Takeaways
Customers have a keen sense for brand authenticity, sharpened by the deluge of advertising to which we're all subjected.'Bugatchi' has Italian-luxury-sounding components (Gucci, Versace, Armani, etc.) but sounds obviously 'not right' next to those authentic brands.
Bugatchi positions itself as luxury, but its merchandising today (on sale in the Nordstrom Rack sock section) paints a different picture. Improving the perceived quality of your brand is INCREDIBLY hard once it has been anchored by an initial experience.
You can’t become a luxury brand just by claiming you are - an authentic story takes time to build. BUT it seems like Bugatchi’s strategy might actually be more savvy; aiming artificially high so that they can target less discerning shoppers somewhere in the middle of the price range.
I must first confess: I only go clothes shopping about once every 2 years, and it takes all of Jess’ energy to have me not deck out the entirety of my wardrobe at Uniqlo. So, I am no Fashionista, but I do have a keen eye for positioning and branding in the fashion world. And, I did watch the trailer for House of Gucci twice while researching this post.
Last time I ventured out to re-clothe myself we were browsing the aisles at Nordstrom Rack (kind of a mid-range outlet store) and came across some socks bearing a fashion brand I’d never seen before:
My initial reaction was that Bugatchi seemed like a kind of…made-up name? Something a text-generating AI might create if you asked it to generate a luxury, Italian-y fashion-house sounding name:
( Bugatti + Versace + Armani ) x Gucci = Bugatchi ?
The uncanny feeling was no doubt reinforced by the fact that we'd never seen Bugatchi in the news, or on an ad, or on a celebrity red carpet (awareness marketing is important).
And it was compounded by the fact that Bugatchi is eerily close to an actual fake fashion brand in Zoolander; silliest of fashion movies:
It was funny at first, but there was something fascinating about the brazenness of Bugatchi - a pair of $15 socks in an airless strip-mall outlet store unashamedly pretending to the heights of the high luxury European brands. What was going on?
Made in Italy, via Montreal and Florida
A quick Google search showed me that I was not the first to start down this path:
In luxury fashion - so it goes - if you have to ask how much it costs, you probably can’t afford it.
So it is with the value of your brand - if you have to ask whether a brand is luxury then No, you’re probably not dealing with a storied European fashion house.
In fact, according to Bugatchi’s brand page, the brand was launched in Montreal in 1981, and LinkedIn indicates that today it operates out of Florida and New York.
Launching just under a decade after Armani and Versace, it seems that the founders chose ‘Bugatchi’ to ride the coat-tails of these legitimately Italian luxury brands.
So...no European high fashion pedigree, but I was curious about the company’s positioning, to see the customer promise behind the Bugatchi brand. Luckily I didn’t have to dig too deep to find it:
‘Wardrobe essentials’ reminded me of how lipstick is often positioned - a luxury-feeling purchase that is nevertheless affordable to the consumer - something you might buy on impulse to treat yourself.
And in a short interview interview with Cecile Revah - CEO of Bugatchi - this concept of luxury/essentials is reiterated - Cecile describes the Bugatchi customer as “the man who wants fashion, quality and comfort without forfeiting his own style”.
So, is Bugatchi a maker of real luxury clothes whose brand is being hampered by low awareness and poor merchandising, or is it making average quality clothes and pretending to a higher status than it deserves?
In a very recent interview with Bugatchi’s new Creative Director (Anthony Keegan) he claims the former; that the company works with the best fabrics and manufacturers available, and that what the company is missing is a coherent story and a way to get that message out.
When Anthony is asked about Bugatchi’s competitors, though, the luxury brand narrative loses its way:
“We have competitors in different spaces. You could say there’s a Theory consumer who buys Bugatchi, also Lululemon as it expands its consumer base beyond athletic wear to a performance-driven wardrobe.”
Theory shirts are nice enough - and Lululemon has its own very dedicated fanbase for its expensive athleisure - but neither is really high fashion or luxury. And elsewhere on Bugatchi’s marketing materials, other branded terms like OohCotton™ slip in, indicating in that indicate Bugatchi might be more for mainstream ‘comfort’ than luxury.
Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land in Nordstrom Rack
Most likely what is a happening here is a deliberate choice, rather than a branding mistake by Bugatchi, or hopeless naïveté about whether they are truly a luxury fashion powerhouse.
A deliberate choice in the 80s to associate themselves by name with the Armanis and Versaces of the world afforded the brand just enough credibility to get on the shelves of mainstream retailers like Nordstrom, which they were able to parlay into ongoing distribution and reliable sales.
Without an intrigue-filled European backstory, high brand awareness or uniquely high quality clothing, Bugatchi lacked any of the many components required to build a world-class luxury fashion brand over time. Presumably, they never had the resources to invest in better marketing or more expensive manufacturing.
So instead, their strategy took aim at a kind of ‘everyday luxury’ segment of the market; selling nicer-than-basic shirts and socks to people who like the idea of expensive-sounding branded things, but either can’t or won’t splash out for high-end designer clothes.
Online and in real life, we live in a non-stop deluge of media and advertising. This means that over time our awareness of brands is shaped, as is our subconscious reaction to them when we see their products in real life (Ferrari = luxury, Walmart = cheap, Uggs = too controversial to go there).
This means that when we see a fashion brand we're unfamiliar with, the [File Not Found] reaction in our brain causes skepticism, and we rely on our context or environment to judge what we're looking at. For Bugatchi, this is where they rely heavily on their distributors - shoppers who have a strong affinity for a brand like Nordstrom, and associate it with luxury, might be convinced to buy the Bugatchi shirt. Others, who either think less of Nordstrom, or know more about the fashion world in general, might pass. As long as they are leaning on other brands, it's unlikely that Bugatchi will be able to elevate their own.
In the end, you can’t make yourself the next Versace just by naming yourself Bugatchi, but there's definitely room for you to be Bugatchi.