Allen Solly, with its Anglo-American heritage, has gone for a brand rejig, the first one since the Aditya Birla group obtained the world rights to the chain in 2001.
The brand, born as part of William Hollins & Co in 1744 in Nottingham, England, was mainly known as a hosiery maker to begin with, and later turned its attention to menswear. While it may have dressed the royalty in the past, in more recent times the brand is remembered for ushering in ‘Friday Dressing’ into the corner offices and corporate boardrooms in India.
The new generation customers, having been exposed to the best in the world, are expecting superior experience, and that’s one of the big reasons behind the re-branding. The old logo, with Nottingham in it, is at the root of the brand understanding. Now, the brand symbol—the stag—has been contemporarised in the new logo, according to Allen Solly COO Suraj Bhat.
The company is quiet about the total cost involved in the rebranding exercise, and all that Bhat is willing to say is, “it will be a significant investment, which will pay back in a year’s time”.
Along with the rebranding exercise, even the store interiors are being redone from scratch. After redoing a Bangalore store as a pilot project some months ago, a revamped Delhi outlet was opened last week. Seven new stores with the fresh retail identity and interiors were also launched recently.
Around 30 additional stores are being planned by March 2013 with the new interiors. Currently, the chain has 135 stores, and it plans to redo at least 40 of them this year itself. The group is spending an estimated Rs 30 lakh to change the look and feel of a single store with 1,500 sq ft space.
Friday dressing concept, introduced by the group some years ago, made fashionistas sit up. Is the chain, estimated at around Rs 500 crore, looking at anything new? Nothing as revolutionary as Friday dressing, says Bhat, but the company is looking at younger customers with a renewed focus on branding and communication.
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Points out Arvind Singhal, chairman, Technopak Advisors, a leading retail consultancy, “every single brand has to go for a refresh.” It’s not the same as repositioning of the brand, Singhal says. While ‘Friday Dressing’ was unique when it was introduced, now people are looking for every single-day lifestyle—so along with products even the brand must evolve, he explains. “The idea behind it is to make things contemporary without losing sight of history,” according to Singhal.
The new ad campaign, which will communicate the idea behind the rebranding exercise, is expected to be rolled out in October. Print will be the main platform for this campaign, for which Ogilvy Mather is the ad agency.
What about television and online campaigns? While TV is something on which the company is still thinking, it’s been investing online continuously, says Bhat. On Facebook, he claims, there are 500,000 fans of Allen Solly.
Online retailing is something that the company is on a lookout for, but has not closed the plan yet.
While pointing out that the company is not looking at launching anything as revolutionary as Friday Dressing at this point, it continues to innovate, says Bhat. For instance, it’s readying to roll out trenims—a hybrid between trousers and denims—around October. A few months ago, it had come out with Friday Dressing for women as well.
On whether any other brand owned by Madura Fashion & Lifestyle had undergone a brand change, a company executive replied, “none right now”. Besides Allen Solly, the brands under the Madura fold include Louis Philippe, Espirit, Van Heusen, Peter England, People, The Collective and Planet Fashion.
Towards the end of the 20th century, Allen Solly was taken over by Madura Garments (now Madura Fashion & Lifestyle). In 2000, the Aditya Birla group acquired Madura Fashion & Lifestyle, and one year later got the worldwide rights to the Allen Solly brand. While 75 per cent of the chain’s revenue comes from work casuals, another 25 per cent comes from casuals. Also, against 75 per cent revenue from menswear, 25 per cent comes from womens wear.