Market Research

Capsule Collection “Like a Boy” Market Research Report Hayman Kinpan Lo

Designer Profile Hayman Kinpan Lo is a young new fashion designer based in London.

After graduated from university, he established the label LIKELIHOOD. The meaning behind the name is not actually the literal definition of the word. From the words, childhood, brotherhood, neighbourhood, etc., “hood” generates the feeling of a circle, a circle of fantasy and produces the feeling of belonging. Also, “likelihood” is the add-on meaning referring to the limitless possibility of creating.

The philosophy of LIKELIHOOD is building its circle of fantasy, contributing to the world’s creativity and breaking the conventionality, and creating the right clothes for the right people.

Collection Sensation: Like a Boy The concept of the capsule collection is expressing androgynous sexuality. The inspiration is taken from women showing their sexuality unintentionally by wearing men’s clothing. And also it shows the label’s philosophy of anti-conventionalism, by “tearing the tailored suit” to reveal the contrasted feminine featured lace, expressing the conflict of androgynous appeal.

Brand Identity • Anti-conventional • Contemporary • Androgynous • Individual • Diverse • Dynamic

Target Market Geographic Our primary market will set in London, UK. There are a couple of reasons. Firstly, London is a fashion capital and also a city with strong cultural influence. Londoners are with highly fashion sense and willing to spend a huge amount of money on fashion products. According to the data given by British Fashion Council and Oxford Economics, in 2010, London accounted for over a quarter retail spending on fashion products in the UK, and around the third of spending in England [1]. It shows that London is a huge market for fashion retailing.

Also, because of the city’s diversity of culture, there are a certain amount of people are creative and open-minded for off-streamed fashion, and also willing to be different and individual, those are our target customers.

Second, London is the one of most visited cities in the world. Tourism contributes significantly to the economics. In 2011 London’s visitors spent £9.4 billion, which is a little more than half of the total amount of international visitors spent in the UK in the same year. (source: the National Statistics International Passenger Survey [2]) Moreover, In 2013 London received 13.3 million visitors and visitors spent £2.8 billion. (source: Tourism Management Institute [3]) The data shows that tourists contribute significantly to the economics; it is a huge benefit for fashion retail in London.

Fig.1 Breakdown of Fashion Retail Spending by Standard Regional Classification [4] Source: The value of the UK fashion industry (British Fashion Council)

Target Market Demographics • Age: 23 – 55 • Gender: Women • Annual Income: £30000 + • Ethnicity: --• Education: --• Location: London, UK • Occupation: Art, Fashion, Design, Creativity related

Target Market Psychographics Our primary ideal customers are the thoughtful and confident women. They are creative, open-minded and self-esteemed. They don’t like to follow fashion trend, individualism is their ethos. They like to mix and match different brands, and also with vintage clothing to create their individual style. They are adventurous, willing to have new experience. They get involve to art and design activities very much in their life, such as going to exhibitions, art and design events, and music festivals.

Their favourite brands are the individualists, such as Comme des Garcons, Yohji Yamamoto, and Ann Demeulemeester.

Since some items of this collection is very androgynous such as the trousers, our secondary customers are the creative, adventurous and open-minded men. The fashion trends of menswear in the recent years proves that men wear womenswear and menswear with feminine feature are already not a very avant-garde and unacceptable thing. And their occupations are possibly fashion and art related such as fashion designer, fashion stylist, fashion blogger, etc. This strategy of retailing also helps building up a firmer brand identity, and increasing the brand awareness.

Market Positioning Since LIKELIHOOD is a brand new label, in order to gain awareness and survive in the highly competitive fashion market, reasonable pricing with high quality clothing is the effective strategy to start up the business.

Moreover, our target market is not a mass market; we only target to a certain amount of our ideal customers. The brand’s value and identity is important. Therefore, in order to build up the uniqueness and individualist of the brand image, for gaining long term loyal followers, the market segments we target to is the market in the middle of the bridge market and the young designer market.

This market positioning is based on two reasons. First, our ideal customers are self-esteemed and need to be unique individual, so we need to produce the brand image of young professional designer and as well as the same level of quality of our products, which belongs to the young designer market. However, for the consideration of marketing advantage, our pricing need to be lower than the general pricing level in the young designer market; the pricing level is set in the bridge market, in order to increase the brand awareness and produce the feeling of worth purchase.

Market Positioning Map

FIG.2 [9]

SWOT Analysis Strength: •

Strong brand identity of individualist.

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Strong brand identity of androgynous, approaching to the certain target customers.

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High quality with reasonable price.

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Talented new designer with innovative vision.

Weakness: •

Less brand awareness.

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Less experience in the industry.

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Insufficient funding.

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The strong individual style could also limit the amount of customers

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The androgynous style also limit the amount of customers.

SWOT Analysis Opportunity: •

Young contemporary fashion designer market is growing up. For example, LVMH group has launched the competition supporting young designers in 2014, the competition is recognized by the world. Talented young designers are rapidly paid attention nowadays.

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The androgynous style fashion market is still the gap in the fashion market, there is a huge opportunity to strive for the large amount of market share.

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London is a popular tourist destination. Benefits from the visitors is always there.

Threats: •

Highly competitive fashion market in London.

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Fast Fashion H&M, Zara’s threats.

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Less sanguine economical situation in the UK, and the EU.

Competitors Designer / Brands

Similarity

Pricing

Market Segment

Customers

COS

Androgynous

£12 - £390

Moderate

Student, Working women

Bassike

Androgynous

£80 - £3000

Bridge/Young designer

Young professional

Damir Doma

Dark, Black, silhouette, androgynous

£80 - £2000

Young Designer

Young professional, exclusive professional

Ann Signature use of Demeulemeester black and white, androgynous

£100 - £4000

Designer

Young professional, exclusive professional

Yohji Yamamoto

£200 - £7000

Designer

Young professional, exclusive professional

Signature black silhouette, androgynous

Price Range Garments

Pricing (ÂŁ)

Tops

60 -80

Trousers

120 - 150

Jacket

120 - 150

Cape

180 - 200

Distribution Dover Street Market (DSM): Dover Street Market would be the ideal retail store for showcase our collection. In 2014 its sales reached 1.3m, they are preparing to expend into a three times larger store in Haymarket this year. [5] The expansion of the store will provide a greater opportunity for new talented young designers for obtaining a place in the store, which will significantly help the increasing of the brand identity. Also, DSM’s cutting-edge identity meets our label’s philosophy and it will help us to reach to our target customers directly.

Distribution Online Retailing:

Fig. 3 The figures come from a study conducted by RetailMeNot and the Centre for Retail Research [6]

The figure (fig.3) shows that in 2014 and early 2015 online retailing in the UK has the highest sales amongst the main developed countries in Europe and North America, way far from other European countries. In the early 2015, the sales per shopper in the UK has increased by 9.6%.

Moreover, the report from BBC in August 2014 reveals: “Some 74% of adults had bought goods or services online this year, according to a snapshot of the way the internet is used in our daily lives. Almost half had bought clothing, with 64% of 25 to 34-year-olds buying clothes online, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said.”, “Younger age groups have been regular users of online shopping, notably on smartphones, with nine out of 10 people aged 25 to 34 having shopped online. But the ONS has noted that people of pension age have increased their online shopping activities. Some 40% of those aged 65 and over bought online in 2014. This was more than double the 2008 estimate of 16%.” [7] In September 2014, Market Research Firm Mintel has released the flowing statistics [8]: • Since 2013 UK sales of online fashion have increased by an impressive 14.5% to reach £10.7 billion in 2014 • Online sales in the UK account for approximately 17% of total spending on clothing and footwear, up from 13% in 2011 • The forecast for the market remains strong with sales expected to reach £19 billion in the UK by 2019 • Today as many as seven in ten (70%) internet users in the UK buy clothing and footwear online, making clothing and footwear the most purchased item online • Tablets are becoming increasingly popular both for browsing and buying with 20% of online shoppers in the UK purchasing clothing via a tablet in the last 12 months

Online Retailing All the statistics prove that the online retailing market has had the huge growth in the recent years. UK has the highest online retailing sales amongst Europe and North America in 2014 and early 2015. Also, as many as 70% internet user in the UK buy clothing online. The UK online fashion sales reached ÂŁ10.7b in 2014, which is a very considerable number. Furthermore, the percentage of higher age online shoppers (65 or over) in those age group has increased to nearly 50% in 2014. It was a impressive growth since 2008.

Therefore, our second yet important distribution channel is online retail. Online retail will also connect us to worldwide, gaining more customers. We will create our own official online shop, and offering free delivery for every purchase of products for UK customers. Also, we will cooperate with other new-designer supporting online fashion retailers, Not Just a Label and British Young Designers.

They will provide the approach to the larger market for us, because at the startup of the business, increasing brand awareness is more important than just making money.

Promotional Strategy Social Media: There’s no doubt that social media is the best and the most accessible media for promotion. We will create accounts of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest, and also a mini blog for updating the news, inspiration and visions of our label, with hashtags to spread out.

However, the weakness of promoting through social medias is that information and advertisements are massively flooding the platforms.

Today, things come easy but also go easy from people’s brain.

Online Publication: We will contact with the online fashion publications/website which supporting new designers, for conducting interview for us to increase the brand awareness. Websites such as Not Just a Label and British Young Designers.

Promotional Strategy Pop-up Store & Launch Event: We will also open a pop-up store in Shoreditch or Camden Town for showcase our collection and also will have a launch event.

The idea of the launch event is that, on the first opening day of the pop-up store, there will be only plain basic clothing on rails in the store, and the store is as well as plain without any construction and decoration. What we will do is that, we will ask people to splash the white paint we provided straightway to the clothing and into the store. (Event is promoted through delivering flyers and social medias.) Finally we will ask the people to take the splashed garments as gifts, and the decoration of the store will be the splashed white paint. After the paint in the store get dried, we will showcase our all-black collection against the white paint in the store. This promotional strategy is very provoke, the reason of doing this is not just because of making noise and gaining attention, as I mentioned before, brand identity is very important, the paint splashing is a great way to present our identity of cutting-edge and anticonventionalism, it helps to reinforce our identity as well as increasing brand awareness.

Bibliography 1.

THE VALUE OF THE UK FASHION INDUSTRY (BRITISH FASHION COUNCIL, OXFORD ECONOMICS) http://www.ukft.org/documents/industryinformation/The%20Value%20of%20Fashion.pdf

2.

INBOUND TOURISM - UPDATED MAY 2014 http://www.visitbritain.org/insightsandstatistics/inboundtourismfacts/

3.

THE TOURISM ALLIANCE: UK TOURISM STATISTICS 2014 http://www.tourismalliance.com/downloads/TA_365_390.pdf

4.

FIG.1: THE VALUE OF THE UK FASHION INDUSTRY (BRITISH FASHION COUNCIL, OXFORD ECONOMICS) http://www.ukft.org/documents/industryinformation/The%20Value%20of%20Fashion.pdf

5.

LONDON EVENING STANDARD, DOVER STREET MARKET PLANS LONDON EXPANSION AFTER SALES HIT £13 MILLION http://www.standard.co.uk/business/business-news/dover-street-market-plans-london-expansion-after-saleshit-13-million-10181431.html

6.

FIG.3: https://econsultancy.com/blog/66007-uk-online-retail-sales-to-reach-52-25bn-in-2015-report/

7.

BBC.CO.UK http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-28691147

8.

LONDON FASHION WEEK & BRITISH FASHION INDUSTRY FACTS & FIGURES http://www.londonfashionweek.co.uk/news/674/London-Fashion-Week--British-Fashion-Industry-Facts-Figures

9.

FIG.2: https://louisvuittonbrand.wordpress.com/brand-positioning/