The Melting Blog: An American Icon That Missed the Hip Hop Revolution

September 10, 2004

An American Icon That Missed the Hip Hop Revolution

The woes of jean maker, Levi's, are pretty well documented. Once an American fashion icon, the San Francisco-based apparel brand is now wallowing in the discount bins of your local mass merchandiser, most likely Wal-Mart. Moreover, they've finally buckled under pressure (the financial kind), and will be outsourcing the manufacture of their wares outside the U.S. Subcontracting issues aside, any kid trying to achieve any measure of hip street cred these days generally avoids 501's like they avoid country music and the confederate flag.

Funny, we've actually worked with the San Francisco-based apparel brand before to help them understand today's new multi-ethnic youth generation -- as an approach to restoring some of that hip lustre they've since lost once hip hop came onto the scene and swallowed up everything. Judging by the results, they're not pretty:

The company missed the urban jean revolution of the 1990s that favored the baggy look over Levi's more slim-tailored fits. Its response last year, the launch of "Type 1" jeans with big stitching and a bolder look, fizzled.

Facing what are among the most severe financial woes in its history, Levi's now is retailoring its clothing lines, trying to stem a 40 percent slide in sales since 1996. For fiscal 2003, the company posted a $349 million loss, offsetting the combined profit of four previous years.

The company is auctioning off its Dockers unit, which launched the khaki craze that dressed a dot-com generation. After years of coasting on its iconic image, Levi's now is pushing cut-rate jeans at discount retailers, for as low as $19. And in the latest symbolic blow, Levi's seven months ago closed its last U.S. factory.

My colleague David actually spent a number of years as a brand manager at Levi's, so I'm sure he'll weigh in with some perspective. But if I were Levi's (disclaimer: my personal opinion only), I would jettison the low-end, price-competitive, volume-driven strategy. It may offer an easy revenue stream, but it's no way for a one-time American brand icon to recapture any of its former glory. Selling off Dockers is a good start. Consumers once aspired to what Levi's represented: a certain rugged, American individualism (with a little maverick cowboy sensibility thrown into the mix). Going down the price-slashing discount wars route dampens the brand's integrity and is a course for suicide. It'll bring you the "heartland" market, but little else (and we all know that "urban" is where it's at).

Instead, Levi's needs to recognize what it represents and gradually scale up its operations to exploit its brand's retro-vintage possibilities. There are orange-haired Japanese hipsters I know who deliberately seek out vintage, used-and-faded 501's at garage sales and bargain bins and will pay top dollar for them. They sell these jeans at $200 a pop back in Japan.

See, they recognize there's something quintessentially cool -- a uniquely American kind of cool -- that comes from 501's back in their heyday. It's coolness reappropriated -- in both a nostalgic and postmodern sense. These sensibilities can be tapped if Levi's decides to re-launch and re-brand a retro-line for a whole new club-and-DJ-oriented generation, much in the same way that Puma resurrected themselves from the dead. In the case of Puma, the shoe-maker eschewed the sports-athletic end of the market -- already dominated by Nike, Reebok, New Balance -- and instead focused their niche in the fashion-conscious, sixteen-seasons-in-one-year, loft-dwelling demo. That formula helped them climb back from the bargain bins and into the forefront of cool.

It's not too late for you, Levi's.

(Oh, and it wouldn't hurt if a Kanye West spun a verse about you either)

Here's another good report on the jean maker in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Posted by thomas at September 10, 2004 12:44 PM | TrackBack