“We Invest in the Brand”

BETTER RICH

“WE INVEST IN THE BRAND”

Maximum commitment: Wolfgang Lohe, now the sole owner of Better Rich, is developing the label into a lifestyle sportswear collection that offers a total look. He is well on his way to achieving his declared goal of making Better Rich more visible as a brand.

Interview: Nicoletta Schaper. Photos: Better Rich

Loungewear only was yesterday: Better Rich is now being transformed from a product into a lifestyle brand. What progress has been made?

Wolfgang Lohe, owner of Better Rich: We have added blouses, dresses, skirts, and most recently fleece, teddy jackets, and coats to our range of knitwear. In addition, we offer denim and the sustainability capsule Better Together. The sales increase in womenswear is flanked by a substantial expansion of the menswear line, which is why the latter now accounts for 30 percent of sales instead of five percent as back in 2019. A promising signal for the future!

How do you achieve this in these challenging times?

Better Rich presents itself as a sportswear brand with a lifestyle-oriented visual language. Special haptics are always in focus. 98 percent of the brand's manufacturing is done in Europe.

By not only investing in the product, but also selling sustainably. Between seasons, we take care of the retailers' sell-offs and steer the merchandise to ensure that the relevant items are in the right place at the right time. This is controlled by a sales-based merchandise management system. Generally speaking, we are in the process of establishing Better Rich as the spearhead in the premium segment, both in terms of modernity and quality.

How can that be accomplished?

We have doubled our team from 30 to 60 employees. A new product management team supports Head of Design Markus Funder, and in terms of communication we are focusing on 360-degree marketing including a dedicated social media strategy. In-house, we have realigned the position of Head of E-Commerce, who is now solely responsible for visibility on the web.

Does this also benefit specialised retailers?

Absolutely. We handle sales in Germany and Holland in-house and were able to increase average orders by more than 50 percent. In the Benelux region and Switzerland, we hired new agencies to represent our menswear. We also have a sales agent in Ireland. We recently returned to New York, our birthplace, to launch a subsidiary called Better Rich USA Corporation. We plan to establish a total of 50 shop-in-shops this year. In any case, we are just as successful throughout Germany at the big top dogs as we are in smaller boutiques. As a result, we succeeded in increasing turnover by 50 percent from 2019 to 2020 and will almost double it from 2020 to 2021. We spent the last two challenging years developing all departments of Better Rich in peace and quiet. Our big advantage is that we, as a fresh brand that has not been pigeonholed yet, earn retailer money from the very first moment. Simultaneously, we are an absolutely reliable partner for specialised retailers.

Wolfgang Lohe is the proud sole owner of Better Rich. He has already proven his brand-building skills at Gant.