Eileen Fisher Repositioning The Brand Pdf Printer. Za: Sitemap 9. Eight- Legged Marvels - Beauty and Design in the World of Spiders.| While reading through Eileen Fisher, Repositioning the Brand, it became apparent early on that the company’s main issue was relevancy—an issue that many companies face in today’s market.
THE MAKEOVER Eileen Fisher, favored by an older crowd, is trying to attract a younger audience with new designs, left. Credit Photographs by Eileen Fisher Inc. IN the new Off Broadway show, “Love, Loss, and What I Wore,” written by Nora and Delia Ephron, a character muses, “When you start wearing Eileen Fisher, you might as well say, ‘I give up.’ ” That sums up the problem for Eileen Fisher, the designer and the brand. Fisher, a 25-year veteran of the retail trade, has never staged a fashion show or dressed an Oscar nominee. But her generously cut, washable designs developed a passionate following among moderately affluent middle-aged women, who scooped up $200 organic-cotton sweaters or $400 alpaca coats in her stores, havens for the trend-averse. Many customers have been loyalists since college, embracing her kimono shapes and floppy trousers as, one devotee said, “a safe way to be bohemian in a grown-up world.” Those women fueled the company’s growth, but for the fashion-conscious, Eileen Fisher clothes had as much style and shape as a. To them, the line was designed for graying bobos who dabbled in ceramics and had lifetime subscriptions to The New Yorker.
“About a year ago I was feeling sad,” said Ms. Fisher, 58, as she paced her light-filled showroom on lower Fifth Avenue. “I thought we’re so much cooler than we appear. We have made the clothes look hipper, but nobody knew that.” It was time, she resolved, to give the company a face-lift.
She has subtly tweaked its offerings, highlighting skinny tank tops, leggings and jeans and trimmed-down cardigans, some of which, Ms. Fisher insists, have been in the line all along.
And she has capitulated to other fashion norms as well; her advertisements now feature models who glower as convincingly as any on the runways. Gone, for the moment, are the silver-haired models smiling serenely into the distance.
But ministering to the faithful while courting the groovy can be fraught. And there is this question: why cure what’s not ailing? “The apparel world is littered with companies who ruined their businesses trying to change their image and reach a different customer,” said Gerald Barnes, the president of Neiman Marcus Direct. “Her merchandise is not really very different from year to year, and that’s one of the good things about Eileen Fisher.” Indeed, at a time when her retail competitors are slashing overheads and advertising budgets, Eileen Fisher is healthy enough to chase growth.
In the last year the company has added seven stores. It reported sales of $273 million through the fiscal year ending last December, at stores like Saks, Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s; on its Web site, and at its 49 namesake boutiques. Profits are projected to be off by 8 percent, which is significant, Ms. Fisher acknowledged, but less so when compared with declines of 20 percent or more reported by some competitors.
Yes, her pursuit of the hip may turn off fans. “Even with this broadening of her customer base, she wants to make sure it isn’t alienating anyone,” Mr. Fisher’s retail champions are upbeat.
Candace Corlett, a partner in WSL Strategic Retail, a consulting firm in New York, pronounced the line “less dowdy” and predicted that Ms. Fisher would also successfully woo style-driven women over 50. THE DESIGNER Eileen Fisher, at her office in Manhattan, said it was time to give her company a face-lift. Credit Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times A visit to the Ms. Fisher’s Manhattan showroom turned up violently colorful T-shirts and scarves, filmy sequin-spangled tunics, metallic vests and this year’s ultimate totem of cool, the biker jacket in cotton. “There were a lot of fresh pieces, great combinations of contrast and texture, and we saw a great opportunity to bring some of those out,” said Martin Bone, the design director of IDEO, a branding and design firm hired by Ms.
Fisher last year, at an initial cost of $500,000, to give the brand a discreet nip and tuck. “We figured that if people could see the clothes in a different light, there was more chance they would go into the stores,” Mr. Bone said, adding, “And if we could get them into the stores, we had kind of won them over.”. With that goal in mind, IDEO embarked on comprehensive research, watching younger Fisher employees put together outfits, visiting customers’ homes to study their wardrobes and even accompanying some on shopping trips. In the meantime, Ms. Fisher revamped her store in Irvington, N.Y., as a retail laboratory, stocked with new, “recycled” and trend-driven pieces.
“We were surprised at the eclectic way that people were putting things together,” Ms. “We discovered that they are the same shoppers who may buy a jacket from Chanel and a tank top from Target.” The company sought this fall to appeal to those increasingly catholic tastes by advertising in unaccustomed venues like Harper’s Bazaar and Style.com, and posting videos on Hulu. The campaign itself is a significant departure: In place of friendly, laughing women-next-door, there are unsmiling models, vividly made up and staring challengingly into the photographer’s lens. Some are wearing high heels — an approach that to Ms. Fisher’s comfort-driven acolytes may be tantamount to heresy.
“We were trying to give a stronger attitude to the clothes,” Mr. Bone said, to emphasize that “all of a sudden this is a fashion-friendly company.”. Advertisement Instead of spotlighting only the newest wares, Ms. Fisher’s namesake stores now mix existing items with the fresher or more daring pieces that arrive each month, displaying them in a gallerylike setting at the front of the store. The strategy has led to double-digit sales increases over the same period a year ago, said Jim Gundell, the brand’s vice president for retailing.
The line has attained a newly stylish veneer at some department stores, as well, Mr. Gundell said. Once displayed alongside moderately priced middle-of-the-road collections like Dana Buchman and Ellen Tracy, it now hangs side by side with labels like Burberry, Tory Burch and Tahari. Such subtle alterations seem to resonate with shoppers. Susan G., a 50-something event planner and self-professed Fisher devotee from Maryland, who preferred to be identified only by her first name and last initial, seemed tickled at the SoHo store to find that “the clothes still look sleek, clean and comfortable.” “They don’t yell at you,” she said, “and they haven’t changed enough to put anybody off.” Heewon Cerk, a graduate student in interior design, and a first-time visitor to an Eileen Fisher store, seemed to be keeping an open mind.
“I used to think all this is more like for an older generation — sort of an upscale Gap” she said. “But now I’m thinking maybe I can do some pieces to layer or mix and match.” Even Ms. Fisher, who is nothing if not cautious, has succumbed for the moment to fashion’s allure. “Because of my age, I don’t always understand what the younger designers are doing,” she confided.
She resisted, for instance, adding the biker jacket to the line. “But now I’ve decided I’ll wear it,” she said.