East Coast Lifestyle Case Study: Growing a Regional Brand to Global Success

On February 28, 2017, Alex MacLean was wrestling with Stella, his Mastiff Labrador mix puppy, at the flagship retail location of East Coast Lifestyle (ECL). It was 4:00 p.m. on a Tuesday, which meant that it was almost time to meet with his executive leadership team. The atmosphere at the head office was always light and easy-going, and playing with his dog in the office always seemed to help MacLean mull over strategic business issues. His latest struggle was fraught with opportunity and risk —he was considering stretching ECL beyond its regional identity. In 2013, MacLean founded ECL, a Nova Scotia -based apparel company that sold a range of products from T-shirts and hoodies to dog collars and baby onesies. The company had experienced exponential growth as a small business. Despite having operated for less than four years, ECL had already sold more than 500,000 products .1 Its product line was now available in 91 retailers across Canada and had been worn by many high profile celebrities, including singer Ed Sheeran, Nova Scotian hockey star Sidney Crosby, and members of the rap band Wu-Tang Clan.  MacLean also had the vision of making ECL a truly global brand by expanding into the United States before launching in Japan and Australia. While the U.S. Eastern Seaboard offered a massive market for lifestyle apparel, and offered synergies with ECL’s current positioning, the logistics of brand-building, distribution, taxes and tariffs, and revising ECL’s organizational structure were roadblocks for getting started. Plus, was it realistic to think that ECL could become an imported regional brand that locals were proud of, or was ECL already too mainstream and corporate to resonate with non-Canadians?  MacLean started the meeting: Lately, we’ve been trying to do everything launch new product lines, develop West Coast Lifestyle as a separate brand, and penetrate the U.S. market. I’m not convinced that our divided attention is working because we are not seeing enough progress fast enough. Perhaps we should choose one option for growth and focus on it. After two hours of protracted debate, MacLean still felt he was in the same position. He wanted to do everything, but he knew that choosing one strategy for the time being was likely the right thing to do. The real question was which one strategy to pursue, and more importantly, how to implement it and roll it out.

In January 2013, MacLean was a 21-year-old busines, Nova Scotia, a small student town with a population of less than 5,000. Along with eight other students, he was enrolled in a class called Venture Creation, where the goal of the course was to create a business plan for an invention. MacLean, who was rather pragmatic if not rebellious, thought , “Why would I create a business on paper when I can star t a real business?” With an $800 loan from his father and the idea that locals wanted to wear their maritime pride, he created East Coast Lifestyle. He bought 30 hoodies and screened them with the phrase “East Coast Lifestyle.” He then became active on social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, to create awareness about his start -up. He sold the hoodies on his front lawn—and sold out on the first day. He reinvested the profits to purchase 60 hoodies the following day, and began allowing consumers to pre-order to facilitate inventory management. By the end of the month, he had generated $3,000 2 in revenue. At the end of the semester, his professor was not overwhelmingly impressed with MacLean’s success—it was a business plan class, not a business class. MacLean decided to continue with ECL after the class had ended. During the summer of 2013, MacLean worked part-time at Atlantic Lottery and part-time on ECL, selling about 25 hoodies a week. He hired his first employee, Taylor Northey , as ECL’s creative director. ECL began diversifying its products by also offering T-shirts and tank tops. By late 2013, MacLean was approaching retail chains to carry his product line. Pseudio, a regional apparel retailer with 30 stores, was the first store to sell the ECL brand. One store manager took 10 hoodies initially and told MacLean that if he could sell those 10 hoodies, Pseudio would place them in stores across Canada. Pseudio sold out of the ECL hoodies in 30 minutes. That day , MacLean learned about his consumers’ price elasticity , when he realized that people were willing to pay an extra $10 in the store for the same product he was selling on his lawn. In May 2015, and made ECL his full-time job.

MacLean consistently talked about the distinctive character of ECL as being simple and universal—it was about being proud of where you are from. To understand East Coast pride, it was important to understand some of the history of the region. Historically, the major industries of the region were based on fishing, agriculture, forestry, and coal mining. For myriad reasons, including fiscal policy and investment decisions being driven by the needs of urban centres in Central Canada, the region entered a period of economic malaise in the 20 th century. To this date, the M aritime provinces remained one of the poorest regions in Canada, with lower average wages and lower property values relative to the rest of Canada. As a result, Maritimers tended to be ra ther humble, but still felt a tremendous amount of regional pride. Maclean understood these challenges as opportunities: “I’m proud of being from the East Coast, where oftentimes, we are the underdogs of Canada. People are often required to leave their home to find work.” With ECL, people could share this identity wherever they went, showing others where they came from and connecting with other people from “home.”