If you’re starting a business, or trying to achieve more success, the intimate apparel industry offers helpful insights. Why listen to the intimate apparel industry regarding your business practices? Think about it, while bras, panties, and other undergarments are almost exclusively worn by women, their target audience spans genders, backgrounds, and price points. Even if you’re not wearing a bra, you may be buying one for someone else.
For this reason, the intimate apparel industry has to cater to pretty much everyone if they want to corner the market. This inclusive approach means genuinely understanding both the needs and desires of customers and working hard not to leave anyone out. At the same time, businesses selling undergarments must take a unique approach that allows them to stand out to those who respond to the brand. Businesses hoping to follow this path must be mindful of the following:
1. Take a Customer-Centric Approach
If you’re not listening to your customers, your business will eventually become irrelevant. Examples of prominent companies that failed to adapt to their customers’ demands include Blockbuster Video and Borders Bookstore. The times were changing, and people wanted to be able to stream movies and read digital books. Sadly, both companies failed to make the necessary changes to match their competitors, like Netflix and Barnes and Noble.
It’s a crucial move in business to pay attention to what your customers want. Read comments, visit sites where your products and services are discussed, and watch what your competitors are doing. Intimate apparel companies have made updates to their offerings. Customers can find wireless bras, period underwear, and even nursing gowns. Be the place your customers go to get what they want and they’ll reward you with their loyalty.
2. Be Inclusive
Speaking of listening to your customers, you also want to know your customers. Intimate apparel companies have no choice. Women’s bodies come in all shapes and sizes, colors, ages, and abilities. You can’t sell bras and panties to only one group of women. It would behoove companies in other industries to learn this same lesson. Organizations like Target and Walmart have faced severe backlash from customers for not being inclusive.
With intimate apparel companies, you’ll often find different body types, skin tones, and abilities not just in ads but also in products. Bras come in different shades to match different skin colors, and cup sizes accommodate every breast size. With the best companies that sell undergarments, every woman can find something to love. If you’re looking to sell more products or services, take a good look at the full range of potential customers and appeal to them.
3. Fearlessly Innovate
Innovation is a big part of appealing to your audience and listening to their wants. If Blockbuster had just employed engineers to figure out how to create a streaming service, they might still be around. If Blackberry had moved to the touch screen, it could have competed with the iPhone. The companies that fail to innovate, fail, period. And, often, they don’t innovate because they fear the risk. But it is exactly those big risks, the ones that respond to customers, that win.
The most successful intimate apparel companies have kept up with the times and with their customer demands. They innovate through changing attitudes and changing bodies. Lingerie companies have moved from stiff, painful underwire to soft, pliable material that still provides strong support. Underwear manufacturers have designed period underwear so women don’t have to scramble for menstrual pads or tampons. Take the risks that will help your customers, and they’ll keep coming back.
4. Enforce Strong Supply Chains
Now, if you’re innovating, listening to your customers, and including everyone, you’ll likely find your customer base growing. The biggest trick now will be to keep your supplies in stock. It sounds like a nice problem to have until you run out. Then, your customers are frustrated, and if your competitor has the supply, even if the product is inferior, customers may turn to them. Sadly, they might not come back.
Intimate apparel companies know this reality better than most. Because the market is so rich with great products, people in the market for a new pair of underwear or a new bra will simply go somewhere else. Thus, it is incumbent upon these companies to continuously monitor supply and demand, so they can always meet customer demand. Employ tracking and insight data, so you can enforce a strong supply chain and never let your customers down.
5. Ensure Brand Protection
Finally, guard your brand relentlessly. Bad public relations, a bad campaign, or an unhealthy or unhelpful product can destroy your brand. Anheuser Busch released a single commercial with influencer Dylan Mulvaney drinking Bud Light and ostracized an entire sector of their most loyal beer drinkers. Years later, the brand remains at the center of controversy and vitriol, and the company hasn’t quite figured out how to rally.
Victoria’s Secret, on the other hand, is a brand that responded well to the changing times, without excluding its existing customer base. Once derided for having models with unrealistic figures, the brand continues to have slender supermodels but also includes plus-sized models on the runway and in ads. Intimate apparel brands across the board seem to have made this shift, and it’s one any business can learn from. Welcome the new, without outcasting the old.
In the end, the intimate apparel industry has a lot to teach businesses about adapting to times, listening to customers, and protecting brand identity. It takes leaders and marketing executives willing to get it wrong and also willing to make necessary changes when they do. You can absolutely come back from a failed risk, but you should never be afraid to take those risks. Just make sure your risks are calculated and considerate of your entire customer base.
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