Mavi Jeans has thus far managed to be successful in the ferociously competitive retail fashion industry. The difficulty in marketing fashion is that the product needs to hit a style-price-fit trifecta with the consumer. If the product hits only two of three points, the consumer will be reluctant to make the purchase.

To complicate matters further, what a consumer considers to be a style-price-fit trifecta can change dramatically over time. A fashion company must constantly weigh the risks of when and how to change its product line, price structure, or brand image to suit the changing marketplace.

Mavi’s Success Story

Mavi’s brand is targeted at the fashion-conscious youth market. Their strategy uses product, price, placement, and promotion to hit the youth consumers’ fashion trifecta. Mavi entered the U.S. market by placing its product line in high-end department stores at a price point that was toward the lower end of the range relative to the other brands sold at the location. This allowed Mavi to communicate itself as a stylish brand at a price youth shoppers could reasonably afford. Finally, they marketed the slogan “Mavi fits” and invested in making a wide range of sizes available to the customer.

Mavi promoted their product in ways that resonated with a young audience. It opened a flagship store near New York University, created an app allowing customers to digitally customize different outfits, and gained visibility through product placements and celebrity endorsements popular within youth culture.

The Rise and Fall of FUBU

Given the intense competition, survival as a startup clothing company requires a marketing plan that allows the company to cater to a niche. An example would be the rise and fall of FUBU. This clothing company saw initial success by catering to the African American youth market (hence the name, For Us By Us). Under this marketing plan, FUBU was able to grow without facing a direct competitive challenge from larger established brands like Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger, and Gap. Also, the niche market strategy allowed FUBU to control its capital expenditures. Since African Americans tend to have larger body frames than white, Latino, and Asian Americans, the production sizes of FUBU’s product line had a defined range in which it could hit its trifecta.

FUBU’s initial success caused it to outgrow its original space when its product line suddenly and unexpectedly became popular with mainstream youth (i.e. white kids). Just as FUBU felt confident it could take on fashion's major titans, the unthinkable happened. The 90's gangster rap cultural trend suddenly goes out of style with White America. And with it went the hip-hop fashion trend of extra baggy shirts and jeans. FUBU, finding itself out of favor in the mainstream fashion scene and lacking credibility with its original niche, was quickly devoured by its competitors.

Now the question is whether Mavi Jeans is on the same doomed path or if it will learn from FUBU’s mistakes.

Recommendations for Mavi

While Mavi’s success to date is respectable, they are by no means out of the woods. First and foremost, Mavi must take care not to hitch its brand to any trending fashion style. It doesn’t take a marketing genius to see that the idea of paying a premium for pre-tattered jeans is something society will look back on as being as ridiculous as when we used to hold up baggy jeans wider than most trash bags in the 90s (of which I am admittedly guilty). Instead, I would recommend the company double down on the “Mavi fits” brand identity by leveraging and expanding its use of technology to capture market research and identify the emergence and transition of fashion trends.

The “Mavi fits” slogan works as a double entendre. Mavi’s clothes are designed to fit your body, as well as your lifestyle. Considering the former, mass-producing clothes to fit all or nearly all body sizes is a risky proposition. Every article of clothing Mavi doesn’t sell eventually ends up in the discount bin. The more Mavi items end up in the discount bin, the less value their brand retains among their fashion-conscious customers.

If Mavi were to design its app to allow users to input their preferred measurements, they would have effectively created a massive database that tells them the exact quantity of different sizes they should produce and distribute to each of their locations. This would reduce Mavi’s manufacturing costs by allowing them to cut production of undesirable sizes and also protect Mavi’s brand by preventing items from one day ending up in the clearance bin.

The app also has major marketing implications that can allow Mavi to create products that fit customer lifestyles. Mavi’s app could incorporate an algorithm similar to what Pandora Radio uses, allowing their app to make style recommendations based on the user’s responses from a like/dislike button. This not only helps the customer find what they are looking for, but it also allows Mavi to observe how its customers are responding to its product line over time. This data would aid Mavi in deciding when to discontinue a particular product and test reactions to new design concepts by asking users to vote or rank particular items for an upcoming seasonal line.