Nottingham Research Day

"Perfume is a sector that drags down luxury"

Using Nottingham as our initial primary research location, we wandered around in our groups asking questions and taking photos of various shops which embody scent through all different aspects. Doing this helped us to refine our research focus and look into team priorities prior to our planned trip to London to carry out more primary research. Before we got started our initial idea was to look into unisex fragrances as from our first thought there isn't a lot around that is easy to find. 

We were given 9 research starting points then asked to choose 4 in order to help us refine what we were looking into

. Price

. Gender

. Age

. Story

. Trend

. Object

. Range

. Context

. USP

 Lush Nottingham were very helpful in explaining thoroughly that each of they're newer collections all have stories and are all inspired by various album covers one being by band 'Janes addiction'. Each single scent then from the collection could be mixed together to create one final body spray, making it easy for you to mix and match making personal scents for yourself. This helped us as a group to look into having a solid inspiration when coming up with our own perfume. It also helped us to think about maybe doing a set of scents.

We also went into various other shops such as Molton Brown, The Body Shop, Jo Malone and Kiels. All are on an equal price level and each shop assistant told us that all of their products can be unisex. This threw us off guard and we went back to the drawing board to think of a new initial concept before London. 

Supreme Flagship Store New York City

The next university project entails us to create an individual 2 part brand zine, choosing a brand of our own from a list and analysing the brand, discovering its position in the market, it's competitors, its consumers, looking at brand touch-points and then finally creating a new concept for the brand. I chose Supreme, a New York born world renowned street wear brand. Whilst in New York I conducted an informal interview with a member of staff at the Lafayette Street flagship store.

What would you say the target age range of customers is?

I would say it’s very much changed in the past few years, it used to be primarily 12-26 but recently we’ve seen a lot of 25 and overs so I would say an age range of 12-40

What would you say is the most popular product?

Most definitely the hats, but it has changed again over time.

How would you summarize the brand?

The brand is wrapped together with Art and Music, punk, rock, reggae which all relates back to skateboarding being the main inspiration for both the brand and the flagship store here in NYC.

Could you run through the plain visual merchandising in store?

We have a plain minimal layout as we like to let the product speak for itself. We rarely change the visual merchandising in store as we like to keep true to the brands roots and keep it as simple as possible. We don’t like to go crazy or digital.

What is your personal favorite Supreme collaboration?

My favorite is the collaboration with Cartoonist Robert Crumb, as the graphics were originals for Supreme unlike collaborations with artists such as Keith Haring where the images are pulled.

What would you like to see from Supreme in the future?

Just to continue its work with artists and for the creative team to not pick what’s hot. To keep establishing good relationships with musicians and to not worry about what’s popular at the moment and about being popular.

Celine Selfridges

The main purpose for my trip to London was to conduct market and retail research on my groups chosen brand 'Celine', pre arrival in the city we discussed where we could find concessions of the brand as the flagship store was closed down by Phoebe Philo in 2004. Me and my partner Sam looked around Celine Selfridges. The Celine concession was located on the 2nd floor in the women's wear designer gallery situated near other well known high end luxury brands such as Alexander Mc Queen, Balenciaga and Dries Von Noten. 

Whilst looking around the concession we took notes of positioning and also conducted 2 separate questionnaires in order to learn more about the brand from different people, its workers and its consumers. 

Staff Questionnaire

What do you think the brand stands for?

. We know the brand has made it from how its been copied by other brands such as the Zara Studio collection

3 words you associate with Celine

. organic, pure, high quality

What does the brand promise it's consumers?

. luxury and quality

What type of person do you think it targets? Age range?

. business not afraid of wearing a mens cut

Is there a specific colour palette? 

. black, beige, grey, changes with seasons

Consumer Questionnaire

How does Celine appeal to you?

. cut of the clothes, the silhouette, the clean beautiful fabric

Where would you wear Celine?

. All the time, classic

Target age range?

. 40+

3 words you associate with Celine? 

. classic, cool, grown up

What do you think the brand stands for?

. elegant grown up, well cut, edgy

'Hot Coffee, Cool Clothes' Case Study

In our latest seminar we were asked to carefully look and evaluate into a case study detailing a new retail store concept which has been provided disappointing for the 2 owners 'Julie and Anna.' It opened 12 months ago based on a store that they had seen visiting New York. They wanted to combine a gourmet coffee shop and a ladies clothes shop into the same store. The shop itself was aimed at a target market of 15-30 young fashion-orientated females and after being given all of the prices and research I have compiled this conclusion of information into what went wrong.

Firstly they didn't do enough research, the pair only asked 25 people all of which were friends (who would give a biased opinion) and even then only 30% of them said that they are recreational shoppers (7.5 people). The only other research done was into atmosphere to influence the consumer to shop longer and purchase more. In my personal opinion more research should've been done into a specific target market and into the area in which their store would be placed as the case study said that they turned away a shopping complex because of costs but spending that little bit more on a good location would've benefitted them vastly. 

Secondly the money borrowed of friends and family to start the business wasn't wisely spent. In total $500,000 was borrowed to invest, $100,000 was spent on the clothes, $300,000 on the look of the store and finally $100,000 was saved for staff costs. Eventually after a failed number of months $10,000 more was spent on radio advertising. Using the radio wasn't wise, it would've been more effective to make flyers or TV adverts rather than the radio. Less money should've been spent on on the look of the store, it seems that they just threw away money. In conclusion, if they had invested money into extensive research they would've developed a store which would've made a profit. 

With 4 years left on the lease of the coffee shop there are many different things that they can do, if it was me I would sell up and attempt to get back some of the money which I spent in order to give my family and friends back their investment. Another option could be to sell on the clothes and use the money to make a high end gourmet coffee store. The business partners had a very good USP but didn't pull it off as well as they expected. This activity helped me to get to grips with the idea of rebranding to make more money and to succeed rather than fail.