Sass & Bide: An Australian Fashion Essay For Bold And Independent Women.

Question:

Discuss about the Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management.

The chosen company Sass & bide is mainly an Australian fashion label for women. Many Hollywood celebrities in more recent time have been seen worn this label. However, this company was established around 1990s, it was mainly founded by Heidi Middleton and Sarah-Jane Clarke, after they had begun selling customized jeans in a booth on London’s market known as Portobello Road (Sassandbide.com, 2018). They business actually succeeded in the market initially and so they returned to Australia in 1999, and in Sydney they expanded an underground following which guides them towards their first seasonal collection in the 2001, Mercedes Australian Fashion Week. However, their succeeding collections were displayed in the 2002 London fashion week. Moreover, they also initiated their collection in New York Fashion Week in 2003.

Their products mainly consist of highly designer clothing that is guided by the latest culture of fashion for the bold and independent women. Sass & bide collection mainly gains inspiration from the Love Culture Art to generate their unique brand style. Each of their collection mainly involve accoutrement, ready-to-wear, denims, leather as well as unique gallery pieces which is mainly defined by their commitment towards women of forever spirit associated to a revolutionary and free style of relaxation as well as enhancement. Therefore, their products mainly comprises of women dresses, jeans, tees, knitwear, jackets, pants, skirts and accessories (Craik, 2015). As per as their locations are concern they are situated in 45 locations in Australia & New Zealand. Apart from their stores, they also sell online and ship their products in UK, USA and NZ.

Sass & bide consumers are mainly those women who love to style themselves beautifully and are very much knowledgeable about the great brands in the market as well as about those directions which have not yet become the fashion trends. Their consumers are moreover those women who also values fun as well as can laugh at a feeling. In the present times leading celebrities like  Sarah Jessica Parker and, in more recent times, Madonna, Rihanna, Kate Moss, Beyoncé, Nicole Richie and Mila Kunis are the well known consumers of this fashion brand (Sassandbide.com, 2018).

The Australian textile, clothing or footwear industry encounters an undermined future in the light of modifying international trends. However, in Australia manufacturing has decreased drastically along with which management of the supply chain has also been organized differently (Bruzzi & Gibson, 2013). Therefore, because of this very few large clothing factories have persisted, while on the other hand, the small fashion designers or the entrepreneurs were found to have either emerging or at times thriving. Moreover, an evaluation of skills in this industry determines that many previous skills connected with this industry in Australia have been lost and the effect of new trends is yet to be appreciated fully.

Product Offerings

(Source: Carpenter & Lazonick, 2017)

Moreover, for the last five years it has been observed in Australia that fast fashion has made its way into the people’s wardrobes. Therefore, the fashion industry’s revenue is expected to expand annually for 21.5% over the five years to $1.8 billion (Carpenter & Lazonick, 2017). Along with the fast fashion trend in Australia, the consumers are also manifested to social media as well as online shopping to the latest fashion, new styles as well as the trends on demand. Therefore, with the changing fashion trend many brands including Sass & Bide in Australia is taking the world by storm and entering the international marketplace. International markets provide many opportunities to the designers in Australia as the key markets mainly include New Zealand, United Kingdom and USA. Thus, Sass & Bide has been immensely affectedby the fashion industry as well as trends in Australia.

The financial regulations of a country are among the most common political factor that affects any business. Australia’s fashion industry is among the safest destination for any business to invest. It has a stable political as well as regulatory environment, which is also open and progressive for the investors. Australia bestows their investors with confidence and certainty (Liu et al., 2013).

Australia is among the biggest capitalist economies in this world. Fashion industry is benefited mostly in Australia because it has strong as well as stable financial systems, open markets with few restrictions. However, for brands like Sass & Bide the affordable pricing strategy can guide theyfight off with few of the effects of low economic activity.

Australian has a unique fashion style and they mostly follow a casual approach. However, modification in the social trends can bring an impact on the demand as well as availability of the products by the fashion industry in Australia. Thus, the fashions brands have to keep in mind the social trends and responsibilities. Thus, brands usually do not enter new markets without doing preliminary research (Jegethesan, Sneddon & Soutar, 2012).

Technology is modifying everything internationally and so things are happening in a rapid rate in the spheres of communication, transportation or any other aspects of business. Fashion industry is much affected by technology from manufacturing to marketing or supply chain. Thus, Sass & Bide has been very much mindful at using technological power to its profit.

Sustainability is among the most important concerns in the internal businesses. Sass & Bide has also funded in sustainability by trying to making their stores 100% eco efficient by the year 2020. This will further help their stores to become energy efficient as well as to have better features of recycling (Cervellon, Carey & Harms, 2012).

The legal system of Australians is mainly based on the basic beliefs in the rule of law, independence of judiciary as well as justice. Thus, Sass & Bide’s focus is on the ethics as well as sustainability all over its business and its supply chain. They are also focusing in creating a brand imagine which is mostly ethical. 

In the Australian fashion industry the biggest competitors of Sass & Bide is Zimmermann Wear Pty. Ltd., Manning Cartell and Camilla And Marc. Sass & Bide has prosperously fended off the annexations of foreign retail giants like the fast fashion brand of Spain named Zara as well as top shop or online competitors like ASOS to publish a robust 48% hike in the total year’s net profit to $7.68 million. Moreover, it further owns the nation’s largest department store, which brought them the business of $72.3 million recently. However, since last August the share of Sass & Bide has fallen almost 50%, wiping more $600 million off to Myer’s market capitalism (Craik, 2015).

One of the major aspects is the gender towards which their products will be targeted at. Sass & bide is one of the leading fashion brands that has targeted its products mainly towards women. They have considered the fact that females are more fashion conscious than men. Women are very much eager to try out the brand new collections being launched by the fashion brands. Women somehow feel that wearing the latest and innovative fashionable outfits will also help in adding to their level of confidence (Sassandbide.com, 2018). 

The young and modern women are usually more attracted towards the new trends in fashion and they are very open towards accepting the latest innovations that are brought. They want to upgrade themselves along with time (Brito et al., 2015). However, it is seen that the old and traditional women are usually not very open towards adopting the new trends coming up in the market. As Sass &Bide is a considerably old company working from the year 1999, it has already won over the trust and loyalty of many old and traditional customers. On the other hand, they also keep on upgrading themselves with the latest trends in the fashion industry in order to attract the attention of the young customers as well. It is to suit their taste, that they deal in different kinds of accessories, clothes, scarves, paradise catcher, resort-17-accoutrement and many others. The paradise catcher and the resort 17 catcher are very good ways of attracting the young customers as the paradise catcher has a good range of bags and the resort 17 accouterment reveals a Brand new range of accessories for the young customers.

Australian Fashion Industry

One of the most important factors is the income level of the clients. It is a known fact that the clients with a higher level of incomes will be more fashion conscious than the ones with a low-income level. This is because the high-income level group customers are the ones who can easily afford the products with high prices whereas the low-income group customers cannot (Ani? & Mihi?., 2015).

The client base of this company mainly includes women of all age groups starting from the young college girls to the adult business executives as well. Thus, the decision-making style and the behavior of all the clients will surely vary from one another (Ani? & Mihi?., 2015).The adult women customers will look for something that they have been using since many years whereas the young customers, might be looking for some changes and innovations in order to keep themselves in pace with the changing times. 

Sass & Bide provides due attention to the lifestyles of their clients. As they sell products for women of different age groups and income groups, they also have to consider the kind of lifestyles led by them. The college girls will have a lifestyle different from the lifestyles of the businessperson. The college girls may try to shop before their colleges reopen (Sassandbide.com, 2018). Hence, Sass & Bide must take care of the fact that their latest arrivals for the college girls or for the young teens are released at a suitable time when the universities are closed for vacations. Similarly, the products designed for the working and the business executives, can be launched during any time of the year. The college girls will mainly look for the trendy and most innovative kinds of dresses like jumpsuits, jackets, pants, skirts, tops, shorts whereas the business women will like to go for some casual yet fashionable business or office wears like coats.

It has been  found in about 45 locations in Australia and New Zealand in places like premium boutiques, Myer concessions. However, they have also considered those customers who are living in distant regions and are unable to reach out to the physical store. In order to meet up with the needs of customers living in other geographic areas, they have started their online delivery system to UK, USA, and NZ (Dessart,Veloutsou & Morgan-Thomas.,2015).

The Primary market segment for Sass & Bide is the group of women having a good income flow and the ones belonging to (Brito et al., 2015). This is because only those customers having a good amount of income will be able to afford all the products of this company. Along with this, the lifestyle also matters a great deal for any fashion industry. Sass & Bide makes sure to suit the standards of living of all their clients. Their client base comprises of both adult business executives and also the young teenage college girls. Sass & bide has launched a large number of new brands of accessories in order to suit the needs of the young generation of girls. The young college girls will naturally decide to buy some outfit that will be suiting their purposes like going out to nightclubs. SPEAKEASY WINTER 17 is a newly launched brand that has been launched by Sass & Bide that brings a range of beautiful dresses that would suit the purpose of a nightclub outing (Sassandbide.com, 2018).

Political Factors Affecting the Business

The secondary market of Sass & Bide mainly comprises of the middle-aged women who are the office goers. Though the income of these women clients will be higher than the young and the college girls at the same time, they will be less open towards accepting any new trends in fashion (Sassandbide.com, 2018).

Sass & Bide pays due importance to the customers. They provide the customers with ample information through their online pages. The customers will be able to take their decisions after going thoroughly through all the details of the newly arrived products. They also have provisions under which the customers can demand an exchange if they change their mind with a particular product and want to get a new. They also give their customer’s full freedom to return back a purchased product if it is faulty or do not meet the customer's expectations (Sassandbide.com, 2018).

(Sources: Created by the Author)

Conclusion

Thus, to conclude this report it can be said that the chosen Australian fashion brand Sass & Bide that was established in 1990s is among the popular fashion labels in Australia and is worn by many Hollywood celebrities recently. The fashion industry has also finds its way into the international markets because of their emerging opportunities. Zimmermann Wear Pty. Ltd., Manning Cartell and Camilla And Marc are the biggest competitors of Sass & Bide in Australian fashion market. Moreover, they mainly target women with high-income levels so that they can afford their products. They provide an excellent service to their customers through their websites as well as stores. Thus, their customers are always updated regarding their products and can easily purchase and return if not satisfied. 

References

Ani?, I. D., & Mihi?, M. (2015). Demographic profile and purchasing outcomes of fashionconscious consumers in Croatia. Ekonomski pregled, 66(2), 103-118.

Brito, P. Q., Soares, C., Almeida, S., Monte, A., & Byvoet, M. (2015). Customer segmentation in a large database of an online customized fashion business. Robotics and Computer-Integrated Manufacturing, 36, 93-100.

Bruzzi, S., & Gibson, P. C. (Eds.). (2013). Fashion Cultures Revisited: Theories, Explorations and Analysis. Routledge.

Carpenter, M., & Lazonick, W. (2017). Innovation, competition and financialization in the communications technology industry: 1996-2016.

Cervellon, M. C., Carey, L., & Harms, T. (2012). Something old, something used: Determinants of women's purchase of vintage fashion vs second-hand fashion. International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, 40(12), 956-974.

Chouprina, N. V. (2014). Characteristics of «fast fashion» concept in the fashion industry. Fibres and Textiles (1) 2014 Vlákna a textile (1) 2014, 30.

Craik, J. (2015). Challenges for Australian fashion. Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management, 19(1), 56-68.

Dessart, L., Veloutsou, C., & Morgan-Thomas, A. (2015). Consumer engagement in online brand communities: a social media perspective. Journal of Product & Brand Management, 24(1), 28-42.

Jegethesan, K., Sneddon, J. N., & Soutar, G. N. (2012). Young Australian consumers’ preferences for fashion apparel attributes. Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management: An International Journal, 16(3), 275-289.

Liu, N., Ren, S., Choi, T. M., Hui, C. L., & Ng, S. F. (2013). Sales forecasting for fashion retailing service industry: a review. Mathematical Problems in Engineering, 2013.

Özer, Ö., & Zheng, Y. (2015). Markdown or everyday low price? The role of behavioral motives. Management Science, 62(2), 326-346.

Sassandbide.com. (2018). Meet The Stylists. [online] Available at: https://www.sassandbide.com/au/meetthestylists-fiesta2017 [Accessed 2 Jan. 2018].

Sassandbide.com. (2018). Our Story. [online] Available at: https://www.sassandbide.com/au/our-story [Accessed 2 Jan. 2018].

Sassandbide.com. (2018). Speakeasy. [online] Available at: https://www.sassandbide.com/au/lookbook/speakeasy [Accessed 2 Jan. 2018].

Sassandbide.com.(2018). Our Story.  Retrieved 3 January 2018, from https://www.sassandbide.com/au/our-story