CDG Non-traditional retailing project

JINHEE KIM MIKI XU FASM 415 Prof. Kevin Knaus

BRAND INTRODUCION Comme des Garçons(CDG) French for "Like Boys" and is a Japanese fashion label headed by Rei Kawakubo in 1969, who owns the company with her husband Adrian Joffe. This brand is mainly on Tokyo and Paris. It is based on anti-fashion movement and more creations on design. Design from the Original CDG is more surrealistic and innovative.

In 2004, it released new brand under the CDG called ‘PLAY’ for young and casual design with its signature logo.

CDG has store in New York near from Chelsea Market, and few items are selling through other retailers including Barneys New York, Saks, and others.

In sales, PLAY line is more popular than the original CDG line with simple design and humorous character. The main concept of this line is “Simple is forever”.

In this year, CDG has great chance to do marketing its brand as Rei Kawakubo is the designer for MET this year. In this line of trend, CDG PLAY needs to prepare its marketing strategy including the online and offline retail business.

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CURRENT BUSINESS IN U.S. CDG has had collaborations with world-wide known brands including Converse, Coca-Cola, Supreme, Hermes, and Louis Vuitton. Also it collaborates with contemporary artists for visual merchandising or projects. One of its characteristics is pop-up stores from 2004. Rather than building stores, it has had more pop-up stores for the marketing because it developed the brand based on the community.

All around world, it has only few boutiques less than 15, and one is on NYC, U.S. CDG PLAY has the flagship store only in New York City, and this is called Comme des Garcons Pocket. In other areas, certain buying shops are selling some of its products. Opening Ceremony in NY and LA is selling PLAY lines on offline, and the other retailers support only online commerce.

From the brand website, there is no e-commerce, and its website is really hard to figure out each section.

The website has only inspiration images for the brand and there is no specific product line divisions for look book, or product information. Thus, it is little bit hard to build up brand awareness in U.S. compared to other Asian or European countries from the offline accessibility. Also, as CDG PLAY does not have separate social media account from original CDG account, it looks so hard to figure out details about it.

The price range for CDG PLAY is from $80 to $500. it is higher than other casual brands, but similar with designer labels.

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SWOT Strengths

Weakness

- Basic design with simple point for non-limited ages - Uniqueness from the logo play - Multi categories for unisex (Clothes, Shoes, Bag, Accessories, and Perfume) - Accesible price and design compared to the original CDG - Strong Brand identity from visual merchadising on Store.

- Collaborations with Worldwide known brands

- Limited location for shopping - Hard to access website - No website for CDG PLAY only - No e-commers from the offical webste - Size differences between American and Asian

Opportunity

Threat

- 2017 MET by Rei Kawakubo - Develop Brand awarenes among young people - International shoppers in U.S for CDG PLAY - Building more flagship stores in other bit cities - More sales from U.S. area

- Competition with similar price / style brands (Acne Studios, Opening Ceremony) - Price differences depending on retailers.

- Limitation on design - Copy / Counterfeit / Knock-off products

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OBJECTIVES 1. Brand Name Value and Awareness 2017 S/S is best timing to do the strong marketing for CDG PLAY with the MET opportunity in New York City which is one of the biggest fashion city in the world. It will be our main event for main marketing strategies.

2. Build Own Website and Social Media As it does not have any other official customer service, it is hard to take care customers. Thus, it is necessary to make better communication with customers and develop customer services through website and social media. Also, the official e-commerce will help to solve the problems of price differences from other retailers and the sales of counterfeit products.

3. Target Exact Customers Analyze target customers for product development, and lead more sales. Also, this analysis is important to build new stores following specific range of ages, area, and others based on the customer profile.

4. Unique features following brand Identity All of marketing strategies should keep the brand identity and following the uniqueness from the brand. Concept and design of website, social media, store, and marketing ideas are based on CDS PLAY’s main capsule idea.

5. Make more sales in U.S. Final objective is definitely making more sales in U.S. from new developed marketing strategies and new retail format. It might be started from short-term special sales during MET to long-term sales based on target customers.

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CUSTOMER PROFILE

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TARGET CUSTOMERS - Both male and female from 18-35 live in big cities.

- Have cool and strong personalities.

- Confident and passionate of everything in their lives.

- Attention to fashion know what is trending nowadays, they love the comfortable, effortless but also fashionable style.

- Believe fashion can be a white T-shirt with pair of jeans or the fancy dress with a cardigan.

- Very open-minded, willing to try new and playful things.

- Love travelling for experience more, hanging out with friends to watch a sports game or visit a new graffiti exhibition.

If customers in the United States want to a buy a PLAY t-shirt, the only platforms offer are Barneys, Ssense, Nordstorm and Farfetch. However, if they want to try the collection on, the only place customers can go is Opening ceremony in New York and in Los Angeles, but at the same time, Opening ceremony only carry a small amount of products. Or they need to visit the flagship store near from the Chelsea Market in NYC. So in some ways we can say Comme des Garรงons has not make their appearance to the America market officially.

This is the factor drive to the most important need of our customers - they are looking forward having a chance shop and know more about the collection, rather than see some celebrities wearing that in streetwear pictures. Compare to the main line of Comme des Garรงons which is very geometrical, dark and gothic, PLAY collection has the chance to target at wilder customer bases. A 16 years old boy can wear the PLAY T-shirt with a pair of jeans to have his first date with the girl he had a crush on, and a 50 years old lady can wear a PLAY cardigan walking in the park with her husband enjoy their day off. Our customers just need a chance to know, to try, to see and to has their own experience Comme des Garรงons PLAY, this is what we are offering them.

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TARGET CUSTOMERS Even though we believe anyone can wear Comme des Garçons PLAY, because we are selling basic items, however as we claimed before, the customers we are focusing this time is from 16-35, this is the target group we believe are the most profitable.

First, the article “Brand is Culture, Culture is Brand” from Harvard Business Review emphasized what really make a brand stand out is its culture. Concept and culture is an important part customers looking forward to see. The culture of CDG PLAY will make customers in this age range feel related to.

Second, while our life quality is getting better, people are paying more and more attention to technology and clothing, especially our target customers, they would love to try and buy something they never seen before, playful, innovative and unusual.

Third, according to the survey done by Bain&Company shows the words like “limited time”, “small amount” will stimulate the desire of customers to buy a product. No one wants to walk on the street and see ten people wearing the same T-shirt with her, the uniqueness of CDG PLAY will satisfy our need of being one of a kind, this is the best way to attract target customers.

We share the similar target customers group with Opening Ceremony, that’s why we will put our campaigns near or in the store, in order to attract the right potential customers. Also in order to target them effectively, we will go to the places they go, that’s the reason we put our campaign activities in the two districts attract young people most.

SoHo district in New York has the coolest stores in town, this is the place attract many local artists and tourists, all of them will be interested in something they have never seen before. The location we choose for Los Angeles is the shopping paradise, near Beverly Boulevard and Melrose Avenue.

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PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT In real, CDG PLAY’s customers can be anyone who wants to wear simple and basic design with humor. It looks hard to make royal customers, but it is its one of marketing strategies to make sales from everyone. Thus, the product development can not be too unique or too different from the current products. However, it can develop limited editions with collaborations to hide boring product lines.

Clothes Development of products is limited on CDG PLAY because this line is based on simple and basic design for unisex. So, the color variation is main design factors for unisex clothes. It can design limited edition t-shirt for MET exhibition for temporary sales.

Shoes, Bag and Accessories Shoes are mainly from the collaboration with the Converse for high and low Chuck Taylor style with the logo. However, it can develop slip-on style with the logo for the trend and the brand identity.

Accessories can be more varied with different patterns and colors for scarves, wallets, pouches, umbrellas, smartphones cases, and other small products. All products are based on the dots pattern and the heart shape logo for the brand concept.

Perfume In 2012, CDG PLAY released new perfume called 'Three Brothers'. It has three different scent with three different design of perfume bottle. It keeps brand concept “Simple is Forever”. It will develop limitied edition or collaboration for the design of bottle.

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SERVICE DEVELOPMENT Service Development It is the main part CDG PLAY needs to develop. Its customer service is really limited and hard to access. As it has only one official store in New York City, customers are buying items usually through e-commerce, but all of online retailers are buyers, not from the official CDG customer service team. Thus, they need to build up welldeveloped official website with e-commerce system, and the social media for the communication with customers.

Website -

Concept based design Including brand information and products E-commerce system - inventory managed from the flagship store.

Including the list of authorized sellers or shop Contact system through website for questions about products, shipping, and others

Social Media - Based on mega social media: Instagram, Facebook - Posting Photos including visual merchandising and information of new items.

- Posting Notification of events including pop-up shops and promotion.

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PROMOTION

April 28th Launching websites, social medias, mobile application.

May 4th - May 7th Treasure Hunt Event at MET

May 5th - Sep 3rd Sales on Vending Machines

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PROMOTION Mobile App: We will launch a simple app for Comme des Garรงons on April 28th. Basically this app will include four functions.

First we will give customers a comprehensive introduction of the designer and brand story, also highlight the Play collection.

Second the app will include the categories brand carry in Opening Ceremony and our vending machine.

Third, customers can view the map of where we put the vending machine in this app; it also means if they want to buy products from vending machine, they need to download this app.

Forth, customers who would love to participate in our Treasure Hunt event in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, need to use this app to scan the code box.

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PROMOTION Treasure Hunt Event: This event will only take place at the opening weekend of the Rei Kawakubo exhibition, May 4th to May 7th. We will prepare five code boxes and put them in five different places in Metropolitan Museum of Art in advance, May 4th.

Each day, the first 20 customers collect all six code boxes and scan them with our app can go to the CDG PLAY Pocket store near Chelsea Market to redeem for a phone case. The purpose of this event is to attract more people to the MET to see the exhibition and increase the brand awareness.

We will advertise this event one week advance the opening week of exhibition, 1. Send leaflets in MET museum and Opening Ceremony SoHo store 2. Send e-mail blasts to Opening Ceremony customers 3. Update on CDG PLAY and Opening Ceremony’s Instagram account daily.

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PROMOTION Vending Machine: Three vending machines from May 5th to Sep 3rd.

Locations 1. In front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1000 5th Avenue, New York, NY 10028) We want offer exhibitors an immediate chance to buy products right after they visit the exhibition. We will prepare enough inventories at the backstage of the exhibition in case the supplies run short.

2. Near Opening Ceremony store in SoHo (35 Howard Street, New York, NY 10013) SoHo is the hottest destination for young people shopping, which is full of our target customers, they will feel curious of the unusual “pop-up shop�. The vending machine is near OC shop, convenient for staff in OC to replenish the supply.

3. Near Opening Ceremony store in Los Angeles (451 North La Cienega Boulevard, LA, CA 90048) The location is near Beverly Boulevard and Melrose Avenue, which is the shopping paradise of Los Angeles. Also put the vending machine near OC shop for replenishing the supply conveniently.

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PROMOTION Vending Machine Products: 1. Instant tattoo stickers of PLAY logo 2. Stickers of PLAY logo 3. Phone cases for iPhone6&7 4. Basic T-shirt (Unisex, White and Black) 5. Cardholder 6. Pins of PLAY logo 7. The collaboration Coke between Coca Cola and CDG PLAY

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CITATION http://www.comme-des-garcons.com/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comme_des_Gar%C3%A7ons https://www.pinterest.com/mikixxxy/comme-des-gar%C3%A7ons/ https://www.openingceremony.com/ http://www.metmuseum.org/

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