Decoster is a luxury fashion brand with over 70 retail locations across China. Founded in 2000, Decoster’s contemporary designs and success led it to be recognized as one of the first Chinese designer brands.
The Brief
Like many retail brands in 2011, Decoster was facing the digital revolution unprepared. If it didn’t adapt, it would be quickly replaced. With China opening up to international competition, the pressure to evolve only became stronger. As the company was stuck in its old habits and past successes, I was employed to lead the transformation to a modern lifestyle brand. I headed a department team of 12 people as the Brand Creative Director.
What were the obstacles?
1. Looking Back Instead Of Looking Forward
‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ was the underlying mantra of the company. Past success created a complacent mentality which made employees very reactionary — change only ever took place by external force. There was reluctance to adapt to the new competitive retail landscape.
2. Company Culture Against Change
Being the first fully-foreign employee hired to change the company, understandably there was a great deal of resistance from long-time employees. Breaking down walls and earning trust was significantly more challenging than normal situations.
3. Everybody For Themselves
Due to the ‘cut-throat’ nature of the luxury fashion industry, management historically did not encourage collaboration between employees. Departments worked in isolation and built rigid structures within themselves. Working outside one’s designated role was not a natural occurrence.
What did I do?
- Marketing
- Brand Management
- Strategy
- Visual Merchandising
- Art Direction
- Store Engineering
- Runways
- Photoshoots
Section 1: Marketing
Communicating in a new voice to the next generation.
While the reality was that our core customers were in department stores, we needed to think ahead and start building excitement among the next generation of customers. With an intense focus on strong imagery, digital communication, and brand collaborations, Decoster took a bold step into the new retail landscape.
Runway & Press
Runway shows using models such as real grandmothers, mothers, and daughters. Exposure on Elle, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Grazia, and more. To drum up attention in the China market, there is still no replacement for impressive runways and big name press.
Marketing Campaigns
Decoster acted as a platform for forward-design by collaborating with up-and-coming designers new on the scene. Installations, pop-up stores, and a strong blend between photography and graphics design, led to dramatic increases in store traffic.
New Website & Social
With the market’s rapid adoption of new technologies, we quickly adapted all our customer touch-points to be mobile first (rare for its time). This included shifting all the social media efforts to WeChat, as that was the highest point of interaction between retail teams and customers.
Content Marketing
Traditionally, photoshoots were done for editorial mediums. With our mobile-first marketing strategy, we adapted our campaign work to be conceptually suited to the small screens, not big books. This meant shooting for GIFs, videos, behind-the-scenes, and other social content forms.
Section 2: Branding
New brand identity for a new direction.
In order to spark internal change in the company and to communicate to the new retail landscape, my department led the new branding initiative. With a focus on clean, comfortable, and forward-design, the Decoster brand was reinvented. Design was featured on Behance.
Blue
#223C76
Bleach
#F1F0EC
Brown
#90705C
Gray
#E1E0DC
Oyster
#ECE8DE
Beige
#BDA992
Visual Identity Guidelines
As consistency was paramount to success, comprehensive VI guidelines were created. In the 100-page book, everything was covered from standardised colours to production specs.
Brandbook
With the belief that branding starts internally before it succeeds externally, a brandbook was created. This tool was used to inspire and train the team to move towards the same future.
Section 3: Visual Merchandising
Closer integration between the retail and marketing.
Section 4: Management
Cultivating culture and systems for a more productive future.
Process & Systems
Setting up cross-department processes to create more effective work. Implementing new software to increase efficiency. Building templates for critical tasks to maintain high standards.
Training
Transforming the brand involved changing real behaviours in the workplace. To weave a new culture, we performed company-wide training and put into action new onboarding processes.
Data Tracking
Tracking performance and using data to make decisions was imperative. We set up systems to look at engagement across marketing channels and compared it with retail performance.
Section 5: Outcome
The main achievements that made a difference.
1. Historical highest revenue reached.
In January 2015, Decoster had reached its highest point in revenue. Ultimately, this achievement is owed to everybody company-wide, as it takes more than just exceptional marketing and great products to succeed. That being said, I’m glad to have been a contributing factor of that success.
2. Created a new productive company culture.
After years of failed attempts to get different departments to cooperate, I’m personally proud of the culture of collaboration that finally took root. Testimony of this was when different teams would proactively stay behind to help each other in times of need without being asked to — a scene that was extremely rare previously.
3. Successfully transformed the brand.
While many other local Chinese brands suffered to the international competition, I helped transform Decoster into a competitive designer brand. By taking a long-term, inside-out, and people-orientated focus, the results ultimately came into fruition with growing store locations and high recognition nation-wide.
“Kaye has always been a highly motivated individual. He is a very proactive problem solver that is not afraid of taking on big challenges and coming up with innovative solutions.”
Ziggy Chen — Owner & General Manager
Decoster