H&M reveals another exciting co-operation – Sonia Rykiel, the “Queen of Knits”, will be the next guest designer of the Swedish fashion chain. With her knitted wear, French designer Sonia Rykiel invented her own exceptional style, representing the Parisian chic in 1968 and still inspiring young women around the world.
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Beginning 5th December 2009 Sonia Rykiel will heat up the cold winter by launching her exclusive range of lingerie and accessories in 1.500 H&M stores worldwide. In case you can’t get hold of one of the selected pieces in your H&M nearby, and here comes the news, you even can go to one of Sonia Rykiel’s major boutiques around the world where the collection will be available as well. And that’s not all. On 20th February 2010 a Sonia Rykiel knitwear collection for women and girls will be launched in 250 H&M stores. Â
So only three weeks after Jimmy Choo will offer his exclusive shoe collection in 200 selected H&M stores (also see article), Sonia Rykiel will continue H&M’s highly successful co-operation approach with her range of lingerie and accessories. We’re excited to see how H&M’s marketing approach for both co-operations will look like. Â
On the long run, however, it remains to be seen if this is the right strategy to follow for the co-operating designers. By selling clothes off the shelf the exclusivity of premium fashion brands might get lost at some point, don’t you think?Â
Further information:Â
Sonia Rykiel teams up with H&M
Next H&M-Star: Sonia Rykiel (German)
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1 response so far
Very interesting post but i don´t share your worries about if it´s a good strategy or not. In my opinion the exclusivity of designer labels is mainly given by the price, design and quality of its products. On the other hand exclusivity is not the only purpose to premium labels, they obviously also do want to be well known and appreciated by many people. Otherwise they wouldn´t exist for too long. But exactly this seems to be the difficulty: how can you make your brand popular and well appreciated by many, when regarding their prices your products are only accessible by few?
Plus as we know from past designer & high street label co-operations, the items of these special collections are only sold in selected stores and in a strictly limited quantity. So if against these odds you manage to get you hands on one piece of this kind of collection, you are definetly part of a lucky few.
The adantages of such a strategy are quite evident to me, while high street labels can offer exclusivity to their costumers from time to time, designer labels can profit from their high popularity and at the same time whet the appetite of a whole new target group. Furthermore the regularity in which this kind of co-operations are established indicates that they have to be highly profitable for both collaborating companies.
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