Womens Fashion Blogs, Does Anyone Wear Old Navy Pants for Work
Old Navy Thrives Subsequently a Style-Witting Rebirth
SAN FRANCISCO — For years, Stefan Larsson was Gap'southward worst nightmare, equally he led H&Thou'southward boundless expansion in the United States with a combination of designer chichi and rock-bottom prices.
Three years ago, Gap Inc. hired him, and gave him its nearly challenging brand, Old Navy.
Since his arrival, Mr. Larsson has led a hitting turnaround at the low-toll label, transforming Old Navy from a butt of jokes to its parent company's crown precious stone. Last twelvemonth, One-time Navy took in almost $6 billion in sales in the United States — almost as much in sales as the Gap and Banana Democracy brands put together — and fabricated up 40 percent of the visitor'southward global acquirement. Earnings due this week are expected to underscore Onetime Navy every bit Gap'due south biggest driver of growth as its other big labels are struggling.
However, Quondam Navy faces a challenge in sustaining that strong growth in a world of cheap fashion that increasingly seems a race to the bottom.
Mr. Larsson is unfazed. "I saw an unpolished diamond in Sometime Navy," Mr. Larsson said in a recent interview — his starting time since taking the helm at the brand — in a corner of a bustling staff cafeteria at One-time Navy'south San Francisco headquarters. "Everything starts and ends with production."
Former Navy'south success so far under Mr. Larsson has been congenital on a level of attention to pattern that sellers of low-end, family-oriented clothes — including the onetime Old Navy — had not put into their wares. (Mr. Larsson calls that view of fashion the "dress past the pound" approach and says it ignores the aspirations of low-income shoppers.)
The label's newfound strength as well points to a fundamental shift in the way people shop for clothes, equally well as a new frugality for all merely the wealthiest of shoppers in the United States. Matching a $x T-shirt with a designer bag has go much more common, as shoppers grow more selective near what they will splurge on. And even every bit consumers benefit from lower gas prices and a stronger task market, cautious households — especially those with children — have preferred to invest in fundamentals like their cars or homes rather than their wardrobes.
All that has been a boon to Old Navy. Sales at established stores jumped eleven pct in the fourth quarter, by far the fastest rate shown by a mass apparel brand in the critical vacation season.
"Old Navy'due south arroyo used to be selling bolt," said Betty Chen, a retail analyst at Mizuho Securities USA. But the more than fashionable clothes and marketing that Mr. Larsson has brought to the brand take had "a strong halo effect," Ms. Chen said, that has bolstered the make'southward image. "And price points are so much lower than Gap or Lululemon."
Conceived past Gap in the early on 1990s as a response to efforts past rivals to undercut Gap on price, the marked-down version of itself was wildly successful at first. Shoppers were fatigued by Sometime Navy'southward promise to combine the style and quality of Gap clothing with the low prices and large selection of a Home Depot. The whimsical layout of the stores, with concrete floors and display cases fashioned from stripped-downwards school lockers, was a striking in the working-class neighborhoods where they opened. Within four years, sales at Old Navy reached $1 billion, the fastest rate at the time for any retailer. (Even Google took longer to reach that milestone.) Gap opened Old Navy stores at a breakneck pace.
That expansion started to go awry in about 2000, right around the time that H&K, the Swedish fast-fashion juggernaut, opened its first store in the United States, in Manhattan. Its strappy dresses and abrupt jackets were not only inexpensive, simply as well were direct off the style runways. Onetime Navy's laid-dorsum hoodies and campy ads started to experience uninspired past comparison. A partnership in 2007 with the glory designer Todd Oldham flopped. The recession took a huge bite out of retail spending, even at the depression-cease Old Navy. Its sales fell by more than than $1 billion from 2006 to 2008. Morale hitting a low.
Brought in to rescue a brand in distress, Mr. Larsson set to piece of work assembling a heavyweight team. He hired Ivan Wicksteed, onetime global creative director of Coca-Cola and the architect of brand makeovers at Converse and Cole Haan, as primary marketing officer. 1 of the first changes Mr. Wicksteed fabricated was to liven upwards the company's drab headquarters in San Francisco with pop photography and upbeat music.
"It looked like a doctor'due south part," Mr. Wicksteed said. "You lot have to start with ground nix. You have to showtime with the employees. If you can't get your own people to want to get on board and change management, and then you lot'll never persuade your own customers to do it."
Another important recruit, Jill Stanton, the sometime head of apparel at Nike, has transformed Old Navy'due south approach to design. Previously, its merchants would purchase clothes from higher-stop retailers like Saks 5th Avenue or Abercrombie & Fitch and pick pieces to adapt, oft clumsily, for Onetime Navy stores.
"We were taking a product that was in the marketplace and we were bringing it to market maybe a yr later," Ms. Stanton said. "And our designers were designing for somebody else. So you used to get pattern teams say: 'Well, I'chiliad non sure if I'd clothing that, but it's O.K. for Old Navy.' "
Ms. Stanton instead pushed to build Onetime Navy'south own pattern muscle, leaning on Gap'due south supply concatenation to allow designers to quickly examination various prints, shapes and sizes in small runs in stores earlier increasing the product of styles that were with a hit with shoppers. It shifted its collection from everyday or basic items to others that were on-tendency and in flavor. Instead of hiring designers whose experience was in the depression-price market place, Old Navy hired top talent: an accessories and pocketbook designer from Coach, athletic wear designers from Nike and Reebok, the men'south apparel managing director from Northward Face up. ("They don't starting time with cheap," Ms. Stanton said.) Old Navy's new ads, starring 2 comedy favorites, Amy Poehler and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, take gone viral.
One of Sometime Navy'due south biggest triumphs has been its pixie pants. 2 years agone, just as Mr. Larsson's team was getting the label's new look off the ground, a designer on Old Navy's women'south team noticed that blogs and runways were filling upwardly with casual, slim-plumbing equipment pants. The pattern team "obsessed over every detail" — the fit, the cutting just higher up the talocrural joint — and chop-chop tested different prints and colors in stores. The pants were a hit.
"We uniquely designed that pant, so we put information technology to market and nosotros tested it and we sold 2.4 1000000 pairs terminal yr," Mr. Larsson said. "It's one of the biggest acquirement-generating styles that we have."
Mr. Larsson is on the hunt for his adjacent big production.
"If you lot were at Apple tree, nobody would say, 'Permit'southward relaunch the iPhone 6.' People would laugh, and say that'due south crazy. But that's what happens in the mode industry," he said. "If you proceed competing with generic products, and a college and college discount, you're going to lose. If Apple tree doesn't continuously refresh its products and brand them current, they're dead. And that would happen here likewise."
A new expanse that Onetime Navy has thrown itself into is agile article of clothing, for the start time investing heavily in functioning fabrics, like breathable textiles. With sportswear, Sometime Navy is tapping into a trend that has swept through fashion, as sneakers and yoga pants have the place of jeans and pumps. Simply where a pair of yoga pants from Lululemon might cost almost $100, the same amount would outfit an unabridged family in operation wear at Old Navy, Ms. Stanton said.
There are big challenges ahead for the company. For 1, it starts to be compared against a yr of stiff sales, making further growth peculiarly difficult. In the showtime quarter of the yr, same-store sales growth at Erstwhile Navy slowed to three percent, though it remained the fastest-growing Gap label.
Rising wages overseas, as well equally heightened scrutiny over working conditions at Gap's strange suppliers, likewise enhance concerns over Old Navy'south depression-price business model.
Some analysts also wonder whether the contempo jobs growth or savings from gas prices volition prompt some shoppers to graduate from One-time Navy, ascension up the luxury ladder. Mr. Larsson says he does not think and so. Snobbishness in fashion is on its manner out, he says, especially among younger generations.
"The manufacture is traditionally built on the ladder, but I don't know if people aspire to that anymore," he said. "Times are changing, and prestige is being looked at differently." Young shoppers, specially, will always desire to save — "then they want to travel, experience things," he said.
"Sometimes when I shop at high-end brands, I get this look when I walk in, like people working there are screening me and asking: Are y'all good enough to be our customer?" Mr. Larsson said. "I hate it. And Former Navy is equally an antidote to that."
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