One of the great things about building a successful brand that is known for a specific specialty is that you have focus. Buyers know what you are and what you stand for, as do you. The flip side of this is that you can feel like you have all of your eggs in one basket.
That’s fine if the basket is still relevant and what people want. If the world changes and this becomes less true or if there are opportunities in other areas of your industry that are growing faster it can be hard to shift how you are perceived in the mind of the purchasers of your products.
Sub Brands
It’s always more expensive and time consuming running multiple brands, so you have to consider your options carefully when taking the plunge. Our friends along the South Coast, Five Dollar Shake, have diversified with their sub brand Counting Stars, for example. Like the original brand, the cards are still handmade and well captioned, so why bother with a sub brand?
A sub brand can mitigate cannibalisation and erosion of your current core offering. You don’t just want your customers simply dropping one range for another. It also allows you to take risks and try new things. When you have a core look and feel that your brand is known for it is hard to try new things without the new label.
When people buy Blue Eyed Sun cards they have certain expectations. Despite creating new and different cards we love, we have occasionally found that customer and market expectations of our brand have been a stumbling block to the success of alternative ranges. One has the feeling that if a different publisher had published some of our more ‘different’ products they may probably have fared better in the marketplace.
What buyers want from your new products is something that they recognise as key to the brand and yet different enough from last season for it to still feel fresh. It’s a challenge when you constantly want to evolve and grow as a publisher. You have to recognise what is unique to you and be able to tailor that signature into your offering whilst still being able to play with new ideas.
Brand Legacy
I recently visited the Christian Dior exhibition at the V&A and was fascinated with how the brand had managed to maintain it’s essence of elegant femininity despite the changing times, a range of global influences and six different creative directors each having their own interpretations of Dior.
Having survived earlier financial disaster Dior established the fashion house in 1946. He ran it for 11 short years before his untimely death, after which point his 21 year old assistant Yves Sant Laurent took over. How on earth the company failed to fail is quite remarkable and undoubtedly down to the fortuitous hiring of the young designer who later went on to create his own global brand.
As you cast your eye over the range of garments and products on display in the exhibition, including the outlandish, colourful, flamboyant creations of John Galliano, there is still something holding the brand together in its look and feel. Perhaps it is elements like the pinched waists that accentuate the curvaceous female form, a delight in fabrics and materials or even the garden influences that extend beyond flowers to the feel of petals and butterflies. Its inspirations are global and yet there remains a timeless femininity to the Dior brand.
I’m obsessed with how to create diversity within a clearly defined brand at the moment. Mainly because I feel an urge to try lots of new things. I’m also acutely aware of how this can confuse customers and may cause a brand to lose its way.
Challenging Changes
Sometimes you can be so well known for something that it is almost impossible to move on from it. Take Smythson, for instance, arguably one of the most established and well regarded stationery brands in the world.
The craftsmanship in some of their creations is outstanding. Their ornate and intricately printed greeting cards can retail for up to £30 each. They have been producing invitations for the world’s most illustrious gatherings since 1887. Interestingly, despite their attempts at new and innovative offerings, their top sellers are still the classic invites customers were ordering 60 years ago. Nevertheless, Smythson is a premium stationery brand adored by the rich and famous.
Owned by an Italian leather goods manufacturer, Smythson has also diversified into fashion accessories like handbags and brief cases. So far so good, you have a nice Smythson diary, custom printed letterhead, business cards, diary, etc. Why wouldn’t you buy a bag from them? Their bags look pretty classy too, and yet a Smythson bag is nowhere near as coveted by consumers as the likes of Burberry and Louis Vuitton bags.
A brand lives in the mind of the consumer and retailer. It is an idea that exists outside of the logo and is signified by trade marks and design elements. It is not always successfully controlled by its owner and it can be tricky to shift the perception of how people see it. People know and love Smythson for stationery, but not for their bags? Not so much.
Brand Authenticity
There’s an element of natural authenticity that needs to be built into any brand’s extension into new territory. For Christian Dior, he knew from the start that he that accessories and even perfumes would be part of what Dior was. With Smythson the diversification into bags doesn’t feel as natural, even though it kind of makes sense.
Perhaps it’s because the personality of someone who loves stationery is slightly different from that of someone who adores fashion. Ultimately, for any brand to succeed in diversification one needs to know their customers deeply and appeal to them in a consistent and authentic way. Most importantly the change needs to make sense and focus on the customer’s needs above all else.
It’s interesting to watch the abundance of new sub brands springing up within the card industry. Paperlink have Meraki, Woodmansterne have Proper Mail Company, Brainbox Candy have Unknown Ink, even Hallmark have been playing with launches that have the look and feel of smaller companies.
I see this as a new form of consolidation in the greeting card marketplace as larger businesses with stronger sales, marketing, operations and distribution attempt to fill the gaps normally filled by smaller startups. This is hard for newbies to compete with. It’s also costly and time consuming for larger companies to maintain authenticity in their sub brands.
Brand Licensing
I expect to see more partnerships and licensing deals between larger businesses and smaller publishers as the latter realise the uphill struggle ahead of them and the business acumen and capital required to compete in a marketplace that has never been more competitive.
At PG Live we are excited to be launching Doodle Girl a new range of hand finished cards designed by Marnie Maurri and featuring a licensed character that has appeared in two successful children’s books published by Shuster & Shuster. The cards are printed on FSC board and use biodegradable glitter. We also have more exciting collaborations in the pipeline that I’m looking forward to sharing with you soon.
Brand Risks
Over the last year I have been mindful of the danger to Blue Eyed Sun’s greeting card brand of diversifying into giftware products like BambooCup. Our business instincts have born fruit though and the move couldn’t have happened at a better time for our business. Sales have flourished and the cross pollination of product categories is opening new doors to retailers that might not have looked at our cards previously as well as adding value to those that already love our cards and our great customer service.
Our next step is to evolve the look and feel of our greeting card product line to sit more naturally with our giftware products. I also want to establish our new values and brand position in the mind of our retailers and consumers. I’m excited this challenge. Next year Blue Eyed Sun will turn twenty. I can’t tell you how profoundly grateful I am that our customers still find our brand relevant after all this time.
