Business Model Innovation at Wildfang

1 Description of the situation

The case study “Business Model Innovation at Wildfang” covers the story of the startup com- pany Wildfang and its problems. The company was founded by Emma Mcilroy and Julia Pars- ley in 2013. Wildfang is a menswear-inspired fashion brand, described as “the home of tomboy styles and culture” (Mathwick, 2017, p. 1).

To build a brand which the customers could relate to, the founders interviewed prospective customers to get insights into their clothing tastes, shopping patterns etc. They also observed who influenced their taste and found that most of the prospective customers were following the same people on social media. The founders came across a demand of the prospective customer that they have felt as well. To make the brand well-known within the target audience, they used influencers they could relate to. Due to this opportunity, they were able to grow organically – there used less paid media than they earned by using influencer marketing (Mathwick, 2017, p. 2 f.).

Wildfang targets different types of women such as footballers, judges, teachers or rockers. These women share nothing but a set of values around the feminine independence and strength and they all belong to the target audience of Wildfang (Mathwick, 2017, p. 6). The customer groups of Wildfang vary in their shopping patterns. There are so-called ‘Core-Loyalists’ who are familiar and highly engaged with the brand, walk-in shoppers who are excited about fashion and also fashion-engaged online-shoppers. There are also so-called ‘Wildfang Exclusives’ which are 15 % of the customer base and spend more than 1000 $ per month (Mathwick, 2017, p. 8 f.).

The case study handles the current challenge of how to expand the company and describes different approaches which will be explained further in following chapters.

2 Main Issues

2.1 Problems and challenges

The main problem of the case study is how to expand Wildfang. There are two different possi- bilities. The challenge for Mcilroy is to decide which one is the best for the company and the target audience but also has to meet the investor’s opinion and taste. The first approach is the so-called ‘Bricks and Clicks’ (B&C) method. ‘Bricks and Clicks’ is a combination of distribu- tion in physical stores and online shops. ‘Bricks’ stands for physical stores and ‘Clicks’ for online shops (Collins Dictionary, 2017). The second approach is a multisided platform which would be linking products and services of other brands to the Wildfang community (Mathwick, 2017, p. 1). Both approaches have their advantages and disadvantages. Thus, the decision be- comes a challenge for the company.

Before making a decision which approach is most appropriate for Wildfang, it is important to know the company and its environment. First of all, it is important to know the marketing en- vironment of the company which are actors and forces outside marketing which affect the com- pany’s ability to build a relationship with the target audience (Kotler & Armstrong, 2012, p. 66 ff.). Competitors of the company could be e.g. Urban Outfitters or collections of other bigger brands. However, the fact that Wildfang only offers one type of style makes the company unique. Other brands might offer collections that are similar to the ‘tomboy’ clothes but Wild- fang’s approach is much easier for customers. Thus, Wildfang does not have big competitors in this area. Moreover, they have a well-defined target audience: women who are independent, self-confident and have shared attitudes and role-models. They are also excited about fashion and like menswear-inspired clothes.

Furthermore, a SWOT analysis is important to look into the company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (Kotler & Armstrong, 2012, p. 53). This method analyzes internal and external factors of a company (Bruhn, 2003, p. 77). One of the company’s strengths is that the clothes only have one style – menswear inspired fashion. Thus, their target audience have the same needs and wants: they need clothes and want menswear-inspired fashion and a community with people who have the same attitude. A weakness of the company is that their idea could be replaceable. An opportunity is that ‘tomboy’ fashion is a social trend which exists for many years but is very present at the moment. Another opportunity is that Wildfang does not have direct competitors that have the exact same offer as they do. Threats are that the demand for menswear-inspired fashion could decrease which means that the niche they are in could become smaller than it is at the moment. Another threat could be low-price competitors.

2.2 Alternative actions and analysis of these actions

As mentioned before, there are two different models for the expansion of Wildfang: the ap- proach ‘Bricks and Clicks’ and the multisided platform (MSP).

B&C is a combination of online and offline distribution. The main aspect of this approach is the possibility for customers to order, pick up and return purchases either online or offline in stores. The company would concentrate on expanding the private label either with in-house designers or collaborations with existing clothing labels (Mathwick, 2017, p. 9). This business model is the one they have been using during the last three years and have experienced