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Are brands responding to what consumers want next?
Words Sarah Curran-Usher
Is it the brand or the customer that is in charge of the next fashion trends? Retail expert Sarah Curran-Usher takes us on a journey through time to discover who really has the power.
Sometimes the best way to understand where we are, and where we go from here, is to understand how we got here.
This has all happened in a relatively short period of time. At its height, the fashion industry and magazines were at their biggest and most influential around 2000-2011. Zara hadn’t taken over the High Street or our wardrobe space, and magazines such as Grazia, Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar were at their peak, with readers climbing over one another to gain access to the ‘IT’ item of the season. High Street brands and designers were slow to adopt e-commerce, so the ‘this is the way we’ve always done it’ (referring to how the industry had always been run, from buying seasons tocollection drops) led the way. They told us what to buy and when, with fashion editors and designers able to sell us almost anything and fashion followers taking instructions on the ‘Trends of the Season’.
What happened between then and 2020 was an accelerating authority and power of social media platforms for style inspiration and the rise of the influencer. The brands often refused to be swayed from how they have always created their collections, and it was only brands like Zara that really started to allow shoppers to ‘buy now wear now’. The industry as a whole was not ready to change how it engaged with their customers; the fashion industry is a complex sector, with many moving parts and billions of pounds at stake. When is there ever a time to pivot away from the status quo?
Now in August 2021, we are in a very different place. Customers are the disrupters to the fashion industry. As shoppers, we are buying what we want, when it suits us. Customers are about style, - no longer about trends - and this is probably at the heart of some of the disconnect.
In today’s competitive landscape, knowing your customers is more important than ever - aligning brand values and style with he/she/they is key. Ganni is a brand that stands out in terms of navigating this challenge. I recall first buying into the collection in 2011. They were already ‘Skandi Cool’ in their aesthetic, but they have taken this to new levels - appealing to the traditional women's market - but also by making themselves relevant to a new group of gender neutral/non binary enthusiasts of fashion, whilst remaining true to themselves and authentic all the way.
Humans tend to fall into certain tribes. Knowing your tribe and where you fit is important to one’s identity. We may no longer buy into trends, but we desire brands we identify with and who tell stories we can relate to. If the brand seeks to understand and build community within its tribe, its customers will buy with deeper levels of loyalty. We obsess about brands as we see them across our daily digital journeys. The brands that have fallen behind are those that don’t seek to understand what the customer wants today. Brands that deliver products without building dialogue risk doing so at the expense of being generic, repetitive or irrelevant. Today’s consumer is ultimately in charge of the dialogue and a brand’s identity and the community behind it.