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The Best Brand Defense?
October 22, 2007
As the saying goes, the best defense is a good offense.
Or was it the other way around?
The proud new owners of a classic brand might be excused for getting confused.
Take for example, Iconix Brand Group, an investment and marketing outfit that has quickly built itself into a player in the fashion brand licensing arena. For the first time, Iconix has entered the home textiles zone by virtue of acquiring Official Pillowtex and that entity’s lead home brands: Cannon, Charisma, Fieldcrest, and Royal Velvet.
Hoping to convince Wall Street analysts that this buy-in was a wise one, Iconix last week sent top executives to a show-and-tell.
There was just one hitch: Iconix shouting out that Bed Bath & Beyond was ramping up a Royal Velvet rollout for next April was just the kind of public airing of its plans that this retailer would rather avoid.
For the last several years, with licensee Li & Fung as the producer, Royal Velvet towels – the product has always been the leading focus of the brand – have been part of the mix at Kohl’s, a retailer that knows how to present brands powerfully in-store – and that promotes them heavily and pretty much constantly.
Royal Velvet products have appeared or currently feature in the mix at other chains, but mostly regional ones. The real potential face-off here would be a Kohl’s/BB&B contest. Or maybe it’s destined to be a brand handoff?
The questions multiply. Would Bed Bath take on Royal Velvet as part of a strong “offensive” strategy, deciding the classic name fits well with its overall offering to consumers?
Or could it be a “defensive” move, one made less on the basis of high confidence in the brand’s performance potential within its own doors, and more on the desire to keep a rival retailer from capitalizing on the brand?
These possibilities, it must be emphasized, are speculation by me.
By the way, speaking of offense and defense - - it may be a good idea for the new owners of the Pillowtex brands to do something about the www.royalvelvet.com website, which seems designed to lure searchers into a variety of fell-off-the-back-of-the-truck merchandise options.
Posted by James Mammarella on October 22, 2007 | Comments (0)
