Tag: branding

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Business Law Intellectual Property

Brooks Brothers at 200 – Part 3: Lessons

Earlier in this series of posts (here and here), I reported on my interview with Arthur Wayne, the vice president, global public relations of Brooks Brothers. We discussed how the brand maintains continuity throughout hundreds of points of sale (wholesale and retail). In business and legal terms, here is the short and simple version:

  1. Stylistic consistency creates trademark consistency. Brooks Brothers maintains uniformity of cut, pattern, SKUs and style names worldwide. I own suits and jackets in the 1818 line, which is the company’s standard, positioned between its premium Gold Fleece line and Red Fleece bridge line. My pieces are of Italian fabric, sewn, variously, in Italy, Thailand and the company-owned workrooms in Haverhill, Massachusetts. All bear the trademark 1818, all are in the slimmest of the company’s fits, which is branded Milano. As a customer, I know that, wherever I find Brooks Brothers in the world, I can put on an 1818 Milano jacket made in any of three continents and know it will fit just as do the ones in my suitcase. In legal terms: The more consistent the message, generally speaking, and the more clearly a trademark represents just one source of origin, the stronger will be that trademark.
  2. Control the message, but respect regional differences. Japanese customers much prefer the company’s products made in its US factories—which they view as a mark of authenticity. French customers, in contrast, want to experience the brand, but they care relatively little where items they buy are sourced. (Interestingly, offered Mr. Wayne in an aside, when foreign buyers visit, it is the Japanese men who typically have the best interpretation of “American traditional style.”) United States trademark law does not permit the registration of geographically descriptive marks, so from a legal point of view, where it is made is of no matter: if customers get that the brand is about the American experience (reinterpreted and, to my taste, noticeably improved, by Italian ownership), that is what matters most.
  3. As in the movies, story is everything to a brand. Marketers and lawyers do not always see eye-to-eye. Every business day, in multiple places around the world, marketing teams are presenting to their lawyers exciting new trademarks, only to hear the lawyers say that they are unavailable for use. On the importance of story for a fashion or luxury brand, however, there should be no disagreement. Just as the mere mention of Veuve Cliquot brings to mind the story of the taste and luxury of Champagne and the mention of Leica brings to mind the story of precise German optics, so does a reference to Brooks Brothers open a page on a story about the American experience—in style of dress and in style of living. When Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,” he omitted any reference to wise consistency. That is the path taken by Brooks Brothers and by other international brands that know that, from consistency comes the strength to endure and prosper in multiple territories, among multiple customer bases.
  4. Newness is the best tradition. “People think of us as a traditional brand,” said Mr. Wayne, “but our founder, Henry Sands Brooks, was a fashion guy—a dandy. Look at what followed: collars with buttons; readymade suits; pink shirts on men. All of these things were innovative in their time—probably even shocking to many.” Tradition, in other words, is what happens when innovation meets inheritable acceptance. And that is the best way a marketer, together with his or her lawyer, can build, expand and ultimately preserve a fashion brand.

Credit:  Alan Behr

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Video: Brooks Brothers | Made in America: Makers and Merchants

Categories
Business Law Intellectual Property

Brooks Brothers at 200 – Part 2: Method

In my last post, I offered some of the history of the Brooks Brothers brand provided to me by Arthur Wayne, Vice President, Global Public Relations, during a recent visit with him at the company’s headquarters in New York. Having been to Brooks Brothers stores from Milan to London and beyond, I asked if the styles, brand names and trademarks appurtenant to them were used consistently throughout the world.

“When Claudio Del Vecchio bought the company, in 2001,” explained Mr. Wayne about its Italian owner, “he already ‘got’ the brand. The first thing he did was undertake a comprehensive product review. Under its prior owners, the company wasn’t really looking in its own garden—for quality of construction, tailoring—the core elements of the brand.” Mr. Wayne noted that, in the mid-to late 90s, there was much talk that casual Friday would be the death of tailored clothing, and the result at Brooks Brothers was that too many items were inexpensively made—something that is possible to accomplish credibly with fast fashion but is not possible to do stylishly with most tailored clothing.

“Claudio approached the brand as a customer,” continued Mr. Wayne. “His thinking has always been, ‘If I feel this way about what I am seeing, others must, too.’ He brought back quality tailoring and made sure the stores have a consistent Brooks Brothers look. The review was a long process and not everything was changed, but the initiative made us ready for the next challenge: brands are now in their customers’ hands.”

That was elegantly put and it shows the current problem faced by all brands and their lawyers: a brand in its legal form is its portfolio of trademarks, along with other intellectual property rights. And a trademark is above all an identifier of source of origin. If you see the trademark COCA-COLA on a soda bottle, that means it comes from Coke, not Pepsi—and so on. If someone else uses your mark, you take legal action to prevent that or risk potentially losing control of the mark and its registrations.

But how do you accomplish that in the age of social media, when consumers get to rate a brand’s offerings down to individual products—and when the brand feels obligated to post negative consumer reviews of those products on the very website where it is trying to sell them—and when it must deal as well with influencers, who can influence whosoever they please, on their own terms? Those forces can alter the perception of where a brand stands, rather as the gravity of the sun bends the approaching light of a distant star, changing the perception of the position of that star. Brooks Brothers partners with influencers, and it features two of them—one American and the other Polish—in its anniversary edition of its house lifestyle magazine. It is all about what Mr. Wayne calls, “the importance of creating a dialogue with your customers. This is what matters to them.”

What is a fashion lawyer to do with all these new forces and new demands? In the third and final post in this series, we will consider some contemporary lessons for international branding.

Credit:  Alan Behr

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Accessories General / Musings Intellectual Property Menswear Textiles Womenswear

Brooks Brothers at 200 – Part 1: Background

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At a time when the fashion press engages in a group hug with brands over how labels can stay viable in the digital age, it is fitting that we should pause to consider a brand that has been doing just fine, thank you, since James Monroe was president of the United States. Brooks Brothers, which celebrates its 200th anniversary this year, has had different owners and various designers (with Zac Posen now directing womenswear), but has adhered to a consistent philosophy that can be described in abstract terms as “wearable and confident American style.” Brooks Brothers can also be described, more explicitly, as one of the few places where, no matter what you buy, if the color and fit work, you can forget the term “fashion victim.” To celebrate its anniversary, the brand mounted its first show at Pitti Uomo in January. Sixty-one models (including eight women who made the term American style into a synonym for chic) were presented to the accompaniment of a full symphony orchestra; unusual for almost any show anywhere, every piece could have been worn out the door of the Palazzo Vecchio onto the streets of Florence (or New York, London or Tokyo).

As a branding lawyer, constancy in branding message and in legal protection are always on my mind. Managing that from the flagship at the corner of Madison Avenue and E. 44th Street in Manhattan may have been easy enough back when, if someone said he was going to Brooks Brothers, you just assumed that he meant going to that corner and into that store. Keeping consistency in message and legal protection became a bit more complicated when the brand expanded across the USA (eleven stores by the 1970s) and then, in 1979, to its first international location, in the prosperous Aoyama neighborhood of Tokyo. The challenges are global now, with the brand maintaining hundreds of stores in nearly fifty countries, and with a wholesale business that places Brooks Brothers products onto shelves and racks of many third-party retailers.

I sat down recently with Arthur Wayne, the vice president of global public relations at Brooks Brothers, in his office in the tower behind the company flagship, to gain some understanding on how it is done.

The first thing that became clear in speaking to Mr. Wayne is that Brooks Brothers adheres to the strategy (which I fully support in general and for fashion in particular) that a brand is its story made temporal. The Brooks Brothers story is the American experience. There are many examples, but consider just three outlined briefly by Mr. Wayne: when miners landed in New York from around the world and headed (one might say herded) west in 1849 during the gold rush, Brooks Brothers innovated, with the ready-made suit. No need to wait to be measured and return for fittings. Pick one off the table,* let it out or take it in, and off you went to California, well-dressed, with a pickaxe in hand. Then came the Oxford button-down shirt, which has been copied by nearly everyone trying to look American.** And I have gone into detail on these pages about why the stripes of American ties, led by Brooks Brothers, go from right to left instead of left to right, as do the British regimental ties of their inspiration.

In my next post, I will pick up with what brought the company to where it is now—and what it is doing to keep its brand on message.

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* Until comparatively recently in the company’s long history, men’s jackets were neatly folded and presented in stacks on counters.

** American style is about looking effortless; that does not mean it is easy to do. I shared with Mr. Wayne how I once knew the American representative of a renowned British shirtmaker. As he explained it to me, after several failed attempts on Jermyn Street to get that American collar right, he walked over to Madison & 44th, bought two Brooks Brothers button-down shirts off the shelf and sent them back to England with the message to please just copy this.

Credit:  Alan Behr

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Business Law

Toys “R” Us and Fashion

I have been fielding questions from the press and colleagues about the bankruptcy of Toys “R” Us and its challenge to stay in business after shutting many stores in the chain. A leading question, typically asked with evident nervousness and need for reassurance: “It couldn’t happen this way in the fashion business, could it?” The answer: it could and it has. Some points to consider:

The Toys “R” Us model was to put familiar, heavily advertised brands into large stores for one-stop toy and game shopping. That worked in part because children see toy advertisements and play with friends’ toys with such regularity that “shopping” is often simply a matter of picking up what they have requested (over and over) and then fending off enough impulse purchases at least to give the illusion of parental control over the process. Trust me on this: I have an eight-year-old.

And trust me on this as well: pushing a shopping cart through large, undifferentiated corridors, plucking brand-name toys off shelves, is not an adult-friendly experience. Contrast that to the flagship Hamleys shop, which has cleverly positioned itself on London’s Regent Street, in easy walking distance from both my tailor and shirtmaker. Eager, helpful people are constantly demonstrating products, which is how, on my latest visit, I got two wafer-thin model airplanes for £10 that broke up on first crash landing and a coin-trick magic set I haven’t quite got the hang of yet—though I’m working on it. Yet it was a fun visit, which is quite the point. Just as important for the chain, a large portion of its merchandise is private label, which makes part of what they sell both exclusive and retailer-branded. If you want it, that is, you have to go to Hamleys, and when you bring it home, the name on the product reminds you from whence it came.

Providing a quality in-store experience and building a brand through exclusivity and desirability are very much points for any fashion retailer to consider. There is no benefit in falling back on the familiar mantra: “We are working to enhance our presence online.” Consider what, if anything, is unique about the Toys “R” Us website that would bring you there first instead of to Amazon. A certain segment of the population still wants to walk into shops, and what you provide online, at least in the near term, will be seen as an extension of what you provide in-store. Private label is still largely a bricks and mortar play, and it is often a very necessary one to reinforce the power of a brand and to build and hold onto customer loyalty. Private label has so far not had the same impact on fashion websites as it has in-store, in fair part because it is quite challenging to recreate the kind of storytelling experience that the best store brands provide in real space. (Is there any doubt, when you are in an Hermès shop anywhere in the world, that you have entered the Hermès world—one of chic sophistication, style and even, around corners framed by carefully arranged displays, a touch of mystery?) A website can support that experience, but so far, at least, cannot fully replicate it.

So the lesson for fashion retailers is simple: make them want it, and make them want to come in to get it. Which is to say, the lesson is what you already knew. Major bankruptcies are like traffic accidents. You drive slowly by, saddened by the damage; and, although you surely already knew that driving safely is a must, the experience brings the message home with great force.

Credit: Alan Behr

Categories
Accessories Intellectual Property Licensing

Matryoshka Marketing

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We have all seen Russian matryoshka (nesting) dolls: open one and out comes another, and open that and you get another, and so on. When a fashion brand incorporates components from another brand into its finished product, it is rather the same thing, with a difference: although the brand covering the finished product is the brand that in all likelihood is the primary branding driver of consumer demand and the primary branding influence for consumer purchasing, that brand will not exist in isolation. It will be helped or hurt by the quality, function and aesthetic appeal of the brands of the constituent parts.

Perhaps the easiest place to see that at work is watchmaking. There are many more well-known watch brands than there are watch movement makers. Although most watch brands design and make their own cases, they often rely on others to make the most important thing in the package: the actual movement. If the movement is not working properly—if the watch is not keeping time—good luck trying to convince the consumer that all he or she really wanted was a well-designed bracelet with a watch-face for decoration. Typically, the maker of the movement is not even mentioned in advertising, on the product or in the accompanying instructions. Clothing, however, is a bit different since there are some key fabric vendors whose brands are considered important enough to drive sales, which is why garment makers are willing, if not eager, to place the Gor-Tex and Loro Piana trademarks on clothes made with fabrics bearing those brands.

All well and good, but a couple of key points should be considered:

First, no matter how you, the manufacturer, market the finished piece, you are helping build good will (and therefore value) in the brand of your supplier. Your vendor is the legal owner of that goodwill, not you. Your advertising will promote and otherwise benefit the vendor, which at times might also participate directly by adding its trademarks to the ads. All of that should be considered when entering into the agreement by which the vendor’s trademarks will appear on your fashion products. In addition, your vendor will likely require an agreement permitting it to exercise quality control over the use of its marks—which is again what the law expects—so be prepared to have the vendor involved in production in a way you might not typically expect from a supplier of components not displaying B2C branding.

The other key point to consider is that, even if the consumer is aware of the vendor’s brand and the vendor’s contribution to your finished product, the consumer will most likely hold your brand accountable for the performance of your product. Going back to the watchmaking example: ETA SA Manufacture Horlogère Suisse (a subsidiary of Swatch Group Ltd.) makes movements that go into a number of watch models made by Breitling SA, which is an unrelated, privately held Swiss company. Even a consumer who is fully aware of that fact is not going to say, “Hey, my Swatch stopped working!” in the (highly unlikely) event that his Breitling should cease to function—even though, in a purely mechanical sense, that is exactly what happened.

Just a few things to keep in mind when entering into supply contracts with important vendors.

Credit: Alan Behr