Brand Reinvention: Who Will Succeed?

WWD has an article on brand reinvention today. If brand revival were the keywords of the last decade, brand reinvention are the big ones today. And a brand reinvention is a much harder task. A name like Halston (WWD includes it in its list of brand reinventions, but I disagree) with next to no current identity is ripe for revival -- like Gucci was back in the 1990s. The downside of a revival is that your starting with next to no sales and frequently bad license agreements that are hurting the brand image and must be cleaned up for the revival to work.

Brands ripe for reinvention have sales but are beginning to wane either on shop floors or in customer perception but are still bringing in money. It's a much more delicate balance to try and keep the current customers (or at least the dollars they represent) while tinkering with an image. Brands that got it wrong of late are Bally and St. Johns -- both of which cast off their old customers without luring in the new ones. And if you're a public company, well, investors don't like that kind of drastic action.

Of the brands currently being reinvented -- in addition to Halston, WWD lists Gap, Liz Claiborne, Bill Blass, Tommy Hilfiger and Anne Klein as the brands in the midst of a reinvention. From what I've seen so far, I'd say that Anne Klein is strongest out of the gate.

The new creative director, Isabel Toledo, put on two runway shows that showed just how chic an Anne Klein label could look. But yet there are problems at Klein. For one, the European retailers I spoke with said they would never stock the collection, no matter how great it was. Why? They say the name is just too strongly identified with mid-market. I think that is something a bit of clever marketing and a few trunk shows could sort out. The other problem I see with the reinvention is that a bit confusing. The Toledo collection sells at Barneys and has a different font, but it is still called Anne Klein. The Anne Klein shop on across the street on Madison Ave has a completely different set of products. OK, Toledo is still newish so it will take a while for her influence to be felt throughout all the offerings but I think that in the meantime they're confusing consumers new and old. I think they should have made some floor space in the Anne Klein stores available for the runway looks. And given it a name to differentiate it from the Anne Klein customers already know. A Jones spokesperson (Anne Klein is part of Jones Apparel Group) told me that Ralph Lauren has a separate high end line also called Ralph Lauren, so why not Anne Klein? Ralph also has lines called Ralph Lauren Collection, Rlaph Lauren Black Label, Ralph Lauren Blue Label and on and on, but more to the point Ralph hasn't had to do a brand reinvention yet. He's managed to stay on track with his audience. When you're trying to get back into the game, sometime more drastic steps are needed.

(Photo by Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images)