In the 1940s, Wrangler gained notoriety for its innovations in denim for cowboys - rear pockets positioned for comfort in the saddle, zippers and the use of a strong tack in the crotch. Over the years, they’ve had to redefine and reinvent offerings to suit the modern-day consumer. Nitin Chhabra, Chief Executive Officer at ace turtle (the exclusive licensee for Wrangler in India), tells us how they’ve altered the brand messaging to resonate with the Indian market. He also gives his unique take on digital marketing becoming impersonal and the implications of growing ticket sizes in smaller towns.
Excerpts from the interview…
How does ace turtle pick brands to launch in India?
Our selection criteria are based on three parameters – one of them is that the brand should have awareness in India. This is important because it helps us scale faster and keep the customer acquisition costs lower. Next, we should have rights and access to global designs along with the freedom to design and manufacture locally. Lastly, the brand should be able to hit a 100-crore run rate within two years.
What are some qualities of good denim for an Indian consumer?
Denim is the only other fabric apart from leather that gets better as it ages. Therefore, you have to give the consumer a good reason to buy again. That is where innovation and creating new styles play an important role. But one of the biggest differences in selling in India vs Western markets is that the value proposition has to be very strong in India. This doesn't mean it has to be cheap but it does mean that the product has to deliver at its price. The other difference is that Western markets are far more homogeneous in tastes and preferences. In India, our market changes keep changing from catchment to catchment. So there will be a few products which will work across the line, but from region to region, we have to innovate for specific tastes.
Tell us about Wrangler’s partnership with SOCIAL and the value it creates for the brand.
We are seeing that people like to go out a lot more today. Earlier, the word ‘outdoors’ used to mean trekking and adventure but today, it is going out to cafes and bars, meeting friends and socialising. An aftereffect of the pandemic has been that people don't want to be confined to their homes. That is where our partnership with SOCIAL comes in. Our consumers identify with a place like SOCIAL. Apart from partnering with them for events across their restaurants, we’re also launching a clothing line in collaboration with them.
Have there been any notable changes in consumer behaviour you’ve noticed?
I think one very clear trend is that people want to go out of their homes and that's why offline is doing a lot better than online. People want to go out and shop and the experience matters more. Creating value is not just about the product or the transaction. Value is in how you sell the product to them and how they interact with the product. The other thing is that the consumer is not very forgiving. If you are not able to provide them with what they want, they will quickly move on to the next choice.
What are the keys to customer retention that Wrangler focuses on?
We’ve seen that the revenues from broad-based advertising are not as good as compared to when we focus on communities. For example, we have a biker community that resonates well with Wrangler. In Western markets, especially in North America, Wrangler is all about the cowboy and celebrating the cowboy lifestyle.
In India, the consumer doesn't understand the cowboy. So we took the essence of the cowboy — a rugged lifestyle, love for nature, self-reliance and adventure – and used it to celebrate the biker community. Instead of the horse, the riders have an iron horse, the bike. India is the world's largest market for motorbikes. Now we’re also expanding our reach to the community that likes going out. In a nutshell, whenever we are focused on specific communities and tailor our engagement and campaigns to them, it has given us a better ROI.
In the future, we'll be far more community-focused, on-ground and touch-based focused, rather than digital. Digital is just not as personalised anymore.
Tell us about how the brand plans to expand its reach across platforms and into smaller cities and towns.
About 73% of our business is already coming from tier-two to three towns, across channels. Pre-pandemic, we believed that certain products, especially premium products, would only sell in the larger cities but that's not the case anymore. Our average selling price is higher in certain smaller towns than some other city stores.
While it is difficult to point out the exact reason, we hypothesise that the infrastructure in metro cities because of traffic, congestion and parking problems makes it inconvenient to go shopping in malls. On the flip side, tier-two and three cities offer larger retail spaces and as of now, fewer choices are available to consumers offline. From an economic standpoint too, the share of the wallet in tier-twos is more towards fashion and other discretionary products as compared to the cities because their cost of living is lower. To establish our presence there, we ensure to offer the best quality retail environment in small towns.