The Kooples Strategic Retail Audit

Strategic Fashion Marketing Audit

Nitya Arya 24843911 ARTD 3039

TABLE OF CONTENTS Executive Summary Page 1 Brand Page 2 Operational Structure Page 3 Financial Review Page 5 The Marketing Mix Page 7 Internal Analysis Page 11 External Analysis Page 13 Strategy Page 15 Strategic Recommendations Page 20 Conclusion Page 25 Appendices Page 26 Bibliography Page 30

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Entering with outstanding momentum, ever vigilant of a fluctuating environment, The Kooples spectacular ascent over the past five years, converging on refining and fulfilling core cohesive strategies, underpinned by assuring a pure uniformity of ingenious product design is upholding a shining.

Accomplishments of a meticulous and organic business management based on trust and understanding and balance within the marketing mix pointed perpetual financial performance whilst integration of carefully committed enigmatic communication intuition and sophistication segmented and targeted consumers effectually.

In forecasting, observations of a wider segment analysis measured both testing and motivating internal and external settings, remaining watchful and well appointed with a resolute plan, fortified by the brand’s thrust and financial assets, thus ameliorating any immediate matters stemming from a arduous environment.

In closing analysis, a step forward in words of exciting ventures to advantage the years ahead and advance in long-term objectives presents efficacy in expanding through operating functions, continuing to ensure maintainable profitable growth and pursue an extraordinary brand, boundless growth, and a great company for the future, fully intelligible with the French British style and ideals.

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The Kooples STORY From its founding in 2008 by the Elicha brothers creatives, The Kooples stance as a premium international brand adhering to an aspiring philosophy and synergy of English dandy and French savoirfaire sparkled in his-and hers attire, at an attainable price. Always embodying the virtuosity and unstinting quality of fashion sensibility through a style enthused principally by harmonies of sartorial tailoring, vintage love and rock ‘n’ roll, the house has expressively encapsulated prêtà-porter in 322 spaces across the compass.

Further endearing than The Kooples’ artful precision is the enthralling and avantgarde picturing of the brand’s ubiquitous advertising campaigns presenting the jazz of real-life suited duos. Today, The Kooples are a vastly valued, prominent business for both men and women.

These are the makings of The Kooples.

The mission of The Kooples is to portray the most distinguished qualities of a quintessentially classic charm, synonymous with a synthesis of innovativeness, enduring a closely connected creative thinking culture, inventive product design and compelling brand visualisation; all pointing The Kooples through its business evolution.

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THE MARKETING MIX Product “You need to take risks to create something new so that people see you.

If you don’t take risks, you don’t do something different and you stay like the other ones. You stay small”. – Alexandre Elicha Engaged as a sub-division, The Kooples Sport, characterising a farther casual comforting feel enables the brand to offer more whole collections in each segment, pursuing customers and distribution professionally and effectually. Absolutely, accessories are a fastest growing product segment, balanced across both tiers with alluring opening price points, motivating sales and profitability whilst continuing to continually innovate and differentiate the category with added prospect to capitalise.

A British cut reworked with a dash of the infamous je ne sais quoi French personality depicts and distinguishes an inimitable Franglais alchemy and idiosyncratic proposal, echoing and enduring a premium product hierarchy.

Incorporating functional casualwear, graceful tailoring, modern activewear and non-apparel, an ingenuity and accord of elevated quality, charming design and vast value are vigorous disciplines running through The Kooples house, ultimately sustaining remarkable variety and balance and sequentially placing the assorted products in the mind of distinct prospects.

As high area services for fashion, the originality of most brand attire resonates and nurtures in the ‘Growth’ phase of the product life cycle, withstanding a continually progressing lifespan as the brand holds complete control over the product groupings, yet staple basics endure in ‘Maturity’ translating as timeless silhouettes that will survive the customary fashion season such as the seamless white fit shirt.

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Outstandingly, crafting an mélange of a genderless style and timeless seasonality amidst The Kooples line enables couples together to articulate their thoughts and muses in the analogous and divergent ways they will consume the wool suit jacket. Working together helps to recognise and augment decisions. A finer merchandise range is a requisite for The Kooples, demonstrating the brand is entrenching into the Kooples pair’s attitudes of searching for products they truly and authentically desire - worthy and novel cooler, stronger and trenddriven products workable for both Adam and Alice and Eric and Rachida.

Wondrous product is the quintessence of the brand and the object of passionate attention.

Pricing On respectable judgments, proficient and calculated pricing decisions have been implemented, observant to The Kooples consumer. The Kooples price integrity commences with a market skimming approach.

The pricing context arises with an entry retail price point of £35 extending to £565 with an average price point of £145. Substantially, upper prices do not magnetize premature competition, thus demand variables are superior.

Vitally, The Kooples premium marketplace position vaguely obstructs the opportunity to lessen fixed pricing as it conserves a meaningful strategy of communicating greater levels of value and importance to consumers in conjunction with enhancing the lifecycle of the garments and garment performance. A lifecycle extension is apparent as quality and style improvement, varied functionality and the financial benefits the garments offer to the consumer in each usage occasion demonstrates an intelligent means of engaging the competitor’s consumers, yet it can also be understood as targeting price conscious consumers with upmarket aspirations.

Exemplifying this, The Kooples Sport though still costly is a middling component, which can be marketed as an attainable, yet economical substitute for premium brand buyers or an expensive preference for budget buyers. Successively, faster diffusion and adoption is generated, particularly amongst The Kooples’ early adopters segment where there is likely to be adequate demand, creating additional trade through word of mouth.

By stretching their price architecture upwards, the distinguishing range gap (presenting the differentials for given products in distinctive price zones) proposes affordability and a break amid the assortment of garment styles, acknowledging The Kooples consumers’ insight into particular price levels for particular products and discards consumer confusion with numerous price offerings and psychological price points. The semiotic connotation and trigger of a prestige quality that The Kooples nouveau riche consumer is acquainted with boosts their willingness to pay more and indulge, as it is very much about a commodity, which The Kooples couple can share as a lifetime item, further augmenting The Kooples brand value and equity.

The Kooples have embraced where they are, continuing to tell customers why they are still a virtuous option in the face of rivals with both inexpensive and more sumptuous offerings.

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Place Running in 321 standalone presences and numerous concessionaires within three geographic regions in chic and promising neighborhoods together with an online connection, The Kooples engage a dynamic mindset across the company culture and processes to direct endless progression in all distribution channels.

Efficaciously, fulfilling an optimum, yet budding multichannel model instantaneously assists in presenting establishment of data collection, overseas convenience, enhanced values and eloquent brand messaging across all customer touchpoints. The present offline prospects for The Kooples are vigorous drivers of sales where touching garments and brand associating expresses loyalty and exceptionality for the couples at point of consumption and where logistics are guided by simplicity, reliability and transparency.

Amongst the features of Retailer Identity (Schmitt 1999), place (architecture, fascia and interior design) is notable. The Kooples have boosted and challenged in store appearance concepts, giving couples a clear message to follow.

Substantially, productivity in mainline stores in flagship cities (high net worth of local populations and robust tourism flows) is mostly amplified as retail disciplines and customer centricity in inventory management and exceptional service of sale associates momentums constancy in better connection with customers and cultivating personalized relationships.

As men and women are more passionate to coordinate their style, The Kooples have further enriched the in-store experience and service needs with the increased provision of a changing room for two.

Equally, consumerization and connectivity through the online generation assures product offerings are broadened in a way that is opportune for the customer, evolving the sophistication of consumers as well as nurturing new consumers.

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Promotion Staying in the world of the couple, The Kooples picture a signature aestheticism within refreshing consumer-focused reasoning of an idiosyncratic, visionary and zeitgeist-marketing concept.

Commencing with artsy and ultra-cool couple campaigns, the brand encompasses an intelligent insight into the lifestyles of sleek duos (arrayed in The Kooples wear, ages 25-65 photographed in charming places, telling their personal love stories), discoverable in publications and on buses and taxis, complemented with a small film clip.

Amalgamating enchanting, yet relevant content expresses a brand and product story that makes the campaign personal, blanketing universal distinguishing and configuring inbound associations into store spaces.

Istead of fully specialising, The Koople are a bit everywhere.

More, a unique notion entitled The Koo ples Records endures to explore musicians that are analogous to the soul of the brand, a couple, achingly cool and slightly rebellious. This accentuates as an extraordinary partnership and constant thoughtfulness with the modern consumer.

Placing value on a dash of social media marketing (Twitter; 15,514, Facebook; 276,406) is equally instrumental as search, print and outdoor. The Kooples coerce exchanges, fulfill with inspiring content, enhancing a deeper level of dialogue, thus enabling the brand to grasp an entirely new customer, and present who The Kooples are in their own way.

Principally, there is not an entire sense of salability, yet something, which is entirely whole and intimate, an impeccable elaboration of The Kooples.

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STRATEGY STRATEGIC THEMES Elevate and build the captivating and unparalleled Kooples brand, until fashion do them part Enthuse and pursue functional superiority to assure sustainable and profitable growth To eternally create a new form of consumer immersion that enlightens, impassions and amuses Enrich the product proposition, at the heart of The Kooples Focus on and intensify internationally

Today, The Kooples, a story of couples embraces an enduring buzz and closely connected creative thinking culture, balancing on a prosperous attainment of sustained strategies, crafting a more beguiling and meaningful brand. The succeeding themes underpin the potency, dynamics and purity of The Kooples brand, compelling articulate performance.

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Communication In an ‘always on’ creation, The Kooples illimitable, entrancing and conceptual marketing visibility is delicately embellished in line with fulfilling a singular consumer view and illustrating the brand’s artistic voice to the creative industry.

By envisioning and formulating advertising campaigns presenting stylish and cool reallife couples, The Kooples have become part of modernising and streamlining brand communication, which does not advocate and advertise itself in orthodox fashion media (corpus promotions). Alternately, the label’s signature aestheticism is a distinct ideology and unique selling point in delivering a new and unanticipated perspective – an authentic and organic quality that ‘gives back’ to the consumer. There is a sense of encompassing above and beyond a visibly commercially viable concern, which is sincerely inspiring.

Boosting the passion for underpinning a coherent message and shaping recognition of a coherent format, the pictorial delectation and push in an integrated consumer-focused novelty are captivating in configuring The Kooples as ‘first-in-line’ store, heightening tangible market share as brand insight and responses rates are raised.

Marketing and fashioning conversation with their most valuable consumer segment ends in a flowing and seamless conversation, enabling The Kooples to uncover how distinct couples respond and pinpoint fresh patterns of consumer behaviour, further stimulating high sales and loyalty, mounting conversions and optimising the brand’s return on investment.

Customers can distinguish and identify themselves with the couple conveying the message of The Kooples brand. This appeal of surprising and androgynous character almost augments the individuality, quality and exclusiveness of The Kooples experience. Because of its genuineness in content and original in style, the campaign Vitally, The Kooples have promisingly reformed the amalgamation of just product is being recognised all over the world as an intelligent and personal means and brand into an attaching dialogue, of communication unlike any other. affirming their business capabilities in becoming closer to the couple than ever.

A strategy that is something different, something timeless, and yet refreshingly modern.

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STRATEGIC RECOMMENDATIONS In a new actuality, retail can be anywhere.

Submerging the soul of the brand, swift evolvements in dynamic and receptive retail strategies and new patterns of thought will embolden venerable The Kooples to transpire as marvels in more ways than one in an utterly innovative landscape. Indubitably, the contemporary consumer sustains vastly idiosyncratic, yet sophisticated expectancies of product, service and value, thus an amalgamated brand experience must be depicted.

Outstandingly, enrichments in sensory and pragmatic digital creatives and collation of channels as prospective orchestrations of play will embrace and further the refashioning swing in the relation between business and consumer.

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e-Zine

Contrastingly, yet in complement with the age of a digital content library, an associated logic to deliver a genuine visualisation of The Kooples through the integration of ideas and automation, authentically translated in an aspiring modus of a monthly online zine.

Under the editorship and creative direction of Raphael Elicha, couples will find themselves submersed in a symbiosis of mesmerising conversation beautiful imagery and humble graphics, enhancing and celebrating the product design’s personality and desirability of a new and subtle luxury at an attainable level.

This fresh and in-depth substance will prominently resonate with Generation Y’s needs for an information rich quality.

Principally, the zine will be a small, simple and consumable piece created solely to enthuse and materially grasp the reader and consumer with stimulating imagery narratives, thus the manner of content will enhance a widespread and lifestyle array with themes large enough to appeal to every couple, regardless of their age.

Entirely, the investment makes sense, giving depth to the brand in an environment they can manage, creating positivity around the brand, giving a much more valuable currency, particularly as this type of consumer publishing is presently booming. Amid the UK, this industry is probable to be worth £1bn in 2013 (Mintel, 2013). The E-Zine will have an effective influence on The Kooples consumer, generating an uptick in sales as the average consumer spends a total of 25 minutes reading titles, resulting in 25 minutes that may be spent with The Kooples brand.

Vitally, it may also be far more economical than advertising as it pushes product minus the noticeable ‘sell’. They will be connecting a space between viewing something in a magazine and actually purchasing it.

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Mobile Modernisations Today, mobile is not just the Internet in our pockets, it is entrenched into the lives of the consumer. Observations and fusions of mobile commerce to push acquisitions through a valuable unified commerce –a visually alluring smartphone application alongside individualized relevant is a probable pervasive strategy to uplift brand dynamics and attend to today’s multihandset consumer and multi-provider universe.

Refreshed with digitalization, even when the Kooples couples view selections in a physical store, they are probable to reach for their phone and tablet – online whilst shopping offline. Unquestionably, they will not pause to un-connect, yet they will wish to acquire the fresh and covetable basics wherever they are positioned whilst submersing with the memorable services and proclivities of The Kooples brand. Now, the customer profile for in-store and online becomes equal. The interconnectedness of the rich, signified and collective web is frictionless and portable, fashioning the manner in which couples hear about product offerings, suitably strengthening sharing activity and definite purchase choices at an occasion apt to them. In like manner, authentication of mobile consumption means swift access to an endless aisle, swaying the couple from going elsewhere.

Designs of a full-screen interface will also make it simpler for promising customers to discover content, and as their search voices interest, The Kooples can forthwith nurture and refashion them into consumers.

Is a mobile application abundant to truly add value to the brand’s channel mix?

The Kooples will link it back to the store.

Ultimately, mobile will permit the brand to really understand the role mobile can play in motivating business growth, ensuring that the couple doesn’t pick one channel, but chooses both (an ‘AND’ culture for platforms, not ‘OR’). M-CRM is the new customer relationship management.

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