Eileen Fisher: Repositioning the Brand

Eileen Fisher is an American clothing designer that founded her own private clothing company, Eileen Fisher Inc., in 1984. Her inspiration came from her own struggles of finding stylish yet comfortable clothing that she could wear daily to work. With no previous sewing or fashion experience and with only $350 in her pocket, Fisher created her company with the hopes of offering solutions to women who shared her problem. The focus of her designs was to create simple garments that are easy to wear and that allowed customers to creatively mix and match their clothing pieces in order to make the outfits their own. Within no time, her designs were a huge success among women that related to the designer’s own lifestyle and vision. The brand’s target customer was defined as wealthy, middle aged, Baby Boomer women who represented ages from 45 to 64. An effective tactic that Fisher used was to focus on what she’s doing within her company and on the relationship building with her customers instead of focusing on what the competition is doing. This proved to be very successful for her company and resulted in the increase of customer loyalty.

Upon its 25-year anniversary, Eileen Fisher Inc. realized that their core customers who remained loyal to the brand throughout all these years, now mostly formed part of an older audience. Even though the designer frequently innovated her styles to adapt to the changing seasons and latest trends, the brand began to be associated with clothing that only older women wore, making it difficult for younger and fashion forward women to be attracted. Fearing that her clothing and philosophy was being constrained to a single generation, Fisher knew she had to do something to change customer’s perceptions and attract younger audiences. The first issue that the company had to address was redefining its target market and clarifying its brand vision. To help them reach new audiences, the company teamed up with IDEO, a leading design and innovation firm who helped the company conduct consumer research and listen to what their customers are saying about the brand. Discovering that the brand had three different consumer segments –established, emerging, and nascent – Fisher was put to the task of targeting each of the segments independently, which meant repositioning the brand. After realizing many changes on the store, merchandise, and advertising strategies, the company struggled with confused consumers and negative comments on social media. They faced a big issue with their consumers primarily because loyal customers were now questioning if the brand was still for them after all of the changes made. Consequently, Fisher knew she had to attack this issue immediately and social media was the most attractive platform.

Eileen Fisher Inc.’s main problem was that their customer base was increasing in age alongside the growth of the company, which stereotyped the brand as a brand for older consumers with larger body types. After the great efforts of repositioning the brand with the purpose of broadening its audience, it was clear that it became harder than they thought and there was still a question of who to target with the brand. They saw three possible options for the company to undergo this expansion as seen in the case study: to exclusively target the established woman and expand Eileen Fisher’s penetration in this segment, to target the Emerging woman, and to target the Nascent women by introducing more trendy styles and lower price points into the brand. Their objective was to identify products that could universally appeal to women in all three segments, which became extremely difficult.

After analyzing their latest failure of opening the higher-priced sub brand, I developed two options that could help the brand in their repositioning. The first option is to maintain the EILEEN FISHER brand as is, targeting to an older and mature audience, while launching a separate brand targeted for Nascent women. With this option, they could maintain their loyal customers and since Fisher is discovering new fabrics and designs that reflect her age, her customers would have more reasons to purchase her clothing. On the other hand, by developing a new brand targeted towards a more fashion-forward customer at a lower price range, the company can now attract the younger audiences that they wanted. A risk with this strategy could be that customers feel confused or alienated with the brand’s true identity. The second option that I see is that the company could change its whole vision and brand image and develops designs that attract all three consumer segments. This course of action would entail a complete restructuring of the EILEEN FISHER brand and apart from being more costly and risky, it could greatly affect their loyal customer base.

The course of action that I would take would be the first option, to leave the EILEEN FISHER brand as is, and create a completely different line targeted specifically towards Nascent women. Before the repositioning, the brand was doing pretty well financially, in fact it was never truly affected by the economic recession and their brand image was stronger than ever. Therefore, they never really had a problem with their designs, operations, nor with their customer base. By continuing to attract an older audience, the brand can use this towards their advantage and develop modern clothing that caters to this segment’s specific needs and preferences. The desire to attract a broader audience can be met by launching a new brand that directly targets the fashionable and price-savvy consumers who also enjoy wearing simple and comfortable clothing. By developing this new brand under a different name, EILEEN FISHER”S original brand would not be affected because consumers won’t be able to associate one with the other. This is also a great opportunity for the company to indulge in social media platforms and use it to educate consumers of their new brand, and interact with their target market that are more involved with social media and use it as a part of their decision-making process.