On my recent tour of the Berlin retail scene (see for instance my other posts on New Era and Soho House) I discovered Nudie Jeans, a Swedish brand whose store is located on Münzstrasse, next to the Levis store. Today’s article is short and will quickly walk you through the positioning of this brand and my analysis of the customer experience. Eventually I’ll also touch customer satisfaction and loyalty in this context.
Nudie Jeans’ brand positionning
The positioning of this brand is quite original, halfway between fast-fashion and environmental consciousness. Nudie Jeans offers what they call “Organic Denim” jeans, produced responsibly and transparently with 100% organic cotton denim.
Recycling and free repairs
The ecological and socially responsible branding of Nudie Jeans translates into a very interesting customer experience in the store.
First of all, the store offers a kind of lifelong guarantee (a little bit like at Nordstrom): you can bring your pair of worn jeans and Nudie Jeans will repair it for free whatever the date of purchase. This promise materializes through the presence of sewing machines that are well visible in the store along with orange sewing thread (orange being the brand’s iconic colour).
Next to offering free repair service, Nudie jeans also resells second-hand products as you can see on the pictures below. Wearing worn jeans is trendy anyway; so why not wearing second-hand repaired products. They should be even more trendy, shouldn’t they?
Customer experience analysis
The brand’s positioning and the way it is materializes in the store contributes to an interesting value proposition, one that is seldom seen in our era of consumerism. Nudie Jeans clearly promotes values that are appealing for certain segments of consumers and that lead to reinforcing the community feeling. Yet, the brand was also clever enough not to create products that are appealing only to those who are into upcycling, recycling and environmental awareness. A key factor of success is definitely the quality of the product. Nothing good can happen in business if you sell low-quality. Customer satisfaction and loyalty are tightly linked to quality and it’s perfectly illusory to think that selling unattractive or low-quality products can be a sustainable strategy on the long-term, even for activist-type of customer. You must be very resilient to wear low-quality and unattractive clothes just to feel in harmony with your values.
Posted in Strategy.
