The external blog that I chose covers the business story of Everlane, one of my favourite clothing brands.
Based on the blog Hot Startup Everlane Wants You To Know You’re Being Screwed Over By Retailers and my own purchasing experiences about Everlane, the team uses lots of tactics to make the brand popular and successful.
As it says at the beginning of the blog, “Your $120 designer shirt sells for ten times what it cost to make. Not at Everlane.” The establisher Michael Preysman actually has no fashion background, the main reason for him to start the business is that he wants to offer customers with high-quality clothes with fair prices. The customer group Everlane focuses on has no difference with traditional retailers, but one huge change is that Everlane only do online selling services. By cutting intermediates, which are the retailing stores, the brand only has one channel. Customers purchase products in official website, and parcels would be delivered directly to them. This action helps Everlane cuts the renting fees for stores, and to save money for both consumers and business owner.
Another aspect differentiates Everlane from other clothing brands can be called “detailed information and comparisons provided”. At the end of every product page of the official website, there is a chart indicates the true cost of the product, such as materials, labor and transportation fees, additionally the price of similar products from Everlane and traditional retailers are listed. These information help customers to know better about where their money goes and why they should choose Everlane rather than other brands. Also, the detailed information not only creates an “honest brand image”, but also successfully helps the brand to compete its competitors, because customers all want to purchase products with good quality and lower prices.
Additionally, Everlane launches its products relatively slowly. At the beginning it only has men clothing line, then the brand updates four new products per month. This method makes a new brand safer, what’s more important, Everlane could focuses on the little amount of clothes it produces, as well as it is easier for the company to observe customers’ reactions about products and make adjustments as soon as possible.
Everlane has already 200000 users and more than 30% of them are repeat consumers, we could say that the brand did gained success in this short period of development. But when looking into the future, there are still problems existed. Could Everlane keep the quality of its products? How to gain larger customer amount? Should the online selling method be strengthened? These all could be questions for Everlane to answer.
Word count: 432
Work Cited: https://www.everlane.com/
http://www.businessinsider.com/everlane-2012-3