Lacoste case study: Vintage products

Abstract

Vintage sports brands are double whammy. By digging into their history, one can find that they are expanding their scope to fashion, an area where they previously were not present and thus ensure new growth opportunities. The sports brands are actively looking into the fashion market: 70% to 80% of shoes and sportswear are not inclined to practice a sport but a business look (street wear) or casual wear.

In such a context, can we talk about brand of sports and the fashion brand? Can the vintage provide continuity to a brand? Is there no risk of cannibalization, collision of images for brands that simultaneously present in the niche sport and perform towards a niche fashion? Is the vintage is a recipe for marketing and can it be broken down in the long term?

To answer these questions, we analyze the sports market, its characteristics, its development and use of vintage strategies by market participants. In a second part, we will study in detail about the vintage strategy of Adidas and its key success factors.

As part of conclusions and observations of this strategy, we will, in the third part, present the application and recommendations to revitalize and reinvigorate a brand of sport called Lacoste, which experienced difficulties of image and positioning since the early 1990s.

English word which means vintage, said of a Vintage Port that has aged at least ten years. Of course when it comes to fashion, the term has a different meaning. However, it refers to the idea of product that has lived could exhale the aromas of the past. "Behind the word vintage, there is the notion of authenticity."

Heritage is defined as a person who collects and continues a tradition. When you carry this buzzword or a brand, it refers to the idea of seniority of the brand. Brands highlight their past and their longevity. It allows the imagination to play on the timeline and play on affect consumers for a time, for a purpose or a brand while strengthening intergenerational ties.

Nostalgia is all about remembering the past. Thus customers of various brands of sport are sometimes nostalgic for some products that have made history or legend of the brand. The marks are on the sentimental attachment we all have for the past. Since the products are already known to a visual point of view, they remind us of times past.

Retro is old fashion, a style, an object inspired by the recent past, from the 1920s to 1970s. This term, as part of our study, fits perfectly with the sports brands and fashion using their not so distant past to anchor in the collective imagination "history" of the brand and its products.

A trend can be defined as an attitude or behavior that has a probability minority to expand and become the majority, or to represent a profitable market segment in the future. Thus, the company is faced with two issues that forced him to break radically with traditional marketing.


It will therefore adopt a dynamic market of assessing the sense of changing attitudes and behavior rather than photographing the market through market research. However, the trend is to risk not being followed, being too early or late. This market approach is neither new nor restricted to products of fashion, nor exclusively dedicated to youth.


Tags: vintage models; sports fashion; Lacoste;