Stance moves into a new category

Stance CEO Jeff Kearl and President John Wilson - Shop-eat-surf file photo

Stance, one of the industry’s most successful young brands, is moving into a new category: underwear.

Brand executives are talking with retailers at the trade shows about the new venture and getting their feedback on aspects like pricing, positioning, packaging and fixtures. The goal is to deliver the underwear to stores for Holiday 2015, Stance President John Wilson told SES in an interview Wednesday night. The first samples are expected to arrive in March.

Stance has taken socks to a new level by focusing on every aspect of the category, including branding, comfort, quality and fixtures, and also the backend of the process including on-time delivery, demand planning, inventory management, replenishment and servicing retail customers.




John said the company plans to focus on all aspects of its new underwear business in the same way.

While Stance still sees a lot of room for growth in socks, John said underwear was the next logical move for Stance for several reasons.

First and foremost, retail customers and end consumers have been asking for it. It’s also a large global market and provides Stance and its retail customers a new avenue for growth. And, Stance feels that the competitive landscape in underwear is pretty wide open, John said.

Stance underwear will have its own, separate fixtures and there will be continuity between the look of the sock and underwear fixtures to leverage Stance’s brand recognition, John said. But socks and underwear will not be intermingled on a single rack.

The positioning will be similar to socks – not the most expensive, but not entry level. The underwear overall will have a premium look and fit, and Stance will draw on some of the design elements that worked in socks, such as prints and patterns and collaborations, while still recognizing that solids are an important piece of the underwear business.

John said the Stance team has done a lot of research in the underwear category, and has added some employees to the team to work on it. The company also believes it can leverage its existing staff in functional areas like sales, finance and marketing.

 

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