How 34 Fashion Leaders Are Looking Outside Their Industry for Growth
The executives of AMBUSH, On Running, Gymshark, Ganni, AMI, Casablanca, and Uniqlo explain how they're branching out into new territory to meet their customers.
This article is part 6/12 of The Next Big Bang: The Brand Universe Solution to Growth, the inaugural research thesis by edition+partners, distributed here on SOTA. In the ever-evolving landscape of brand development, the concept of a Brand Universe emerges as both a tangible entity and a strategic methodology, offering a dynamic approach to brand survival and growth.
Suddenly, fashion brands big and small are occupied with everything but the fashion itself. Or so it seems.
From luxury brands like Dior, Prada, and Versace taking over beach clubs, ski resorts, and are even venturing space, to emerging brands such as Colina Strada, Heliot Emil, and Coperni embracing generative AI in their designs and campaigns, it’s clear that fashion houses are seeking brand and financial growth as a rapid pace by developing new ways to show up for their audience by breaking category, and even industry boundaries.
Last Tuesday, in ‘From Core to Cosmos’, we explored how Brand Universes horizontally expand into new territories, leveraging the robust core of the brand to hold multiple brand planets within its cosmos. In other words, the new generation of shoppers want their favourite brands to show their commitment to them by going beyond just fashion, and they want brands to put their money where their mouth is by allowing customers to experience the brands across all five senses.
The statistics confirm our predictions. According to our research that included survey interviews with nearly 400 individuals, 42% of shoppers have spent less on fashion in the last year. Instead, they’re looking towards other categories and industries all together, spending more on IRL experiences (55% have spent more on travel, 48% on eating out), non-fashion lifestyle items (43% have spent more on furniture, 41% on art and design items respectively) and personal care (41%).
While all 40 brand founders we interviewed for our research admitted they were looking beyond the fashion category for growth, the tactics and areas which are being focussed on vary. Here’s what they had to say.
Alex Griffin (CMO, On Running)
“On the relationship level, a great product always remains key. What we feel is that consumers want to know more about your brand values, how you connect to major cultural moments, and what your impact on communities is. That’s become a social currency. In the space of collaborations. We always knew we didn’t want to be in the fast collaboration space where one is almost indistinguishable from the next drop. So we always wanted to look for longer-term partners.
It’s become a lot more than sharing a colour drop and seeing what happens. It’s about creating completely new products, creating a sharing space, and how you go to market with those products. Then we think about how close we get and what we bring to the community.”
Yoon Ahn (Founder & Creative Director, AMBUSH)
“The fashion media didn't understand us, they had the traditional way of thinking. In this very limited category of boxes that we didn’t fit into. When we did media, they would ask stereotypical questions about female designers or how streetwear needed to be, I found that very frustrating over the years. I realised that we needed to take control of our brand story and narrative. I wasn’t going to wait around until these people would understand what we were doing so we went into our own channels.”
Priya Ahluwalia (Founder & Creative Director, Ahluwalia)
“People aren’t one dimensional. They don’t just buy clothes. Our universe is our clothes but also printed publications, our community events like the film festival we did, and our ‘behind the collection’ events where people can learn how we made things. Moving forward into the next phase people will see a lot of lifestyle from us. The dream is that someone can sit in a room and wear Ahluwalia clothes, sit on our chairs, look at us on TV, eat our food, and smell our scent. We see the Ahluwalia POV being applicable to many areas. I think the opportunity is endless.”