Don't Compete - Choose Your Own Ring Instead

Chubbies - Instead of competing in the ring, they made their own ring

Name a more competitive environment than clothing? I'll wait...

Besides selling SEO and lead gen services over the LinkedIn (iykyk) selling your clothing brand is one of the most competitive spaces to establish yourself.You're not only going against big corpos who sell relatively quality products on high volume (Adidas/Nikes, Fast Fashion brands, sport elegant chains i.e. Banana Republic) but also influencer merch, category leaders (like Lululemon in yoga/athleisure), and much more.

How do you establish yourself and find your audience?

There's not that much innovation in clothing design after-all. What are you going to do - add another pocket under the armpit and call it UASS(TM) under-armpit-smartphone-storage?

The best chance you get is to find and align with your tribe?

Lululemon done it well - their core audience are smart, successful, and active women who are into yoga (and not so much into making their own granola bars). Their core customers are more than happy to drop $100+ on a par of beautifully designed, comfortable, and high performance yoga pants.

Harley-Davidson is a great example as well. H-D doesn't sell motorcycles. They sell freedom and independence.... and they own 21.1% of the market in the US.

But there's another company that nailed their customer market really well - meet Chubbies.

Chubbies leading product are shorts for men. But instead of focusing on the actual product, they focus on the customer.

Their target?

Bros.

BBQ-flipping, Superbowl-watching, beer-chugging, pool dive-bombing and tailgating dudes who just like to have fun doing bro stuff and couldn't care less about boring and fashionably-constriciting shorts. Nope, give me something fun and colorful where I feel good.All marketing was catered towards that person.

Their copy is awesome.

Check out these gems:

• Bacon for you thighs

• Life's too short not to wear short shorts

• We believe in weekends and Friday at Five

• The epidemic of UNCOMFORTABLE THIGHS needs to end. We're here to end it

Results?

• 50% year-over-year sales growth since the start

• Huge fan base: ~2M social media followers, 1.5m email list

• Dominating their own niche

If you're looking for a differentiation and competitive edge - first thing you need to do is to align with the customer.

Sometimes it's better not to compete in the bloody ring. It's better to create a new ring and be the first fighter in it.

3 Savage Tweets

Lol

All this talk about finding a niche. What do you think of Ferrari desinging a mini SUV? Lambo did it few years before with Urus with record-breaking sales:

If you ever wondered...

3 Wicked Songs

Stoner fuzz, Khruangbin-like grooves and a punk hitter from Viagra Boys (you gotta listen to it!)

What did you think of this one? I would love your feedback.

🤘🤘

d.