Fashion Brands Turn To Crowd-Sourcing For Design

How better to enhance customer engagement than by inviting them to contribute to designs - and then fund them through pre-orders? JL

Christina Binkley reports in the Wall Street Journal:

Crowdfunding for fashion, where people place orders before an item is produced, and crowdsourcing, where the public weighs in on a product’s design, were initially explored by startup companies. The aim is to draw consumers closer to brands. Consumers will be more loyal once they’ve taken the time to help build a product or invest. The companies also seek to fine-tune inventories by not making duds, and smooth their cash flow by taking preorders.
J. Peterman, the ‘90s fashion retailer made famous by “Seinfeld,” is back and acting very 2016. The company has turned to Kickstarter to raise $500,000 and is asking consumers for their design ideas as well.
Crowdfunding for fashion, where people place orders before an item is produced, and crowdsourcing, where the public weighs in on a product’s design, were initially explored by startup companies. These days, they are among the many experiments established fashion brands are trying to design, deliver and pay for products.
The aim, in part, is to draw consumers closer to brands. Ideally, in the brands’ minds, consumers will be more loyal once they’ve taken the time to help build a product or invest. The companies, some of which might have difficulty raising financing in more traditional ways, also seek to fine-tune inventories by not making duds, and smooth their cash flow by taking preorders.
Outdoor-wear maker Timberland is asking consumers to help design a collection of hiking-sneaker boots that it plans to call Craftletics. In May, consumers will be invited to place orders based on prototypes. By November, the winning designs will be shipped.
Timberland is using the platform of Betabrand, a San Francisco apparel maker known for quirky clothes such as horizontal-corduroy pants and surprises such as the Suitsy, a onesie for adults that looks like a business suit.

Betabrand floats concepts, often just a sketch by designers or fans. Crowd favorites are formally designed and prototyped, then proposed for sale in the crowdfunding phase. They’re produced if enough people place orders.
This has produced such crowd-pleasers as Dress Pant Yoga Pants, of which $14 million have sold to date, says Chris Lindland, Betabrand’s founder. “Every product we have has to go through the gantlet of crowdsourcing,” Mr. Lindland says. Less than one-third of the proposed ideas advance to prototypes, and of those, about 60% make it to production.
Timberland connected with Betabrand after Jay Steere, the outdoor company’s global innovation leader and a biking enthusiast, bought a pair of Betabrand’s Bike To Work pants and reached out. Timberland’s sneaker-boot development can be followed at Betabrand.com.
The method gives outsize influence to opinionated but semi-anonymous consumers who often appear as no more than a first name on a website’s comments section. After “Molly M” commented that wedge heels are looking dated, Timberland’s designers prodded her to expound further on their designs for a woman’s sneaker-boot.

“Our designers are actually mentioning Molly’s name when they’re talking about the shoes,” Mr. Steere says.
Timberland regularly uses polls, focus groups, and man-on-the-street interviews, but crowdsourcing offers “a reach and a dialogue on that scale that you just can’t get with focus groups,” Mr. Steere says.
Crowdfunding can work in several ways. Kickstarter campaigns seek pledges of money that are funded if a project meets its financial goal. At Betabrand, consumers place orders for a product that they’ll receive by mail.
Project September, a fashion app launched in April, allows people to post photos with products they like and to follow other people who post, too. The idea is that the app will draw stylists, artists, bloggers and others with big fashion followings—such as Nicole Richie—to set up their own visual storehouses of products. Photos of currently available products are clickable, taking consumers to the Web pages of affiliate brands and stores.
The app tracks views, clicks, and revenues generated from sales, and takes from 5% to 15% of the revenue generated, says its founder, Alexis Maybank, who is co-founder of discount-luxury site Gilt Groupe.
“Kickstarter is introducing us to a whole new generation of 40 and younger,” says J. Peterman founder John Peterman. “Probably a lot of them think we’re a ‘Seinfeld’ invention.”