This looks to be a viable trend for premium brands, as also seen at The Stronghold in LA. They carry their own line, but support it with add-on sales of Filson, White’s boots, and other staple heritage brands.

The same concept also plays out well on the web, sell your core product, but support with related items from other vendors.

As department stores suffer from decreased quality of merchandise, premium small retail has a good chance to make up the gap, and bolstering margins with add-on sales is the simplest way to succeed for brand-owned stores.

After taking a stroll through retail stores this last weekend with my wife, I’ve noticed that the mid-market of apparel and fashion seems to be occupied by what seem to be brand-shaped-objects. That is, entire runs of retail brands that sell endless variants of the same poor quality clothing. There’s nothing behind a brand with no quality or identity to set it apart, and there’s little that can be done with infinite marketing dollars to fix that.

A good place to play this game is thrift stores after the holidays. Thumb through the racks and try to discern any difference in production quality from any mid-market brand after a few wears.

Of course, it gets complicated because you can’t simply spend your way out of the problem unless you’re willing to put in the legwork to learn the difference between luxury (expensive brand-shaped-objects) and premium (genuinely well-made) products. Often times, you’ll see a premium product of higher quality sell for less than a similar luxury item.

Is any wonder consumers are confused and fatigued?

This trend has no choice but to reverse, as we are facing a downturn in available income coupled with consumer burn-out. If spending ticks down a little, but consumers choose to again buy higher quality, the premium market will make a comeback against the discount stores. Consumer behavior also predicts this movement, as the early adopter markets have already moved this direction, and the larger consumer backlash against the surge of stuff should follow soon.

Again, this is going to take substantial consumer education to overcome the price barrier. Tactically, there are many options at every contact with your customers, starting at the first encounter all the way to the point of sale.

I’ve helped a few companies and retailers work through price-sensitivity for a premium product. It’s hard going, but it can be done.

The question is, how are we going to move forward without losing the focus on quality, longevity, and origin that these brands are encompassing?

This is a question with a 2 to 3 year horizon, and the replacement trends that seem to be lurking now are 90’s surf style (see Warriors of Radness) and another wave of grunge (logical follow-up to flannel and boots overload).

If there’s a way to combine those surfacing trends with the current focus on stateside production and craftsmanship, now is the time to start thinking about it. We won’t be knee deep in waxed canvas, aged leather, and Pendletons for too much longer.

Consumer price sensitivity is perfectly reasonable, but when that price sensitivity manifests as demanding specialty items such as bicycle jerseys for under twenty dollars, there’s something wrong with the larger consumer goods ecosystem. The demand for low cost seems to be driven by the desire to have as much cheap crap lying around as possible, combined with tight economic conditions.

It seems that the smartest thing to do right now is focus on producing quality long-lasting goods, and deflecting consumer price criticism with messaging around longevity, the thriftiness of a well-made item, and environmental aspects of re-purchasing cheaper goods. Consumer education now will pay off long-term, especially in for active and outdoor brands.

Reasonable, one would expect customers to start to tire of poor quality and start to migrate towards the higher quality products.

The opposite approach, getting tangled up in the price wars led by Ikea, WalMart, and H&M will simply dilute brands, dissolve loyalties, and leave consumers with no upward path to quality/longevity.

If we look at current conditions wherein people are buying less of everything, yet still need certain things, exploiting the flaws of the efficient marketplace with “inefficient” products should lead to increased regional prosperity. A good portion of consumer needs can be met in the so-called craft marketplace, by local tailors, cobblers, woodworkers, and, to repair the factory produced appliances, a sizable force of repair people. Needless to say, this inefficiency also has positive environmental outcomes as well, with less packaging, less shipping, and fewer large trucks on city streets.

There’s definitely holes to be filled in to make the plot work. Many of the skills needed to build a local economy have evaporated over the last 50 years. Our infrastructure isn’t particularly friendly to local living once you get out into the suburbs. People have to buy into the concept of well-made, slightly imperfect goods made inefficiently, rather than poorly made, perfect appearing goods made efficiently. However, we’ve also got an army of marketers and advertising agencies who are going to need something to do now that simply telling people to buy more stuff isn’t working.

[A] man’s wardrobe was like a house – he bought pieces of clothing and he maintained them so they would last, shirts were mended and ultimately their character was enhanced.

There’s very little ambiguity about the value of living and dressing this way. Less consumption, shorter supply chains, more local jobs.

Check out Bobby Orr’s old hockey bag. It was repaired again and again from getting punctured by his skates. These days, the bag wouldn’t be considered worth the time to stitch up, and likely, the material wouldn’t take it.

Therein lies the defense of higher pricepoints for “investment” pieces. If one could buy a new duffel for $15, why would they spend half an hour fixing it? Make the price of the piece truly reflect the labor and other costs, and the equation changes drastically. Same for everything from shirts to shoes.

There’s a higher up front cost, but a much smaller lifetime cost to everyone, not just yourself. Less time spent acquiring replacement goods, more time to enjoy what you have.

The part that bothered me:

Here is the capper: Tropicana wanted a physical mnemonic for the brand. The design team at the Arnell Group took half of a mid-season orange and created a cap that mimicked its peel in both color and texture… The cap is made from a special gauge of plastic with a soft rebound to it, he said. “It’s got a tactile quality, not unlike an orange. It helped us create a whole new ritual for Tropicana.

Clever, but completely and entirely irresponsible. Creating a new plastic, non-renewable widget to sell a purportedly natural product seem counter-productive. The entire process of creating a new piece of plastic is destructive, even if the end-product can be recycled.

This was a golden opportunity to reinvent the packaging to reduce waste and materials, or the product to be pesticide-free, and they blew it on a squishy piece of rubber that no-one noticed or cared about.

Seth is right, marketers can be evil. And dumb. In this case, more dumb than evil.

Resoling is nothing new to footwear, up until maybe 25 years ago. Shoes now have enough externalized costs that it makes more financial sense to throw them out and buy a new pair whenever the old ones are done. Blundstone encourages this behavior on their website, claiming:

“There have been many technical advances in footwear construction methods, which enable volume manufacturers to produce a quality product economically. As a company we have expanded our use of this technology, particularly through the use of direct injection sole moulding in preference to the method of ’sticking on soles’. The security of the sole bond and the economies realised through adopting this technology, make it impractical to repair and resole footwear…”

However, a little bit of research (ok, 30 seconds and Google), and I found out that my boots can get new soles for the princely sum of $65. Not a bad deal for boots I paid $120 for 5 years ago. I’m sending my boots in early next month, to see how it comes out.

There are better choices than after-market hacks for dealing with poorly thought-out (at least from the re-use / re-new side of the sustainability picture) footwear. Alden, Allen-Edmonds, Russell, White’s, Wesco, and a few other companies make shoes and boots that can be rebuilt, and usually for significantly less than a new pair of shoes.

None of these companies make an inexpensive product, but they’re made in the US, of quality materials. No global wage or environmental arbitrage is used to offset the cost of production, unlike the average pair of sneakers.

What’s the upside in this for retailers and marketers? This is another facet of selling less as more. One pair of White’s is going to cost your customer the same as 3 or 4 pairs of Kenneth Cole or what-have-you, but last well more than 4 times as long. Much longer, when you counted recrafting. It’s a value, rather than price sale.