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Contents BRAND STORY BRAND VISION & MISSION BRAND VALUES BRAND POSITIONING OUR CONSUMERS KEY PRODUCTS OUR LOGO OUR FONTS OUR KEY COLOURS IMAGE GUIDELINES COMMUNICATION GUIDELINES TONE OF VOICE SOCIAL MEDIA GUIDELINES COLLABORATIONS STORE GUIDELINES SUSTAINABILITY CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY
Brand Story A small bunch of creatives started &otherstories in 2010 with a goal to create a new retail concept that will empower women to discover their true personal style. Our aim is for each individual to be able to create their own story by combining relaxed ‘cali’ vibes, chic parisian style and contemporay scandi looks. Through this, they will be able to create their perfect look that tells another story.
&otherstories design team is based in three ateliers in Paris, Stockholm and LA. They create garments for the girls in their cities and are mixed together in our stores.
Brand Vision
Brand Mission
To create garments with no environmental footprint whilst producing more varied clothing choices that women will feel empowered wearing.
To get women to create their own story through their personal style
Brand Values Our brand values are an integral part of our everyday work in every office space. They ensure that all employed creatives have the same aims in their work whether they’re in LA or Stockholm. They are a key part of life at &otherstories. SUSTAINABILITY: We believe in improving the carbon footprint that textiles has on the environment and pledge to creating more sustainable materials in our designs. We also recycle all possible products in offices and in store. COLLABORATION: We encourage all of our creatives to collaborate in office spaces as well as between different ateliers. We love new and exciting ideas being shared between one another as this is the best way to inspire those around you as well as yourself. CREATIVITY: &otherstories wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for creativity. We encourage everyone to test out new ideas, colours, fabrics and concepts. Without creativity we would be a boring brand so test the waters.
HIGH PRICE
Brand Positioning At &other stories our aim is to provide women with a vast collection of pieces at a reasonable price so that they can continue to develop their personal wardrobe. Whilst we believe in keeping our prices consistently achievable we also strongly believe in producing high quality items. It is important to us that all items are of a beautiful quality so that not only will they look classic they will also stay within our consumers wardrobes for longer.
LOW QUALITY
HIGH QUALITY
LOW PRICE
Our Consumers Our target consumers are cultural, metropolitan women between the ages of 21 and 45. They are experimental with their personal style and build their own looks by incorporating trends into their staple wardrobe rather than copying others. Our consumers will enjoy the sophistication of tailoring as well as more casual t-shirts and will combine these to create different stories and looks day to day. They will appreciate quality over quantity due to the rising awareness surrounding textiles and the environment. Whilst they will be paying reasonable prices for their clothing, they will be happy to pay a little more than within other high street stores for better quality items that will last. Ultimately, our consumers are forward thinking females who don’t wish to follow the crowd.
Name: Alexandra Maria Age: 30 City: London, United Kingdom Occupation: Fashion blogger Salary: ÂŁ60,000 per annum
Alexandra is 30 years old and lives in central London with her husband and one year old daughter, Indie. As a fashion blogger, her work day consists of shooting content in upcoming areas of London, having meetings with potential clients and writing future blog posts. Within her spare time she enjoys going to fitness classes such as pilates as well as trying new restaurants within her area. On weekends she devotes her time to her family where she takes Indie to swimming classes and to Hyde Park. She is highly experimental with her fashion. She takes inspiration from watching street fashion around London as well as fellow bloggers/celebrities. She enjoys layering her items so that she can prolong the wear of dresses throughout the year as well as to suit the British climate. Her wardrobe is made up of flexible, staple pieces with some trend led pieces such as leopard print shoes.
Name- Cassie Stone Age- 24 City- LA, California, United States Occupation- Recruitment Manager Salary- $30,000 per annum
Cassie is 24 years old and lives near Long Beach in LA in a one bedroom apartment. She has recently graduated from university after studying Business and is now working as a Recruitment Manager. Her work day consists of getting into the office for 8:50am, many meetings with different departments as well as contacting clients to discuss their contracts. Within her spare time she loves to cook and experiments with vegan and vegetarian dishes. She also loves to socialise with her friends by going to the beach and spending her evenings in bars/restaurants. As her work dress code is extremely formal, Cassie enjoys wearing floaty dresses and relaxed combinations of jeans and t-shirts when outside of work hours. She incorporates her personal style into her work dress code via accessories such as jewellery and shoes and loves to play around with her outfits on the weekends.
All of our clothing is created by our three ateliers; Paris, Los Angeles and Stockholm. The three different ateliers have different concepts of design which is combined in store to allow women to create different looks by mixing and matching the different styles. Our clothing displays in stores evidently show which atelier designed each item of clothing. It is also easy to identify this on our website.
KEY PRODUCTS clothing
Paris Our Paris atelier designs clothing that shows off their Parisian chic. They create a lot of tailored pieces that flatter female bodies as well as some more romantic pieces such as dresses and maxi skirts. Pieces from our Paris atelier display sophistication and class.
Los Angeles Our Los Angeles atelier designs clothing for the lifestyle of LA women. They create more relaxed cut clothing as well as using lots of denim and jersey materials to fit that easy-go lifestyle. Pieces from our Los Angeles atelier display a Californian girls confidence and energy.
Stockholm Our Stockholm atelier designs clothing that flaunts the Scandinavian fashion. Stockholms pieces are very minimalistic and simple but can be combined together to create a flawless ‘scandi’ vibe. They design clothing in a simple palette of colours such as black, white and navy whilst adding pops of colour to attract attention.
At &andotherstories we create many different accessories to complete looks. From jewellery to shoes we design accessories that help women to put their individual spin on any outfit. We believe that accessories are vital to making an outfit complete and this opinion is believed by our consumers also. Our accessories that have the most success with our consumers are bags and shoes.
KEY PRODUCTS accessories
Bags We create bags for any occasion such as tote bags for shopping and the beach to clutches for special occasions. Our main colours are black, nude and a reddish toned brown as these are the most flexible colours for a staple bag that can be worn everyday. As well as this, we create statement bags in louder colours and using alternative materials such as beads, pom poms and faux snake skin.
Shoes Shoes are a necessary part of everyones wardrobe but we want our consumers to feel a bounce in their step when wearing our shoes. We create various different styles in our ateliers such as boots and mules to suit different occasions and climates and these come in a variety of colours and materials. We have also partnered with various shoe companies such as Nike and Adidas to stock some of their trainers as these can add a stylish edge when worn with our clothing. Previously, we have collaborated with shoe companies such as TOMs and Vans and created our own limited collections to stock at &otherstories.
Our beauty range was where &otherstories began and we take pride in our vast range of high quality and highly rated products. We sell bath and body products and make-up as well as branching out into gifting, perfume and nail varnishes. Our top selling products come from our bath and body range as well as base/eye make up.
KEY PRODUCTS beauty
Bath & Body
MIAMI MUSE
BELSIZE BEAT We have 8 different scents that make up our bath and body products and each scent comes in a body wash, body scrub, body souffle and many others. Our packaging of all products is consistent with translucent bottle, black lid and white label. We decided on the translucent bottle so that it was easy for consumers to identify each different scent range. Our top 5 selling scents are displayed on the right and have been top sellers since launching. Each scent has a easily identifiable name, colour and texture which consumers have said made them fall in love with the products.
HAVANA BLUES
SARDONYX FIRE
PUNK BOUQUET
Make Up CREPE BEIGE
HOBOTAI SIERRE
MEISEN WALNUT
SILK MAHOGANY
BASE
We strive ourselves on inclusivity at &otherstories and had this at the forefront of our mind when creating our base range. We have two different types of foundation that give a different finish with our most popular being the ‘liquid foundation’. We launched this in four very different shades so that people of all colour can enjoy the range.
Make Up
KHAKI LUMIERE
EYES
LUSCIOUS GLEAM Eye make up is a fun way to play around with different looks and we love to encourage our consumers to do this in all ways. We have may different products that will help with this such as individual eyeshadows and palettes in various different colours. The palettes are built to be easy to use as the shadows compliment one another and are therefore easier to apply. Our most popular eyeshadow palette is the one on the right which has been a top seller since launching. The combination of greens and warm tones means that this palette is appropriate all year round.
GOLDEN HONEY
BRONZE GODDESS
Our Logo Our logo is made up of handwritten typography that was created on our first moodboard whilst discussing what &otherstories was going to represent. It caught our attention and has been unchanged from then till present. As it is handwritten it represents our brand ethos of creating your individual story and therefore needs to be presented in the correct way on all branding.
Our Logo
DO NOT:
Change the colour of the logo from the black type.
DO: Stretch or distort the logo. Present the logo in its original form on a white background unless discussed otherwise with the Creative Director and/or it is specified within a brief. Crop the logo so that parts of it are unidentifiable
Our Fonts In order for us to keep our brand image easily identifiable we keep use two key font types across all our platforms. The sizing of our fonts depends on what platform we are using e.g. different on website and on campaign images.
CAMPAIGN REGULATIONS Title text: Times New Roman(Regular) Body text: Courier New (Regular) Title text: size 22 Body text: size 16 (rare that body text is used within our campaigns but it can be on occasion). WEBSITE REGULATIONS Title text: Times New Roman (Regular) Body text: Courier New (Regular) Title text: size 20 Body text: size 14
Primary Colours These are the primary colours used within our branding. The black and white are represented in our logo. Although we don’t create black and white imagery; we keep to a very minimalist tone using a lot of white, clear backgrounds with the black typography in our logo standing out. In addition to the black and white colours we use a lot of muted tones of green within our branding. The green represents life and the environment as well as a healthy lifestyle which is part of &otherstories values. It also is used frequently within our stores and campaigns as we use plants to liven up the space/images. We also use muted tones of purple, pink and blue to compliment the greens if we want to add more colour. These are used mainly within social media and campaign images to give them diversity.
Extra Colours These colours are the opposite of our primary colours as they are strikingly bold. These colours are used mainly in seasonal campaigns to draw attention. For example, the yellow and orange are frequently used in summer campaigns to add vibrancy and attention to the brand. These colours will be used within a photoshoot to compliment colourful outfits and will be shared in campaigns, social media and on the website. You will be given a brief by the Creative Director to inform you of when it is appropriate to use these.
Our images need to reflect the minimalism of our brand colours and enhance the concept of mixing together clothing to create your own style. Images of items for our website are shot on a clean white or light grey background to fully display the colours of the products and the fabrics used. On our website we also use images from photoshoots to promote a collection. These are not as minimalist as our item images and are themed depending on the collection. For example, our ‘summer occasion collection’ 2019 was shot in Sicily so includes colours of their surroundings but still embodies the minimalist guidelines through the colouring of editing and their clothing. Our campaign photoshoots have the same rules as those for our collections. However, sometimes we do special campaigns to celebrate a season or social movement. For example, for Valentines Day 2018 we shot a campaign to celebrate same-sex relationships so the images focused less on the clothing but more on the relationship between the two models. It still was created using our primary colour palette.
IMAGE GUIDELINES
Communication Guidelines Communicating with our consumers is important to our brand as it allows us to discuss with them their opinions on our products as well as informing them of store activities and new product releases. We use social media platforms such as Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook and Youtube. Each platform engages with a different demographic for example we use instagram to interact younger consumers where as Facebook generally is used by our older consumers. We have a dedicated team to ensure that all messages are answered in order to help with any issues/questions. We also have our online website which is our main hub for displaying new collections and products that our consumers can immediately purchase. There, customers can sign up to an email newsletter that is personalised to their tastes and therefore informs them when events/products that are specifically targeted at them are released.
Tone of Voice We use the same tone of voice across all of our platforms so that our consumers understand us as a brand and can anticipate how we are going to communicate with them. The key words for understanding our tone of voice are: FRIENDLY DESCRIPTIVE SOPHISTICATED STORY-LIKE FIRST PERSON INTERESTED HELPFUL
We use social media as a way of connecting with our consumers on a personal level. We want to excite the users by showing them images of upcoming products as well as images or videos of our best selling products. Within our stores we celebrate events with in-store workshops for example a flower making workshop in celebration of Mothers Day. We use social media to share events like these with our consumers and encourage them to come into store to participate. In addition to this, we use social media to show our consumers how other people are wearing our products by reposting influencers images of them styling our pieces. This encourages consumers to tag us in their images as well as giving inspiration to consumers who feel stuck on how to style something.
SOCIAL MEDIA guidelines
We also love to share the development of our products so include short video clips of production. For example, a clip of swatching new colour samples for our bath and body products or an image of an exciting group meeting at one of our ateliers.
Collaborations One of our key values is to collaborate with one another but we also enjoy collaborating with other companies to create exclusive collections. Working with another company is a good opportunity to engage with a group of consumers who may not usually engage with our brand as well as treating our consumers to a new and exciting collection. An example is our 2016 collaboration with Vans (see right) where we created two exclusive shoe designs to be sold in our stores.
Store Guidelines
Each &otherstories store is in a different type of building from our modern store on Fifth Avenue, NYC to an old Victorian building on Oxford Street, London. Despite each building being unique to it’s setting all stores have the same interior feel. Each store is stripped back to a combination of industrial features and plants to create the right ambience for our customers. The stores are created with a combination of white and black industrial steel fittings, mirrors to add light and space to the store and mannequins flaunting our latest styles. It is common for large stores to have spaces for customers to sit down on comfortable plush seating in order to enjoy the experience of the store. We paint the walls in all stores in an off-white colour to remain consistent. In all stores, we add many fresh plants to reflect our environmental values as well as creating a relaxing environment for people to shop in.
We have a team of visual merchandisers to maintain the look and feel of each store to our standards. They ensure that all clothing is displayed in an appealing way by picking items that compliment one another. In addition to this, we create studio-like spaces within our stores where the visual merchandisers will piece together clothing, accessories and beauty products that create an interesting look (example on the right) to inspire our customers to venture out of their comfort zone.
To keep in touch with the rest of the &otherstories store our beauty section is also constructed from a combination of white and black industrial steel fittings and fresh plants. However, we display our beauty products on wooden shelving to enhance the natural feel of our products. All products are displayed depending on their scent rather than product type. For example, all ‘Havana Blue’ products will be grouped together to encourage customers to pick up other products in their favourite scents. The main purpose of having our beauty range in store is to create an experience for the customer. All products, such as hand cream, will have testers along side them so that customers can understand the feel and smell of the product rather than just trusting the packaging. In addition to this, all stores have a modern white sink with gold taps next to all the bath and body testers so that customers get to enjoy using the products before they choose to purchase them.
Packaging Here at &otherstories we take pride in our products from the start of production to post purchase. We want our consumers to be proud to purchase from us and carry our products after visiting. Therefore, we decided that the packaging needs to be as unique as our brand. Each store has the same white paper bag with the &otherstories logo on however it will also have the name of each store e.g. ‘258 Regent Street’ above a unique colour swatch/pattern. We chose to use paper rather than plastic as this makes the customers experience luxurious but it also coincides with our ethos to help the environment.
Sustainability Caring for the environment and being sustainable is one of the most important values that our company holds. Therefore, we believe that working with suppliers who also hold these values is extremely important. We work with our suppliers to ensure that our products are being made responsibly and often visit to ensure that our agreements are being upheld. We also offer training to the suppliers so that they understand our values and offer training and education to them so that they live up to those. Suppliers that follow our values are rewarded with further business and co-operation with &otherstories.
Recycle with &otherstories It is extremely easy to recycle with us. In 2014, we introduced our recycling scheme into our stores to encourage our consumers to join us in starting to decrease the impact that the textile industry has on our environment. We work with environmental professionals to understand what can be re-used and create methods that we can rework old textiles into new designs. To help, our consumers have to bring in any unwanted clothing or beauty product packaging into store to be sent off to our recycling warehouse. To thank them for their donation we give them 10% off of their next purchase.
Corporate Responsibility We see corporate social responsibility as a way of proving our values to our employees. We allow employees two weeks paid leave a year to go and volunteer for a charity that employs our values or is meaningful to the individual employee. An example of group volunteering that we allow our staff to do together is when our LA atelier staff went to Borneo in 2017. There they learnt to understand the impact of the textile industry in their country and volunteered to help children in local schools to learn English. Not only did their volunteering help the locals that they worked with it also taught our staff about the textile industry and inspired them to create a collection based on recycled clothing.