) www.youtube.com/watch?v=wR1weirgMTg&feature=share 7) www.facebook.com/BrooksBrothers?fref=ts 8) twitter.com/BrooksBrothers 9) pinterest.com/brooksbrothers/ 10) www.youtube.com/user/Brooksbrothers

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Appendix 1.

Appendix 2.

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Appendix 3.

Appendix 4.

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Appendix 5.

Appendix 6.

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Appendix 7.

Appendix 8.

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Appendix 9.

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