The Future of Fashion Retail: An Interview With Andreas Herr

**Patagonia has been on the forefront of transparency and sustainability long before the terms were in trend. Independent consultant, Andreas Herr found himself as the Senior Manager of Global Content Strategy at Levi Strauss & Co and as of recently the Director of Digital Marketing & Engagement at Patagonia. We sat down with him to talk about what comes next in this post-luxury world. Where owning a handbag for just the brand name has become less desirable for many and companies ethos are cherished. **

How would you define the term “new luxury” or even “post-luxury”?

It's the idea that people are buying brands that aren’t necessarily luxury brands, but have a bit more of a mission behind them. Ones, that are available at a lower price point. Not necessarily cheap – we’re not talking about fast fashion – but brands that settle in the middle, opposed to just leading with luxury and getting people to buy their brand for the sake of luxury.

Why do you think that it is important for brands to commit to radical transparency these days?

I think we’ve seen a shift in the whole market landscape within the last couple of years. There were times when we were interested in labels for the sake of luxury, for the sake of looking at labels. They represented a kind of vacuous world, where the only way people defined themselves was by how much money they were willing to spend on a particular product.

Fast forward. I’d say it started sometime after the economy tanked in 2009 ... I think that’s when people started to really reflect on those purchases and became eager to make decisions that were based on their heart and instinct, instead of purchasing based on image.

Many trends that happen within retail relate to what’s happening in larger society or the macro trends in finance or politics. All of a sudden people wanted to purchase brands that really reflected their values. It became more important for them to see brands that really make high quality products with a great purpose and mission behind them. They didn't want to be tricked into buying something that just appeals to your ego anymore.

In the past, brands could differentiate with, let’s say, a high standard of quality. Today that is expected. Do you think it’s going to be the same with transparency and sustainability?

I don’t necessarily think it’s a standard yet. When you first come out of the gate you establish yourself as a brand. You have to think about where you want to take your brand, how you want it to evolve over time and set yourself up for success. I really think it comes down to brands, having to find their “Soul”, whether they are young brands or whether they’re brands that lost their way a bit, but have been in the market for quite a few years. Brands have to find their centre and build confidence from that point, in order to create a truly authentic brand.

For a fast fashion brands like H&M, for instance, it is much harder to try to ride this ship and establish yourself as a quality leader, than it is for a brand that is already known for being a quality leader.

There’s still a lot of brands that have come out be somewhat of a hype machine, trying to build on coolness. Brands that aren’t built around core values about the environment or have no real purpose. But I don’t think that you can creating a real backbone for your brand with that. There’s nothing to grow from. You might be able to set some trends for a number of years, but there’s nothing that’s going to sustain your growth over the long term when you choose to take that path.

Do you think it’s actually possible to make that shift, for larger brands like H&M or even Louis Vuitton, with all their established production processes and retail channels?

I’m not sure if it is possible – or even interesting – for them. Brands of that kind have know how they established themselves and if they did so as a fast fashion and low cost leader ... I think that their business model is built around that and they likely have no real interest in trying to develop themselves into a quality player or a brand that touts itself as being sustainable.

If anything, I think it comes down to a certain level of transparency and trust between you and the consumer. If I’m a consumer and I’m taking a look at a brand like H&M and I start to see that they are making an effort to present themselves in a more sustainable way, I’m not going to give them any credit for that. They never have been sustainable and they never represented themselves like that. At that point, I’d think they would just be greenwashing and faking it. I think they’re better off just staying in their lane.

New luxury doesn’t necessarily mean expensive. It has to be affordable. How do you manage to keep products affordable when you’re sustainable and transparent?

I think that it’s definitely something you can manage to do. Look at what they’ve done at Patagonia when they first established their footprint chronicles. That was a very bold move in the market at the time, telling their customers “this is exactly where our product comes from”. They were opening up the curtains to give their audience a look behind the scenes – straight into their sourcing.

Fast forward roundabout 15 years and take a look at a brand like Everlane. They even take it a step further. Not only do they show where a product is being sourced, but they actually show you what their margin is. I think that really shows you the next level of transparency – what some brands are willing to undertake in order to cut through the clutter of all the competition out there. To me, those are the type of brands that have a great opportunity for growth, that’s what the audience out there is really looking for.

Imagine if Comme des Garçons or Louis Vuitton showed their audience what their mark-up for certain products actually was ... They’d probably turn straight away from them and refuse to buy their products, simply because they’d feel like they’re being ripped off. But that level of transparency is the move that modern brands, who truly want to establish themselves, are making.

When you’re doing business the transparent way you’re telling it all. The good and the bad. Has telling the bad ever backfired at you?

I wouldn’t necessarily say that it ever really backfired. I can think of times at Patagonia where we were transparent to the point of showing the negative side as well, and I think that in that case it has always been something that helped the company.

Every time that Patagonia decided to do something that would seemingly hurt the company, it ended up helping it. They’re able to come out at certain points and acknowledge that they have made a mistake or that perhaps their sourcing practices weren’t as good as they could have been. They made changes, they course corrected, they rectified it and they were honest about it.

Can you measure the success of transparency or is its effectiveness a question of belief?

I think that you can measure it in form of brand equity. At the end of each year you can get quite a feel for how loyal your customers are. If most of your efforts are rooted in being transparent, then I think that you can put forth certain brand equity measures that give you an idea if that strategy is successful or not.

In my opinion, it all comes down to loyalty. For example, if you’re getting written up in the New York Times you might see a spike in your business and collect new customers, then you can track those customers and you will get an idea: are they staying loyal to the brand? Are they really buying the brand because of the choices that you’ve made? Are they choosing to come back on a consistent basis and grow a relationship over time?

Growing relationships will always be more beneficial than running a flashy commercial that allows your sales to spike for a limited period of time. When the trend moves on to the next hot thing people just won’t come back to you.

How important would you consider being in dialogue with the customer?

I think that the customer demands that kind of interaction. Many brands have failed to put a focus onto it and are now retroactively turning around and trying to develop a proper dialogue. Basically trying to react to the constant thirst for information that dominates this market.

And we are talking all channels here, online and offline. Being in touch with your customer is continuously getting more and more important. The rise of content, storytelling, being in control of your narrative and putting real effort into shaping the outter perspective of the brand. All those things are really important to modern branding.

And it all should be in line with the physical experience, to create an actual relationship with the customer. From in-store experience to events or workshops. When the audience is becoming part of the physical brand experience, that’s where an emotional connection is created.

How important should a brands authenticity about trying to be transparent and sustainable be? Does the customer really care if you’re trying or are the actual results what counts most to them?

I would definitely say that the audience is smart enough to recognize when you make an authentic effort and create a value system that is worth supporting. Especially now that everyone is “going green”, just because it’s cool.

For instance, that’s why Patagonia can be differentiated from their competition so easily.
They have always been sustainable. It’s been the core of their brand from the very beginning and they always made that clear. That just doesn’t have anything to with being trendy, it’s about believing in what you do and doing it right. They made the shift to organic cotton in 1994, no one cared about green back then.

You just need to establish sustainable thinking and implement it into your core identity from the very beginning.

Your advice for retailers?

When you’re trying to develop a loyal fan base, integrity and trust are what matters.
However, keep in mind: integrity does not mean perfection.