Just because a shirt is untucked doesn’t mean your brand strategy should be.
UNTUCKit (for Women)
In my latest #tellthetruths video, I talk about why I think UNTUCKit, the men’s clothing brand, is barking up the wrong tree by trying to extend into women.
The brand’s positioning is to thread the needle between men’s comfort (especially for men of a certain age) and the desire to avoid looking like a slob. It tells them, “you can have on a nice, crisp shirt, and here’s permission not to tuck it in so you can hide your dadbelly.” But that framing doesn’t quite land with women. As much as we care about comfort too, the idea behind this brand just isn’t as aspirational for us.
What do you think? Would you ever buy from them? I’m especially curious what the women in my audience have to say.
This video originally appeared in LinkedIn.
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TRANSCRIPT:
Hey guys, it’s Rebeca with BrandTrue and I want to talk about the UNTUCKit brand. UNTUCKit’s a great brand of men’s shirts and good name, great concept. The problem and why we’re talking about them today is because they’ve extended into women’s clothes, shirts, like they sell for men, and I’ve seen that they have some dresses, too, and it’s just such a …fricking bad idea! Because the equity just doesn’t flow correctly. When you have a parent brand and you want to extend you have to think about what’s the transferrable point of difference? What’s that core equity and how is it flowing? And UNTUCKit is not aspirational, it’s not fashion, it’s about comfort and it just doesn’t work in a women’s context.
Mind you, women like comfortable clothes too, but they tend to go to athleisure brands. They’re going to Lululemon, they’re going to Athleta, and they’re not… if they’re in a comfort context, they’re not doing crisp shirts. So just conceptually that doesn’t work.
And then this idea of the aspiration, it’s just, I think it doesn’t flow from men’s brands to women’s brands very easily in fashion. Maybe if it’s a sort of a high-end designer, and if I think about like J. Press or L.L. Bean… The few times that I can think of it, it’s been when there’s something else going on where it’s like sort of preppier clothing, like a Brooks Brothers, that’s men’s clothing that the women’s clothing that lives under that brand is that same sort of WASPy, genteel kind of aspiration. There’s something logical. It just doesn’t flow with UNTUCKit. And I think part of the reason is because UNTUCKit is too low. And part of the reason is because it is a difficult transfer from men’s brands to women’s brands in fashion.
When I started my career, in the toy industry, there was something that I think is probably still true, that girls would play with boys’ toys, but boys wouldn’t play with girls’ toys. It’s unfortunate, but it’s just the way the equity and kind of the prestige flows, and the flow is in the opposite direction in fashion so this is just strategically unsound. That’s what I think. Let me know what you think. Bye!
