Country road is a middle-market clothing retailer with operations in Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. It is a subsidiary of Woolworths. It is a retail business of apparel, homewares, and its linked accessories. The company does wholesale, designing, and apparel commodities licensing. It provides a wide range of commodities such as men, women, children’s apparel, gift wraps, and gift card home decors. It sells its products via online platforms and retail outlets. The company is famous for its iconic products comprising country road, Mimco, Witchery, Trenery, and Politixs. It outsources most of its accessories and apparel from China, Indonesia, India, Vietnam, Thailand, and Italy (Coyne, 2014). This report also reflects the aspects learned in the last semester, such as research methodologies like email questionnaires, observation analysis, and secondary data about the Country Road from various sources. It also represents the feedback given by the industry, such as pricing, the need for businesses to recruit more young designers to have their design more outstanding, and redesigning its segmentation and launch sub-brands having unique qualities. in Amazon and Alibaba
Contents
Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 4
Summary of semester one research and proposed trends………………………………………………………… 4
Industry Feedback……………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 5
Macro-environment Review……………………………………………………………………………………………….. 6
Environment………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 7
Coronavirus…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 7
Global environment………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 7
Coronavirus…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 8
Review of the retail market for Country Road Partner and Competitors……………………………………. 8
Perceived customers………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 8
Partners……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 8
Competitors………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 9
PROPOSAL…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 9
Product Strategy………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 10
Price Strategy………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 11
Place strategy………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 12
Promotional strategy (digital and non-digital)…………………………………………………………………… 13
Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 14
References…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 15
Appendices……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 17
Country road limited has remained an iconic brand in Australia for more than a decade. It has been building its success on high quality and unique designs that appear casual but stylish. Following its high financial performance, the country road has concentrated on the fashion that it uses to expand internationally (Matsumoto, 2019). It is among the largest Australian fashion company that leads in the market. It positions the middle and upper segment tier with five widely known iconic brands such as Trenery, Politix, Witchery, Mimco, and Country road that encompass Australian fashion designs, urban accessories, and sophistications possessing a quirk (Coyne, 2014). Each of these brands has a unique definitive founding. This paper, therefore, examines how Country Road limited company undertakes its Fashion & Apparel Product Development by offering new designs of high-quality apparel items comprising baseball caps, cotton T-shirts, fleece jackets, and vests. The report shows limitations such as Covid -19 that hinder physical interactions and economic hardships among income groups of its target market.
In semester 1, the research explored research methodologies like email questionnaires, observation analysis, and secondary data about the Country Road from various sources. The team described the business model that Country Road uses as a brick. It primarily used online platforms in selling its products; based on its analysis, customers enjoy shopping in shops with various styles and qualities, and that catalogs and television showcasing depicted powerful promotion. It presented Country Road’s products as a low quality that is a significant drawback, and creativity is missing. The report described the Country Road’s brand’s place among its competitors, such as the brands having similar discounts, shipping, and social media channels, while considering trends such as elegance, efficiency, and biodiversity, and sustainability. And it proposed that the company consider improving its online shopping by having more features that are user-friendly and strengthen stock control. Besides, the semester proposed that country roads should establish membership schemes to preserve their loyalty and enable customers to earn rewards in prizes.
Feedback from the industry is assessed from the recommendations provided. Regarding repositioning and design, given that country road is famous in Australia because it has leisurewear for both women and men, none of its commodities stand out well in the competition. Its design is inferior to H&M and Zara about quality (Jia, 2018). Also, compared to other companies like Tommy Hilfiger, its price is low, and its targets of all ages lack a clear positioning strategy; this calls for the country road to redesign its segmentation and launch sub-brands having unique qualities. Besides, the feedback depicts that the business should recruit more young designers to have its design more outstanding.
In pricing, the impact of covid-19 on the nation’s economy and the income of households has suffered and made consumers be more price-conscious (Knaus, 2020). Consequently, country Road needs to reduce its operating costs and establish a global supply chain and sourcing to access low-cost cotton fabrics and workforce. Also, it should set its factories in the developing and less developed economies like Cambodia and Vietnam to utilize low labor there. According to Inside Retail (2017), by optimizing the supply chain’s production and sourcing, Country Road will lower its operating costs, reduce its price to meet customer expectations, and realize higher profit margins.
Another feedback given was that Country Road product designing requires balancing between its design styles and prices and maintaining and improves its clothes qualities (McDonnell, 2018). The respondents rated price, design, and quality as their top concerns in choosing the fashion brands. As a result, the firm should achieve the best of their products; its design should primarily remain at leisure as 65.26 as indicated by respondents that their preference is leisure instead of other designs (Inside Retail, 2017).
The country road needs to invest in its online shopping amenities and convenience for its customers by offering shipping to encourage them to try out clothing and promote their purchase (Coyne, 2014). Besides, it should use virtual reality approaches to allow its male clients to shop for clothes with more information that lets them browse.
It was reported that Country Road could easily reach its customers through promotional channels of social media about communication and promotion. The report pointed out that the younger generation prefers online TV channels for entertainment. Of the respondents, 60% of them from china attested to that, and that 84.2% use WeChat as their primary social media tool. Consequently, Country road can promote its products through social media and use discounted pricing to promote its products. This feedback forms the basis and backbone for promoting the current product despite using different approaches.
The retail clothing market in Australia grows annually by 2019. Both technological and scientific progress of humanity and the development of online platforms heightens the usage rate of online platforms in making purchases. However, this is not the best practice for the fashion and apparel market because they are items that most of them need fitting before purchasing. The company sale for its apparels rose in 2019; however, this did not go beyond the previous year’s figures. The coronavirus pandemic impedes the fashion industry as it intensified in 2020. The growing use of e-commerce is challenging for this industry and stands to continue affecting the fashion industry in Australia and globally.
The sector of clothing in Australia has faced ground loss as a share to the entire economy for various years caused by the wildfire that took place in December aggressively grew for the retail sector (Dominic, 2020). With prolonged dry spells, the garment factories highly-priced their clothing and raw materials that were made using wool. Such changes made the fashion industry faced losses in 2019; this was the lowest ever season for this industry in Australia within the past 28 years (Dominic, 2020).
With the emergence of COVID-19, most retail stores were forced to close in Australia (Knaus, 2020). And with the adoption of online marketing, country road reported that they were making more sales that were almost five times offline compared to online use during the pandemic. As they partnered with Facebook, the same case was reported in-country trade.
The menswear market has highly grown in the last half-decade, and it is still expected that the apparel for the men’s market is expected to grow to 750 billion dollars (IBIS World, 2020). Also, the women’s market and men’s wear growth have increased to compete with the fastest growth witnessed in the Asia Pacific and North America, making the most significant market for men’s wear. Additionally, in modern time’s men have developed a liking to fashion, thus expanding the market for their apparel (Jia, 2018). Besides, improved technology has made consumers, and this consciousness of environments has called for the manufactures to be environmentally conscious and design those that are recyclable (Payne, 2014). With the increasing number of menswear couture and collecting, manufactures have turned to organic fabrics and thus suppliers and have resorted to VFC and timberlands and are more supportive in their natural knitting; this affects the growth of the market of the menswear (Technavio, 2019).
The prevalence of the pandemic has reduced the customer flows in the Country Road retail stores, and the rate of purchase of apparel and accessories is best while offline than online (Knaus, 2020). Turning the customers to online shopping has been a challenge to the fashion industry.
Country road operates with perceived competitors and perceived customers. Now that the markets have reopened, the construction company did not anticipate other variants of Covid-19 that could lead to other lockdowns. Nonetheless, Country Road’s dream for developing its products continues to thrive.
The target market for the country road is individuals who are of middle-income but sell apparel for all ages. Nevertheless, the primary customers for the company are the middle-income group, whose age group is 24 to 40 years (David, 2020). Its products to this group are of many types its customers visit its retail shops’ to shop for their families. Notably, its purchases are not so popular and fashionable but are more on unique and high-quality goods.
The company partners with Facebook to reveal data conversion from the current campaign that uses multi-channel digital advertisements with the mobile promotion techniques that drive conversion of its in-store sales. Also, partnering with Facebook, Amazon, and Alibaba has increased the conversion of clients’ paths in purchasing and the relevance of integrating its digital experiences with in-store experiences (Jia, 2018).
Country road faces competition from the following companies: M$S, Pacific Brands, Zara, H&M, Myer, Sportcraft, Forever 21, Boohoo, Primark, and David Jones. Together these companies have raised more than 928.5 million between their approximated 8166000 employees (IBIS World, 2020). The revenues that country road limited raises ranks 16th among its competitors. For the top ten rivals’ average 5.5billion, country Road Company has 5,613 employees across its locations. It sells $606.9 million with a total of 19 companies (IBIS World, 2020).
The company applies a differentiation strategy presented by their unique layout and architecture in their stores that profoundly make them outstanding from their geographically close competitors and their marketing for brands with the Australian image (Williams, 2017). With its powerful foothold in the Australian fashion industry, the country road is a well-favored and most presentable brand in Australia.
PROPOSAL
Country Road uses 4Ps in presenting developing its product, as discussed below.
Country Road wants to introduce baseball caps, cotton T-shirts, and fleece jackets and vests in addition to the products it currently offers to all age groups of male clients. The company has been offering product categories comprising bottoms, outerwear, and tops. Their shoes include boots, sneakers, and casual footwear (Orlik et al., 2020). It also offers business wear comprising shoes, tailoring, shirts, and business shirts. Additionally, the company sells accessories like bags, ties, socks, scarves, tote bags, pocket squares, beach towels, and hats. It offers a wide range of garment sizes such as S, M, X, XX, XXL, and shoes of all sizes that fit different people’s sizes (Country Road, 2020). In adapting to the market demand, Country Road has not paid attention to the volumes of complex designs that the new products want to address.
Given that they offer their apparel and other products in about four to six multiple colors, it uses generally sedate and cold colors comprising army green, black and dark blue (Orlik et al., 2020). The company provides between four simple colors and patterns that are generally plaid and stripe regarding fashion items.
For their new product lines, Country Road has researched the most popular colors, designs, and fabrics to its items and named them according to names that consumers prefer. Its color theme is the desert rise, cactus green, sunset red, sunrise pink, and the river rock gray. They will add to their design a slogan matching their logo representing sport and another slogan, “get over it or get it right and their baseball cap will bear a cyclist slogan, “spin it.” There will be around ten new logo designs for a start, and around four slogans more will be designed later. Finally, some logos and slogans would be faded away and new ones introduced depending on market trends. This product strategy will ensure that the product concept remains relevant and fresh and remain focused on distinct features that are not diluted with many variations.
.
Consumer loyalty, to a greater extent, depends on the pricing of a given company. The Country Road uses affordable prices for its products to cater to middle and high-income consumers and has some of its products priced to remain affordable and accessible to low-income groups. Country Road operates with a threshold price of 12.95AUD-129AUD (Country Road, 2020). For the new product range, having redesigned and used the suitable materials and colors as described above, the company will charge prices slightly low but above its competitor range
The company’s pricing strategy lowers its prices but does not lower the quality of its new product lines products. It does this by sourcing from suppliers ready to cooperate with their operations to reduce costs (IBIS World, 2020). This strategy is a win-win scenario for both the suppliers and country road. Additionally, assisting in reducing their overhead costs and maintain profits at the same time make their suppliers gain reputation. They also reduce costs as they use a distribution strategy to their clients in China.
Country road limited is a market leader in clothing. Its location in Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, and the United States gives it a more comprehensive network for distributing its products along with its 786 stores together with other online stores (Williams, 2017). Within Australia, the country road is highly concentrated in the New South Whales and VIC; these are the places where it has its stores (Williams, 2017). Its stores are more concentrated within the commercial shopping areas and within most residential shopping malls; this highly promotes its sales. Customers can purchase their products from its online stores within 2- hours daily across the week (David, 2020). They also operate websites that provide customers and potential customers to make choices and collect from their in-store services. Besides, it has made arrangements to sell through Amazon and Alibaba to enhance its website sales.
Additionally, customers can also walk into their stores and pick what they desire. The offline purchase from the country road is the most crucial distribution strategy for their products compared to online purchases (Statista, 2020). Internationally, the business uses online selling platforms and does global shipping within five to ten days. Additionally, Country Road provides return services for commodities customers find to be not of desired sizes, wrong deliveries, among other causes of returns (Country Road, 2020). Notably, country road operates; large-scale enterprises with well-developed supply chain logistics management significantly play a role in the distribution process for its products. The Country Road enterprise built a 22,000 square meters fulfillment and distribution center in Melbourne to support its online sales of bricks and mortar and assist in managing its manufactured products from other countries (IBIS World, 2020). They did this in 2012 when they noted that they had outgrown their outsourced logistics service models and required to have a more excellent command for their supply chains (IBIS World, 2020). The management for the supply chains and retail outlets have fostered the distribution of its products effectively save for the time of coronavirus pandemic that caused lockdowns and banned travels (Statista, 2020). But still, online distribution assisted to an extent.
Product promotion strategy gives the business a competitive advantage when well planned and executed, but when they are not well-planned, they make the business lose it out. Also, product promotional strategies have the potential to scale up the recognition of a company effectively. According to Euromonitor International (2020), Country Road uses various ways to communicate to its customers; first, it avails information about its products through the internet, in-person, and direct mailing. Through the internet, it uses a Facebook page to promote its products. Besides, its website, along with Amazon and Alibaba, assists it in promoting its products and distributing them. It uses its effort to differentiate its fashion apparel from its competitors.
Notably, Country road sales representatives visit every store at least four times a year to provide in-store training about the feature of their new products and their retailers and those who need refresher training.
Additionally, public relations and sale promotion is the crucial promotional strategy. Their staff works closely with retailers for short-term sales, promoting their new products and tie them to events. Notably, the company does cause promotion by its environmental program contribution and public relations that sometimes take corporate social responsibility.
Apart from Facebook, the company uses various social medial platforms in promoting its products. Such social media include youtube and Instagram (David, 2020). From 2015, they established an advertising strategy through Facebook that was effective due to the visual effects of Facebook in promoting its holiday campaigns; this approach is still driving sales for the firm. Youtube has enabled the business to display its apparel and accessories and demonstrated how they look. As a result, social media platforms have driven their returns by more than 18.2 times (McDonnell, 2018).
Country Road is developing new product lines, including baseball caps, cotton T-shirts, and fleece jackets and vests that it wants to promote. The company has researched the most popular colors, designs, and fabrics to its items and named them according to names that consumers prefer. Its color theme is the desert rise, cactus green, sunset red, sunrise pink, and the river rock gray. It will promote the new product lines using its website, Alibaba, Amazon, and Facebook, along with other promotional strategies such as in-person training and cause promotion by its environmental program contribution and public relations. An increasing number of couture and collecting manufacturers have turned to fabrics that are organic and thus suppliers and have resorted to VFC and timberlands (Technavio, 2019). Online marketing has not proved effective for the fashion industry. It partners with Facebook, Amazon, Alibaba, and Stocard that supplies mobile loyalty applications and improves its product designs and quality to compete favorably. When fully implemented, the country road will have a competitive advantage by using new designs for its proposed apparel and remain a market leader in fashion.
Country Road. (2020). Delivery. Retrieved fromhttps://www.countryroad.com/delivery/.
Coyne, A. (2014). Country Road warehouse overhaul forces IT to rethink. Retrieved from https://www.itnews.com.au/news/country-road-warehouse-overhaul-forces-it-rethink-385978.
David, M. (2020). Coronavirus – how it is affecting the global apparel industry. Retrieved from<https://immago.com/coronavirus-affects-apparel-industry/>.
Dominic, P. (2020). Bushfires likely to impact Australian retailers, analysts say. Retrieved from https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/bushfires-likely-to-impact-australian-retailers-analysts-say-20200108-p53pqi.html.
Euromonitor International. (2020). Apparel and Footwear in Australia. Retrieved from https://www.euromonitor.com/apparel-and-footwear-in-australia/report.
IBIS World. (2020). Fast Fashion in Australia – Market Research Report. Retrieved from https://www.ibisworld.com/au/industry/fast-fashion/4172/.
Inside Retail. (2017). Country Road deploys new supply chain tech. Retrieved from https://insideretail.com.au/news/country-road-deploys-new-supply-chain-tech-201704.
Jia W. (2018). 5 Trends That Will Redefine Retail In 2019. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/jiawertz/2018/11/28/5-trends-that-will-redefine-retail-in-2019/#49b03b8f6526.
Knaus, C. (2020). Coronavirus crisis has had a staggering impact on Australian businesses, data reveals. Retrieved from <https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/apr/07/coronavirus-crisis-has-had-staggering-impact-on-australian-businesses-data-reveals>.
Matsumoto, F. (2019). Australia’s fashion industry shrinks as global brands move in. Retrieved from https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Business-trends/Australia-s-fashion-industry-shrinks-as-global-brands-move-in.
McDonnell, J. (2018). Country Road sees x18 return on ad spend from Instagram Stories. Retrieved from https://www.adnews.com.au/instagram-stories-success-for-country-road.
Orlik, T., Rush, J., Cousin, M. & Hong, J. (2020). Coronavirus Could Cost the Global Economy $2.7 Trillion. Here’s How. Retrieved from <https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2020-coronavirus-pandemic-global-economic-risk/>.
Payne, A. (2014). Spinning a sustainable yarn: Environmental sustainability and brand story in the Australian fashion industry. International Journal of Fashion Studies, 1(2), 185-208.
Statista. (2020). Men’s Apparel – Worldwide. Retrieved from <https://www.statista.com/outlook/90020000/100/mens-apparel/worldwide>.
Technavio. (2019). Menswear Market by Product, Distribution Channel, and Geography – Forecast and Analysis 2020-2024. Retrieved from <https://www.technavio.com/report/menswear-market-industry-analysis>.
Williams, A. (2017). How Country Road is driving in-store sales with digital loyalty innovation. Retrieved from <https://www.cmo.com.au/article/629421/how-country-road-driving-instore-sales-digital-loyalty-innovation/>.
Preferred fabrics
Country Road stores locations
Country road is a middle-market clothing retailer with operations in Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. It is a subsidiary of Woolworths. It is a retail business of apparel, homewares, and its linked accessories. The company does wholesale, designing, and apparel commodities licensing. It provides a wide range of commodities such as men, women, children’s apparel, gift wraps, and gift card home decors. It sells its products via online platforms and retail outlets. The company is famous for its iconic products comprising country road, Mimco, Witchery, Trenery, and Politixs. It outsources most of its accessories and apparel from China, Indonesia, India, Vietnam, Thailand, and Italy (Coyne, 2014). This report also reflects the aspects learned in the last semester, such as research methodologies like email questionnaires, observation analysis, and secondary data about the Country Road from various sources. It also represents the feedback given by the industry, such as pricing, the need for businesses to recruit more young designers to have their design more outstanding, and redesigning its segmentation and launch sub-brands having unique qualities. in Amazon and Alibaba
Contents
Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 4
Summary of semester one research and proposed trends………………………………………………………… 4
Industry Feedback……………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 5
Macro-environment Review……………………………………………………………………………………………….. 6
Environment………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 7
Coronavirus…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 7
Global environment………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 7
Coronavirus…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 8
Review of the retail market for Country Road Partner and Competitors……………………………………. 8
Perceived customers………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 8
Partners……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 8
Competitors………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 9
PROPOSAL…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 9
Product Strategy………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 10
Price Strategy………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 11
Place strategy………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 12
Promotional strategy (digital and non-digital)…………………………………………………………………… 13
Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 14
References…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 15
Appendices……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 17
Country road limited has remained an iconic brand in Australia for more than a decade. It has been building its success on high quality and unique designs that appear casual but stylish. Following its high financial performance, the country road has concentrated on the fashion that it uses to expand internationally (Matsumoto, 2019). It is among the largest Australian fashion company that leads in the market. It positions the middle and upper segment tier with five widely known iconic brands such as Trenery, Politix, Witchery, Mimco, and Country road that encompass Australian fashion designs, urban accessories, and sophistications possessing a quirk (Coyne, 2014). Each of these brands has a unique definitive founding. This paper, therefore, examines how Country Road limited company undertakes its Fashion & Apparel Product Development by offering new designs of high-quality apparel items comprising baseball caps, cotton T-shirts, fleece jackets, and vests. The report shows limitations such as Covid -19 that hinder physical interactions and economic hardships among income groups of its target market.
In semester 1, the research explored research methodologies like email questionnaires, observation analysis, and secondary data about the Country Road from various sources. The team described the business model that Country Road uses as a brick. It primarily used online platforms in selling its products; based on its analysis, customers enjoy shopping in shops with various styles and qualities, and that catalogs and television showcasing depicted powerful promotion. It presented Country Road’s products as a low quality that is a significant drawback, and creativity is missing. The report described the Country Road’s brand’s place among its competitors, such as the brands having similar discounts, shipping, and social media channels, while considering trends such as elegance, efficiency, and biodiversity, and sustainability. And it proposed that the company consider improving its online shopping by having more features that are user-friendly and strengthen stock control. Besides, the semester proposed that country roads should establish membership schemes to preserve their loyalty and enable customers to earn rewards in prizes.
Feedback from the industry is assessed from the recommendations provided. Regarding repositioning and design, given that country road is famous in Australia because it has leisurewear for both women and men, none of its commodities stand out well in the competition. Its design is inferior to H&M and Zara about quality (Jia, 2018). Also, compared to other companies like Tommy Hilfiger, its price is low, and its targets of all ages lack a clear positioning strategy; this calls for the country road to redesign its segmentation and launch sub-brands having unique qualities. Besides, the feedback depicts that the business should recruit more young designers to have its design more outstanding.
In pricing, the impact of covid-19 on the nation’s economy and the income of households has suffered and made consumers be more price-conscious (Knaus, 2020). Consequently, country Road needs to reduce its operating costs and establish a global supply chain and sourcing to access low-cost cotton fabrics and workforce. Also, it should set its factories in the developing and less developed economies like Cambodia and Vietnam to utilize low labor there. According to Inside Retail (2017), by optimizing the supply chain’s production and sourcing, Country Road will lower its operating costs, reduce its price to meet customer expectations, and realize higher profit margins.
Another feedback given was that Country Road product designing requires balancing between its design styles and prices and maintaining and improves its clothes qualities (McDonnell, 2018). The respondents rated price, design, and quality as their top concerns in choosing the fashion brands. As a result, the firm should achieve the best of their products; its design should primarily remain at leisure as 65.26 as indicated by respondents that their preference is leisure instead of other designs (Inside Retail, 2017).
The country road needs to invest in its online shopping amenities and convenience for its customers by offering shipping to encourage them to try out clothing and promote their purchase (Coyne, 2014). Besides, it should use virtual reality approaches to allow its male clients to shop for clothes with more information that lets them browse.
It was reported that Country Road could easily reach its customers through promotional channels of social media about communication and promotion. The report pointed out that the younger generation prefers online TV channels for entertainment. Of the respondents, 60% of them from china attested to that, and that 84.2% use WeChat as their primary social media tool. Consequently, Country road can promote its products through social media and use discounted pricing to promote its products. This feedback forms the basis and backbone for promoting the current product despite using different approaches.
The retail clothing market in Australia grows annually by 2019. Both technological and scientific progress of humanity and the development of online platforms heightens the usage rate of online platforms in making purchases. However, this is not the best practice for the fashion and apparel market because they are items that most of them need fitting before purchasing. The company sale for its apparels rose in 2019; however, this did not go beyond the previous year’s figures. The coronavirus pandemic impedes the fashion industry as it intensified in 2020. The growing use of e-commerce is challenging for this industry and stands to continue affecting the fashion industry in Australia and globally.
The sector of clothing in Australia has faced ground loss as a share to the entire economy for various years caused by the wildfire that took place in December aggressively grew for the retail sector (Dominic, 2020). With prolonged dry spells, the garment factories highly-priced their clothing and raw materials that were made using wool. Such changes made the fashion industry faced losses in 2019; this was the lowest ever season for this industry in Australia within the past 28 years (Dominic, 2020).
With the emergence of COVID-19, most retail stores were forced to close in Australia (Knaus, 2020). And with the adoption of online marketing, country road reported that they were making more sales that were almost five times offline compared to online use during the pandemic. As they partnered with Facebook, the same case was reported in-country trade.
The menswear market has highly grown in the last half-decade, and it is still expected that the apparel for the men’s market is expected to grow to 750 billion dollars (IBIS World, 2020). Also, the women’s market and men’s wear growth have increased to compete with the fastest growth witnessed in the Asia Pacific and North America, making the most significant market for men’s wear. Additionally, in modern time’s men have developed a liking to fashion, thus expanding the market for their apparel (Jia, 2018). Besides, improved technology has made consumers, and this consciousness of environments has called for the manufactures to be environmentally conscious and design those that are recyclable (Payne, 2014). With the increasing number of menswear couture and collecting, manufactures have turned to organic fabrics and thus suppliers and have resorted to VFC and timberlands and are more supportive in their natural knitting; this affects the growth of the market of the menswear (Technavio, 2019).
The prevalence of the pandemic has reduced the customer flows in the Country Road retail stores, and the rate of purchase of apparel and accessories is best while offline than online (Knaus, 2020). Turning the customers to online shopping has been a challenge to the fashion industry.
Country road operates with perceived competitors and perceived customers. Now that the markets have reopened, the construction company did not anticipate other variants of Covid-19 that could lead to other lockdowns. Nonetheless, Country Road’s dream for developing its products continues to thrive.
The target market for the country road is individuals who are of middle-income but sell apparel for all ages. Nevertheless, the primary customers for the company are the middle-income group, whose age group is 24 to 40 years (David, 2020). Its products to this group are of many types its customers visit its retail shops’ to shop for their families. Notably, its purchases are not so popular and fashionable but are more on unique and high-quality goods.
The company partners with Facebook to reveal data conversion from the current campaign that uses multi-channel digital advertisements with the mobile promotion techniques that drive conversion of its in-store sales. Also, partnering with Facebook, Amazon, and Alibaba has increased the conversion of clients’ paths in purchasing and the relevance of integrating its digital experiences with in-store experiences (Jia, 2018).
Country road faces competition from the following companies: M$S, Pacific Brands, Zara, H&M, Myer, Sportcraft, Forever 21, Boohoo, Primark, and David Jones. Together these companies have raised more than 928.5 million between their approximated 8166000 employees (IBIS World, 2020). The revenues that country road limited raises ranks 16th among its competitors. For the top ten rivals’ average 5.5billion, country Road Company has 5,613 employees across its locations. It sells $606.9 million with a total of 19 companies (IBIS World, 2020).
The company applies a differentiation strategy presented by their unique layout and architecture in their stores that profoundly make them outstanding from their geographically close competitors and their marketing for brands with the Australian image (Williams, 2017). With its powerful foothold in the Australian fashion industry, the country road is a well-favored and most presentable brand in Australia.
PROPOSAL
Country Road uses 4Ps in presenting developing its product, as discussed below.
Country Road wants to introduce baseball caps, cotton T-shirts, and fleece jackets and vests in addition to the products it currently offers to all age groups of male clients. The company has been offering product categories comprising bottoms, outerwear, and tops. Their shoes include boots, sneakers, and casual footwear (Orlik et al., 2020). It also offers business wear comprising shoes, tailoring, shirts, and business shirts. Additionally, the company sells accessories like bags, ties, socks, scarves, tote bags, pocket squares, beach towels, and hats. It offers a wide range of garment sizes such as S, M, X, XX, XXL, and shoes of all sizes that fit different people’s sizes (Country Road, 2020). In adapting to the market demand, Country Road has not paid attention to the volumes of complex designs that the new products want to address.
Given that they offer their apparel and other products in about four to six multiple colors, it uses generally sedate and cold colors comprising army green, black and dark blue (Orlik et al., 2020). The company provides between four simple colors and patterns that are generally plaid and stripe regarding fashion items.
For their new product lines, Country Road has researched the most popular colors, designs, and fabrics to its items and named them according to names that consumers prefer. Its color theme is the desert rise, cactus green, sunset red, sunrise pink, and the river rock gray. They will add to their design a slogan matching their logo representing sport and another slogan, “get over it or get it right and their baseball cap will bear a cyclist slogan, “spin it.” There will be around ten new logo designs for a start, and around four slogans more will be designed later. Finally, some logos and slogans would be faded away and new ones introduced depending on market trends. This product strategy will ensure that the product concept remains relevant and fresh and remain focused on distinct features that are not diluted with many variations.
.
Consumer loyalty, to a greater extent, depends on the pricing of a given company. The Country Road uses affordable prices for its products to cater to middle and high-income consumers and has some of its products priced to remain affordable and accessible to low-income groups. Country Road operates with a threshold price of 12.95AUD-129AUD (Country Road, 2020). For the new product range, having redesigned and used the suitable materials and colors as described above, the company will charge prices slightly low but above its competitor range
The company’s pricing strategy lowers its prices but does not lower the quality of its new product lines products. It does this by sourcing from suppliers ready to cooperate with their operations to reduce costs (IBIS World, 2020). This strategy is a win-win scenario for both the suppliers and country road. Additionally, assisting in reducing their overhead costs and maintain profits at the same time make their suppliers gain reputation. They also reduce costs as they use a distribution strategy to their clients in China.
Country road limited is a market leader in clothing. Its location in Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, and the United States gives it a more comprehensive network for distributing its products along with its 786 stores together with other online stores (Williams, 2017). Within Australia, the country road is highly concentrated in the New South Whales and VIC; these are the places where it has its stores (Williams, 2017). Its stores are more concentrated within the commercial shopping areas and within most residential shopping malls; this highly promotes its sales. Customers can purchase their products from its online stores within 2- hours daily across the week (David, 2020). They also operate websites that provide customers and potential customers to make choices and collect from their in-store services. Besides, it has made arrangements to sell through Amazon and Alibaba to enhance its website sales.
Additionally, customers can also walk into their stores and pick what they desire. The offline purchase from the country road is the most crucial distribution strategy for their products compared to online purchases (Statista, 2020). Internationally, the business uses online selling platforms and does global shipping within five to ten days. Additionally, Country Road provides return services for commodities customers find to be not of desired sizes, wrong deliveries, among other causes of returns (Country Road, 2020). Notably, country road operates; large-scale enterprises with well-developed supply chain logistics management significantly play a role in the distribution process for its products. The Country Road enterprise built a 22,000 square meters fulfillment and distribution center in Melbourne to support its online sales of bricks and mortar and assist in managing its manufactured products from other countries (IBIS World, 2020). They did this in 2012 when they noted that they had outgrown their outsourced logistics service models and required to have a more excellent command for their supply chains (IBIS World, 2020). The management for the supply chains and retail outlets have fostered the distribution of its products effectively save for the time of coronavirus pandemic that caused lockdowns and banned travels (Statista, 2020). But still, online distribution assisted to an extent.
Product promotion strategy gives the business a competitive advantage when well planned and executed, but when they are not well-planned, they make the business lose it out. Also, product promotional strategies have the potential to scale up the recognition of a company effectively. According to Euromonitor International (2020), Country Road uses various ways to communicate to its customers; first, it avails information about its products through the internet, in-person, and direct mailing. Through the internet, it uses a Facebook page to promote its products. Besides, its website, along with Amazon and Alibaba, assists it in promoting its products and distributing them. It uses its effort to differentiate its fashion apparel from its competitors.
Notably, Country road sales representatives visit every store at least four times a year to provide in-store training about the feature of their new products and their retailers and those who need refresher training.
Additionally, public relations and sale promotion is the crucial promotional strategy. Their staff works closely with retailers for short-term sales, promoting their new products and tie them to events. Notably, the company does cause promotion by its environmental program contribution and public relations that sometimes take corporate social responsibility.
Apart from Facebook, the company uses various social medial platforms in promoting its products. Such social media include youtube and Instagram (David, 2020). From 2015, they established an advertising strategy through Facebook that was effective due to the visual effects of Facebook in promoting its holiday campaigns; this approach is still driving sales for the firm. Youtube has enabled the business to display its apparel and accessories and demonstrated how they look. As a result, social media platforms have driven their returns by more than 18.2 times (McDonnell, 2018).
Country Road is developing new product lines, including baseball caps, cotton T-shirts, and fleece jackets and vests that it wants to promote. The company has researched the most popular colors, designs, and fabrics to its items and named them according to names that consumers prefer. Its color theme is the desert rise, cactus green, sunset red, sunrise pink, and the river rock gray. It will promote the new product lines using its website, Alibaba, Amazon, and Facebook, along with other promotional strategies such as in-person training and cause promotion by its environmental program contribution and public relations. An increasing number of couture and collecting manufacturers have turned to fabrics that are organic and thus suppliers and have resorted to VFC and timberlands (Technavio, 2019). Online marketing has not proved effective for the fashion industry. It partners with Facebook, Amazon, Alibaba, and Stocard that supplies mobile loyalty applications and improves its product designs and quality to compete favorably. When fully implemented, the country road will have a competitive advantage by using new designs for its proposed apparel and remain a market leader in fashion.
Country Road. (2020). Delivery. Retrieved fromhttps://www.countryroad.com/delivery/.
Coyne, A. (2014). Country Road warehouse overhaul forces IT to rethink. Retrieved from https://www.itnews.com.au/news/country-road-warehouse-overhaul-forces-it-rethink-385978.
David, M. (2020). Coronavirus – how it is affecting the global apparel industry. Retrieved from<https://immago.com/coronavirus-affects-apparel-industry/>.
Dominic, P. (2020). Bushfires likely to impact Australian retailers, analysts say. Retrieved from https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/bushfires-likely-to-impact-australian-retailers-analysts-say-20200108-p53pqi.html.
Euromonitor International. (2020). Apparel and Footwear in Australia. Retrieved from https://www.euromonitor.com/apparel-and-footwear-in-australia/report.
IBIS World. (2020). Fast Fashion in Australia – Market Research Report. Retrieved from https://www.ibisworld.com/au/industry/fast-fashion/4172/.
Inside Retail. (2017). Country Road deploys new supply chain tech. Retrieved from https://insideretail.com.au/news/country-road-deploys-new-supply-chain-tech-201704.
Jia W. (2018). 5 Trends That Will Redefine Retail In 2019. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/jiawertz/2018/11/28/5-trends-that-will-redefine-retail-in-2019/#49b03b8f6526.
Knaus, C. (2020). Coronavirus crisis has had a staggering impact on Australian businesses, data reveals. Retrieved from <https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/apr/07/coronavirus-crisis-has-had-staggering-impact-on-australian-businesses-data-reveals>.
Matsumoto, F. (2019). Australia’s fashion industry shrinks as global brands move in. Retrieved from https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Business-trends/Australia-s-fashion-industry-shrinks-as-global-brands-move-in.
McDonnell, J. (2018). Country Road sees x18 return on ad spend from Instagram Stories. Retrieved from https://www.adnews.com.au/instagram-stories-success-for-country-road.
Orlik, T., Rush, J., Cousin, M. & Hong, J. (2020). Coronavirus Could Cost the Global Economy $2.7 Trillion. Here’s How. Retrieved from <https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2020-coronavirus-pandemic-global-economic-risk/>.
Payne, A. (2014). Spinning a sustainable yarn: Environmental sustainability and brand story in the Australian fashion industry. International Journal of Fashion Studies, 1(2), 185-208.
Statista. (2020). Men’s Apparel – Worldwide. Retrieved from <https://www.statista.com/outlook/90020000/100/mens-apparel/worldwide>.
Technavio. (2019). Menswear Market by Product, Distribution Channel, and Geography – Forecast and Analysis 2020-2024. Retrieved from <https://www.technavio.com/report/menswear-market-industry-analysis>.
Williams, A. (2017). How Country Road is driving in-store sales with digital loyalty innovation. Retrieved from <https://www.cmo.com.au/article/629421/how-country-road-driving-instore-sales-digital-loyalty-innovation/>.
Preferred fabrics
Country Road stores locations
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