Whether you're into sports, chess, politics, or business, we're all interested in how leaders develop strategies to win games, votes, and customers.
I've spent the last 31 years working with retailers to develop strategies to attract customers while keeping the competition at bay. Although many brands try to win the market by being the cheapest, largest, or highest quality, I'm unimpressed by this basic frontal approach.
What impresses me the most is when clever visionaries find a space between predictable positions to mine and exploit. Fashion designer Todd Snyder is one of the best at finding those deep niches.
I've been following Todd Snyder's career since he helped transform and re-make JCrew into a hipster brand for men. When he left JCrew in 2009, I wondered what he'd do, but since then, he has slowly, carefully built the Todd Snyder brand into the go-to resource for an audience of men seeking fashion aspiration and accessibility.
Todd Snyder has a remarkable ability to read the tea leaves of society to gauge where fashion is heading next, but little has been written about his keen business sense.
However, I was super excited to see this great article by Jacob Gallagher in the The Wall Street Journal today. A few memorable quotes include:
"Men want palatable, work-appropriate clothes, but they also indulge on occasion.
“…there’s not a lot of brands out there that make it easy for guys to dress the best,” said Snyder. He described his job as distilling trends and “presenting it to the guy in a way that he can understand.”
"The Todd Snyder business lives in the increasingly vacant center of the apparel market. He is not operating a prices-to-the-rafters luxury house like Louis Vuitton, nor a fast-fashion empire on the race to the bottom. American cities, where Snyder’s stores are heavily concentrated, are rife with white-collar workers—bankers, tech entrepreneurs and marketing professionals—who strive to be better than the Gap, but not as ostentatious (or expensive) as Gucci."
I predict many great things to come for Todd Snyder.
#retail #retailers #fashion #clothing #stores #menswear #menswear #mensfashion #style #brands #branding #malls #marketing #strategy
Owner of Count Sole Brand ®️
5moAleali the GREAT 👍🏾