18/06/2015
Case Study
I was lucky enough to be introduced to a luxury brand that was already trading in two point of sales in the UK and had a very good reputation in their field both with the customer and their peers, and at this point had been trading for more than 8 years. During our conversation when we were discussing how Aspiration Solutions can support their vision, they explained that they wanted to go “global”. It was at this point that it was really important to understand exactly what this looked like in terms of scale of distribution, and timescale over the next 3 years, 5 years and 10 years.
We take a long time to really understand the Brand Creators aspiration for their brand, the key was to understand the competitor landscape, perception and brand awareness in the industry at that moment to start to create the right distribution strategy, understand key point of difference and brand success factors. In this case as the brand was already trading, we were able to understand all the PR exposure, what the press were talking about, a good understanding of the Hero products and of course we matched this with how in this particular case the ‘key department stores’ in London were performing with the aligned competitors.
The distribution needs to be determined based on the 5-10year plan for the brand, pricing also needs to be taken into account to allow for International expansion depending on the vision. Whatever happens at the time of launch determines the road ahead. For this brand in particular we increased the pricing in line with market positioning and allowed for the International expansion so we could work on a distribution model. However this is of course taken on a brand by brand approach, if you increase your RRP too high then you limit your distribution in the market so this is a very key point.
The right strategy therefore was to launch in a key global positioning department store, the brand launched with everything that supports this, strong PR campaign with a media launch, 1 to 1 interviews, and a strong Marketing plan working very closely with the retailer, Education and ongoing development of a handpicked team. The brand in this environment was nurtured and developed to create the blueprint for success, after a year, we had established for the brand its systems, infrastructure and was now ready to increase production and take the blue print model and roll out internationally.
Even today the same philosophy still applies, we nurture a territory or new store and once (when) it is achieving success we move onto the next. The key has been patience, taking the time to do the right research at the beginning and not prepared to compromise on the opening store launch, understanding the length of time this process takes, the number of meetings involved but now the opening vision 5 years later is in force, the brand is global.
To learn more about the detail behind this brand and how these principals can work for you please say hello, we would be delighted to hear from you.
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