Prada : What Went Wrong?

[Lola701]

Lol! Another article about Prada and always the same analysis...
Maybe they should come on TFS to really see what they are doing wrong.
Digital this, digital that...It’s not like their ships are full. This false narrative that you have to have everything to digital is pointless...

 

[dior_couture1245]

“It took months and months,” he said. “We had to show some employees how to use smartphones. We had to train people on how data could be used to improve our business. But they love Prada and want it to thrive and now have an understanding of what we have to do. I am young and I am positive: if I wasn’t, I wouldn’t be able to do this job.”

This is sad. And you wonder why brands are all so soulless now...because you’ve plugged people who once used their brains into a smartphone, expecting everything to be solved because now they have access to a spreadsheet on their phone?

 

[Mutterlein]

“It took months and months,” he said. “We had to show some employees how to use smartphones. We had to train people on how data could be used to improve our business. But they love Prada and want it to thrive and now have an understanding of what we have to do. I am young and I am positive: if I wasn’t, I wouldn’t be able to do this job.”

This is sad. And you wonder why brands are all so soulless now...because you’ve plugged people who once used their brains into a smartphone, expecting everything to be solved because now they have access to a spreadsheet on their phone?

Considering how much media and product consumption is done on smartphones... if you have people in the company who don't know how to use them, you're in serious trouble.

It's like if it's the 1950s and a company needs to advertise on tv but they don't even know how to change the channel on a tv set. How do they expect to compete in that domain? They obviously have no idea how to speak or interact with the customer.

They were shockingly slow to digital. But it doesn't matter if you have an omnichannel experience, a 360 strategy, influencer campaigns, bite size, snack size, or meal size digital content...whatever... if your brand is out of touch and your product is undesirable it won't do anything for you.

I believe, at the core, they need a major adjustment to their brand marketing strategy and their product development, namely the creative. They need better storytelling, they need stronger design leadership. Get some top level design directors to work under Miuccia and overhaul the product range. Get a new agency to handle their their campaigns. They might need to rethink their PR, too. Pay they them whatever they ask for.

Oh. And they need to hire a god damn chief of diversity for christ sakes so that things like those racist as hell monkey keychains don't happen again. They were the last straw for me, so despicably and blatantly racist I swore the brand off forever.

 

[GivenchyHomme]

And they need to hire a god damn chief of diversity for christ sakes so that things like those racist as hell monkey keychains don't happen again. They were the last straw for me, so despicably and blatantly racist I swore the brand off forever.

After the keychain debacle they’ve really pushed for more diversity. The casting of the shows is more diverse than any other brand without looking forced. They’ve also brought in outside help. I can see why the keychain may have angered people, but it wasn’t intentional. It just proved how clueless they were. They’ve made amends and are working on it. That’s admirable.

Prada announces the Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Council

 

[Mutterlein]

After the keychain debacle they’ve really pushed for more diversity. The casting of the shows is more diverse than any other brand without looking forced. They’ve also brought in outside help. I can see why the keychain may have angered people, but it wasn’t intentional. It just proved how clueless they were. They’ve made amends and are working on it. That’s admirable.

Prada announces the Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Council

That is all well and good but it’s a bit of a placebo. Makes a lot of noise but doesn’t actually treat the issue. They can sign on as many unofficial brand ambassadors of color as they want but it won’t change the company culture. They need someone in-house who is part of the day to day.

 

[Mutterlein]

Critics Love Prada. Shoppers Haven’t. What Now?

One of the most influential luxury brands of modern times has not sold well in recent years. But there are signs of a comeback.

By Elizabeth Paton
Sept. 18, 2019

Like moths to a flame, 800 of the most powerful people in fashion are expected swarm to a former gin distillery on the southern fringes of Milan on Wednesday afternoon. They will bat their wings at the doors of the Fondazione Prada, the contemporary arts complex masterminded by Miuccia Prada and the regular runway venue for the brand powerhouse that bears her last name.

The likely reception for her spring 2020 collection? Rapturous applause.

One of the most anticipated events on the fashion week calendar, the Prada show has been hailed among the top 10 of the season by American Vogue for as long as the magazine has run such rankings. In 2013, the British critic Alexander Fury said Mrs. Prada’s ugly chic frocks “have influenced the way entire generations of designers create clothing.” For years, the entire front row would tote matching Prada bags, seeded among them by the brand, underscoring Mrs. Prada’s status as one of the most powerful and admired women in the fashion business.

And yet, in late 2013, after almost three decades of commercial growth and despite glowing reviews about “glamour that got under your skin” (The New York Times) and “resounding repudiations of milquetoast fashion” (Financial Times), financial cracks began to show.

annual profit fell 28 percent to 451 million euros ($498 million today), after a slowdown in China and heavy brand investment. The next year it was down an additional 27 percent; another 16 percent in 2016 and another 7 percent in 2017.

posted its first annual increase in revenue in five years. That led to the Hong Kong-listed Prada losing $864 million in market value on a single day in March after investors were rattled by slowing Chinese demand.

What exactly has been going on? Is Prada destined to become a brand where business woes eventually all but eclipse a powerful creative ability to foretell the Next Big Thing in fashion?

After all, in 2017 Mrs. Prada herself announced: “I don’t want to be judged by sales. My life is so much more important than sales. We’re not really a commercially driven company.”

Nevertheless, Prada has been trying to reverse its slide almost since the downturn began — and recently there have been signs of a comeback.

Marchesi pastry business.

Matchesfashion.com said Prada was consistently in its top 10 brands when stocking women’s wear and men’s wear, with customers’ appetites growing in recent seasons.

According to its fashion buying director Natalie Kingham: “Prada has always been very covetable. Now there are a new generation of fans in addition to the longstanding fans of Mrs. Prada and the brand.”

The e-commerce aggregator Lyst said that online searches for Prada had increased by 156 percent this year. And the luxury consignment company the RealReal said Prada was the fourth most-searched brand on its platform. Still, the jury is still out on whether the turnaround can work.

“I believe Prada is doing a lot to improve and at one point, the results may come. But growth continues to be a challenge,” said Luca Solca, a luxury analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein. “It is a beautiful brand run in a rather idiosyncratic way, though that was the case even things were booming.”

Mr. Solca added that the share price had continued to “yo-yo up and down — but mostly down,” as investors dithered on whether they believed the turnaround was gaining traction, especially given that a weakened renminbi and social unrest in Hong Kong led to jittery demand from China, where Prada was still improving its retail operations and product assortment.

“Of course investors want to believe in Prada — it is one of the most iconic names in the business,” said Mario Ortelli, managing partner of the luxury consultancy Ortelli & Co. “But in the short term they can be nervous when its performance is so volatile and offset by the booming success of rivals like Gucci and Louis Vuitton.”

In a world where luxury brands have been corporatized and structured, Prada has long had some unusual business practices.

The senior Mr. Bertelli met his wife in the late 1970s when she was determined to take her family business’s products into the modern age, and Mrs. Prada has always said it was he who pushed the group’s ambitions forward. In the 1990s, as it entered new markets and product lines, Mr. Bertelli exasperated rivals by making inexplicable business decisions that somehow worked out.

New Yorker profile noted in 2004. Despite growing scrutiny recently around the company performance, Mr. Bertelli has continued to make heavy investments in areas like manufacturing (a new 90,000-square-meter, or almost 970,000-square-foot, factory in Tuscany opened in 2015) and in Prada suppliers to secure control of the group’s supply chain. When asked why the company had stumbled, however, he kept his thoughts close to his chest.

“I would not say we made oversights. Rather there was an underestimation of the speed at which the market was asking us to make some changes,” the senior Mr. Bertelli wrote last week in an email, acknowledging the company’s foot-dragging when it came to the digital space. “For instance — digital transformation. Once we became aware of the need to promptly react, we stepped up our pace, rapidly caught up and bridged the gap.”

Sales today, he continued, were up across all geographies — with the exception of Hong Kong — reflecting a renewed focus on product and merchandising.

Looking back to past hits appears to have been key to Prada reclaiming relevance. Alongside new wins like the $2,500 sellout Sidonie shoulder bag, several Prada signatures like Hitchcock-style knee-grazing skirts, chunky shoes and jersey T-shirt dresses with a contemporary twist have returned to the catwalk.

sports and streetwear (and the related and increasingly important millennial consumer).

The company’s digital shake-up is being spearheaded by Lorenzo Bertelli, who joined the family business 18 months ago, and was also behind the initiative to replace the nylon in its supply chain with a sustainable version by 2021.

The younger Mr. Bertelli conceded in a telephone interview that Prada had not been quick enough to see how the internet would upend the industry. But he said he was optimistic about the company’s future, and he stressed that much of the hard work had already been done. His biggest challenge, he said, had been in getting to know the company culture.

“It took months and months,” he said. “We had to show some employees how to use smartphones. We had to train people on how data could be used to improve our business. But they love Prada and want it to thrive and now have an understanding of what we have to do. I am young and I am positive: if I wasn’t, I wouldn’t be able to do this job.”

Then there are the complexities of working with parents.

“Sometimes it can be a bit strange or harder, but generally it has been wonderful and it makes me happy to be doing it,” he said.

As for his mother, in the days before her spring 2020 ready-to-wear show in Milan, Mrs. Prada — a woman who made her fortune on looking forward and challenging the norms of fashion — sounded sanguine.

“What could be new? What is not obvious? That has always been an obsession, since I was young. You progress and learn more by going against what you know, which is why when I do a show I don’t take the idea of failure into consideration,” she said, citing women and their differences, both internal and among one another, as another core inspiration.

“Of course, I am interested in why people buy things, but I can only listen so much to the consumer because we have so many different types who like our company so you cannot listen to everyone,” she said.

“People always say: ‘Why did you want to become big?’ I never wanted to become big. I want to be in touch and curious about people, politics, cultures, countries. If I do that, then I think I am doing my job right.”

NY Times

What the writer fails to realize is that 70% of fashion journalism is about blowing smoke up the reader's @$$ to appease advertisers and that Prada essentially paid for their spot on the top 10 list all those years. Critics and reporters can say anything but it's the buyers and the customers who whose verdicts really matter and they spoke a somewhat different story.

 

[RaisinBoy]

There's a rumor that Prada is collaborating with Adidas on a sneaker release that should be out very soon.

If that is true, I will probably lose the last grain of respect I have for the brand.

 

[dior_couture1245]

It’s so over for Prada.

They’ve debased themselves so much over the last several years that I just don’t foresee a recovery...at least not for a very long time.

Even so...the whole thing becomes so tainted. When you build a consistent reputation for high levels of sophistication, to then, after a good two decades, begin to pander to the lowest common taste level, the whole legacy becomes spoiled in a way because you have to wonder...how genuine were you all along? Or if you were genuine up until this point, why so eager to sell out? Not a good reflection of character of Miuccia as a designer. I’ve lost respect for her, and now find her intellectualizing explanations of her recent collections...which were once a fascinating insight into her mind...I now find them to be exhausting and phony. I mean...there’s absolutely no way I’m going to be able to take seriously any reasoning or complex thought process that lead her to that Frankenstein collection, for example.

Globalism takes another victim.

 

[RaisinBoy]

It’s so over for Prada.
Globalism takes another victim.

I agree with your post completely and if the Prada Adidas thing is real (which I believe it is), it could really mean the beginning of the end of the brand. (I, for one, think their business is still sustainble at this point.)

But I wouldn't blame globalism on Prada's fall. If they hadn't been so greedy in the 2000s and early-2010s, they could have a private company now that doesn't have to air all its failures. You can operate hundreds of stores globally, have digital presence and be relevant even when you're private. They wouldn't have to chase every stupid trend and instead do their thing and wait for the right moment to emerge again as a trendsetter, which is something I believe Miuccia was trying to do with the women's SS2020 collection. Mind you, the 2020s are going to be very bourgeois.

Also, I can't shake off the feeling that since Miuccia's son joined the company, the whole brand got even worse.

 

[Pricciao]

Why the 2020s are going to be bourgeois?

 

[Benn98]

Also, I can't shake off the feeling that since Miuccia's son joined the company, the whole brand got even worse.

That's not how they're spinning it though. It's all 'new energy, fresh point of view', lol.
Still too soon to tell, I reckon.
In his defense and from a marketing pov, the brand is back on the streetwear hype list and the Asian market's 'must-have' lists again, which would explain why they'd jump in bed with Adidas. They want stay there, seemingly.

 

[gazebo]

Why the 2020s are going to be bourgeois?

Because the 10's were so street.

 

[GivenchyHomme]

If you guys can’t ride with Prada through the tough times then you were never fans at all. Don’t get me wrong, I agree with everything that’s been said. I too greatly dislike the the image they’ve presented of themselves over the last few years, but that’s not reflective of the entire brand. Unfortunately, that will ultimately be her undoing. The sad truth is we live in a superficial time. Prada as a brand is legendary, but no one cares about the past. It's all about what's presented right in front of us. Just look at what happened with Celine, with a snap of Hedi's fingers Phoebe was instantly erased. Now it's all about Hedi. The same goes for Dior, Givenchy, and Balenciaga. Their histories are rich and luxe, the total opposite of today. Where they succeed is their marketing. The products are bland and mediocre, but they are heavily marketed to perfection. It's the right song for the moment. Were Kering and LVMH sing, Prada screams hysterically. They've put all their eggs in one basket. You simply can't market bad products. The Frankenstein collection was a lukewarm offering with nothing desirable to sell. Was the publicity even worth it? They can't be followers, it's not what the brand is. They grew into a mega brand by remaining completely original. They have all the ingredients for success, but no recipe to go off of. Prada is stuck in limbo. They either need to tone it down and market themselves strategically, or start innovating again. Instagram, blogs, and influencers are great for 5 minutes, but what comes after that?

 

[Melancholybaby]

Desperately grasping for relevance

 

[jeanclaude]

I expect Prada for H&M in the near future...

 

[RaisinBoy]

I actually thought it was just a rumor given how the 2020 collections and campaign look.

Also, it's pretty cynical from Prada to upload this on Instagram right after those sustainability posts...

 

[Benn98]

Prada x adidas Unveil Details About Their New Sneaker Collab, Arriving This December

• By Heather Snowden in Sneakers
• 1 hour ago

After officially confirming the collaboration yesterday, Prada and adidas have unveiled new details about the project. In a joint statement shared with Highsnobiety, the two brands reveal they are joining forces for a long-term collaboration, with the first joint sneaker dropping this December.

The project’s aim is to “investigate the realms of heritage, technology and innovation — and to challenge conventional wisdom through unexpected strategies.” It will draw from both brand’s archives and specifically combine their joint heritage in sport, from Prada’s Luna Rossa sailing gear to adidas’ innovation in sport.

The first release will include two limited-edition styles for men and women, which will be made in Italy by Prada. The brands also promise the release of new Luna Rossa sailing footwear, to be unveiled in 2020.

Prada confirmed the unexpected “Prada for adidas and adidas Originals” sneaker collab yesterday. Posting a teaser shot to Instagram, the luxury fashion house revealed its link-up via a simple shot of two adidas sneaker boxes inside a Prada bag. The image already hinted at a two-piece sneaker collab, one performance pair and one set of adidas Originals.
Now the rumors of an “adidas Prada Sailing” shoe that have been whispered about for the last few weeks have finally been confirmed. And as Prada and adidas revealed in their joint statement, we don’t have to wait too long for this release — “the journey begins soon.”

As always, more information will come as we get it.

Highsnobiety

 

[dior_couture1245]

“[To] investigate the realms of heritage, technology and innovation — and to challenge conventional wisdom through unexpected strategies.”

Wow. Miuccia can shove that quote right back up her ***.

 

[Benn98]

I reckon this is all the Prada Prince probably forcing his parents to 'get with the times' in a move which Virgil Abloh would applaud. The entire collab is basically the brand making amends and courting the streetwear set because one of the main reasons why they're not 'relevant' was because of lack of street cred. Hence Highsnobiety and Hypebeast getting first-hand releases before everyone else.

In the immortal words of Piccioli:

I will say Valentino is a beautiful brand, but being beautiful today is not enough. I think you have to be relevant for the moment, but cool is a difficult word. If you try hard to be cool, you will never be cool. My children never talk about coolness. You’re cool or you’re not cool. You don’t have to try.

 

[Lola701]

I reckon this is all the Prada Prince probably forcing his parents to 'get with the times' in a move which Virgil Abloh would applaud. The entire collab is basically the brand making amends and courting the streetwear set because one of the main reasons why they're not 'relevant' was because of lack of street cred. Hence Highsnobiety and Hypebeast getting first-hand releases before everyone else.

In the immortal words of Piccioli:

I will say Valentino is a beautiful brand, but being beautiful today is not enough. I think you have to be relevant for the moment, but cool is a difficult word. If you try hard to be cool, you will never be cool. My children never talk about coolness. You’re cool or you’re not cool. You don’t have to try.

The irony...He is trying too hard to be cool...
Undercover/Valentino...