Market research report
Brand Alicia Glinicki's final collection was originally inspired by butterflies and dragon flies. Looking at the shape of their wings and the various structures of their veins gave the ideas on choosing specific textured fabric. It also built the concept on creative and different pattern cutting. Through the designing process the original idea developed and evolved and ended up being a very elegant but yet modern collection. This is also what the entire identity of this brand is about. All of the garments are ready-to-wear pieces and no Haute Couture. It's important for our brand that the garments are wearable at any time and event, and not just on red carpet. But our identity does not end there. We don't want to just make clothes to wear, our brand wants to give you the full package. Recognising that clothes themselves don't make an outfit Alicia Glinicki is currently planning to sell matching accessories such as handbags, shoes, jewellery as well as nail polish. The ethos of our brand is to not just provide people with a garment, our costumers should be able to get an entire look and we want to give them even more than this, our brand should be a lifestyle. We focus more on personal style then trend-led pieces. Another important key factor is that the brand only uses high quality fabrics and finishings. You will find little details such as a slit and a button on many of our garments. The brand also plans collaborations with new designers / graduates and bloggers. Unlike to other stores that collaborate with well-known designers we want to give graduates and new designers the chance to shine and to promote themselves. Visual merchandising and interior design is also a key factor to our brand.
Store The store's minimalistic warehouse interiors set a clean backdrop for the product. White or wooden mannequins looking like the one's used in fashion university's or studio's are displaying the garments. The store does not have any mannequins with heads, hair or faces, (like other store's usually use them) as we believe that this would take the attention away from the product and does not suit our minimalistic look. To emphasize the warehouse look the store holds big metal pillars, a wide metal, staircase (leading to the second floor), high ceilings and polished concrete floor. The clothes will be displayed on identical white clothes rails and on rose gold or white wooden hangers. Accessories will be placed on marble boards and glass tables which will be highlighted by spotlights. To give you the full shopping experience our changing rooms will be very spacious. They will also have charming lightning (unlike other stores), chequered tiles and wooden benches to make the waiting more pleasant. Our staff is going to wear our clothes and accessories but they should give them their individual style by choosing what they are wearing and how they combine it. So rather than having all of the staff members looking exactly the same we are hiring interesting characters with unusual looks to promote and reflect our brand. As sustainability is important to us we are only using recyclable paper bags. The design of the bags will change with the current collection and also match our window displays. So will our shoeboxes and little paper bags where the jewellery and nail polish comes in.
Website To make our garments accessible to not only people in London we are offering an online store on our website. Currently we are only shipping to Europe but as soon as the brand grows we want to expand and ship to America, Australia and Asia as well. Another very important factor to us was that the website is very straight forward and organised. Black thin writing will highlight the different sections such as 'new in', 'ready-to-wear', 'jewellery', 'shoes' and 'nails'. All of our garments will be photographed on models so that costumers can see of the look worn. As we do not want the usual look-book look, all of our photographs for the website will be taken on different locations. Some of them are going to be photographed in our studio, some in store or some one the streets of London, to give them a rather 'street-style feeling'. We also want to give an insight of our work and give costumers a 'behind the scenes' view. Therefore we will take photographs of the working process or feature an employee (a sale's assistant, photographer, visual merchandiser, designers or stylist) on the website with a little interview and CV. We will also have a column where staff members pick their favourite pieces which will be under the heading 'we love' and be put together into an outfit and look book story. Our Instagram account and tumblr will also be linked to our website. Another important key to our campaigns will be, that we are not only going to use 'standard models' for our shoots. There will be no age restriction and we are also going to use models from all kind of different ethnic backgrounds.
Marketing & promotion As social media is a very important and strong factor nowadays we are having an Instagram account, a Tumblr page and a Facebook page. Posting every day and being active on the social media is an important key to stay 'trendy' and be the brand that everyone talks about. Unlike to most of the stores we encourage our costumers to take photos of our store, the clothes and the interior and post it under the hashtag 'Alicia's Wonderland' to make them feel like they are a part of our team and to create a community. We also work together with different bloggers and let them take over our Instagram account for a day to let them show our brand through their eyes. To promote our brand we are hosting different events, for example, if there is a collaboration we will host a launch-event at our store. To make our store more attractive to a younger target group, we will offer a 10 percent student discount and take part of the 'Uni-Days' where students get 25 percent discount if they are signed up to the 'My Uni Days' website (this campaign takes place for an entire week).
Target Customers To be able to set a prize for our products we had researched our customers, their shopping behaviours and lifestyle to figure out how much they earn and how much they are willing to spend. Looking at their demographics and psychographics makes us as a brand understand them better and also helps us to improve our products. The geographic's of our customers are that most of them live in cities. Our current customer lives in London, but our future customers will live in big cities all over Europe, such as Paris, Stockholm, Berlin, Switzerland and Barcelona. Our customers are interested in high-street fashion that's why our stores will be located quite central, but they will not be near the hight end and couture stores cause that is not what our customer wants or can afford. Looking at the demographics of our costumers we found out that the customers that shop Alicia Glinicki's clothes are mainly between 25 and 45 years old (even though there are some customer starting from 20 years and being up to 55 years old). The main target is also a women. Their
education is spread out a bit. The women who shops at our store can either be still a student, a graduate or someone who has a full-time job. Our customers all have different incomes but work or study around busy streets that's why our stores would be located around these areas too. The marital status of our customer varies from single, to being in a relationship, being engaged or married. Most of them don't have children yet even though some do. Our customers also have all kind of different ethnical background, white, black, Latino, Asian and European people buy at our store. We are also looking into the psychographic's of our customers. Their lifestyle is adventures,, intellectual and trendy. They all have different religions and political views. To give a better idea about the psychographics of our 'ideal' customer I have created a costumer profile.
Customer profile Jelena is in her mid twenties, has a university education and works as a PR manager for Harvey Nichols. She lives in north London in a rented flat. She is very independent and enjoys her own company. She loves going to art galleries, shop openings and meeting her friends. When visiting galleries she especially likes to see photography exhibitions. She likes to read books and fashion magazines. Her favourite magazines are ID, Love and Vogue. She enjoys watching movies (especially Wes Anderson movies as she loves his use of colour and the way how he tells stories) and documentaries. She desires good quality clothes and rather spends a little more money to get higher quality and better service. She likes to wear different styles but would describe herself as very modern. She loves feminine dresses, high heels and jewellery as much as casual jeans, sporty slippers and jumpers. She also likes to wear very simple shapes but then focuses on very unique textures, prints or fabrics. Her favourite 'colours' are nude, black, white, cream and grey. She loves buying matching handbags, shoes, jewellery to the clothes she gets. Friends and family are very important to her. Beneath you can read a little summary of her characteristics. Name: Jelena Sequina Age: 28 Place of birth: Paris Place of residence: London Studied: Marketing & Management Occupation: PR manager at Harvey Nichols Income: 45.000 – 50.000 a year Interests: Going shopping, traveling, fitness, photography, going to art galleries, movies, spending time with friends and family Style: Mixed, modern, smart but casual Favourite Shops: Alicia Glinicki, & Other Stories, COS, Acne, Zara Favourite Designers: Alicia Glinicki, Jil Sander, Jonathan Sanders, JW Anderson Identity: Independent, confident, out-going
Shopping behaviour & pricing The everyday woman wants to go well dressed to work/university but looks good in her free time as well. As their work spaces and universities are placed very central they often have a quick look into store after work or university. Our costumers tend to browse the store every week or two weeks to see what has arrived new in store. Clothing prizes range from 15 pounds for basics such as tank tops or t-shirts and go to 195 pounds for a winter coat or bomber jacket. This wide prize range is very suitable for our costumers as they come from various backgrounds and have very different incomes (from students – full-time employees).
Competitors Alicia Glinicki's biggest competitor is probably & Other Stories. They have a very similar concept of how they display their clothes and decorate their store. Even though they use a lot more wood for their interior design. Another differentiation is that they are using various bright colours for their garments such as green and blue which Alicia Glinicki is not using very often in her collections. They both are very similar in their prize ranges, & Other Stories starts selling their basic items from ÂŁ17 and their most expensive item costs ÂŁ245. & Other Stories also offers a very wide beauty range and sells items such as moisturisers, fragrances, make up and sentence candles. They also have a lingerie and swimwear range. You won't find these items at Alicia Glinicki's store. Alicia Glinicki rather wants to keep her main focus on clothes. Jewellery, handbags, shoes and nail polish are at second place. At & Other Stories their beauty range is as important as their ready-to-wear range. They are both very similar when it comes to collaborations. & Other Stories does collaborations with musicians (for example Lykke Li) or other big brands such as Vans. The only variation is that Alicia Glinicki rather does collaboration with less famous designers or graduates to give them a chance to build up their brand.