The Workwear Column
Carving out a new route P
atagonia is making a brave bold attempt to smash into the workwear market running off the back of its already successful world-renowned brand of professional outdoor clothing. You might well know Patagonia for arguably some of the best clothing in the world. Used by professional mountain climbers to ramblers globally, it’s trusted by the masses and is well known for its distinctive colourful logo. When you trust a brand you will continue to go back knowing you get value for money and no fuss when it comes to the fit and functionality.
Patagonia has built its brand through this platform, so when the team contacted me to tell me that they were now entering the workwear market I was sceptical about how these guys would fare in such a heavily dominated market. To make it in this industry you have to do something different and making a product similar to the status quo these days just won’t cut it. You have to offer the customer something else, something that resonates with them and that will engage them enough to try the product out and then if it’s true to its word, come back for more.
You will no doubt know that the workwear market is dominated by the heavyweight workwear titans, Dickies and Carhart across the USA and in Europe, also brands such as Snickers, Dewalt, Caterpillar and alike are making huge leaps in technical workwear apparel.
Excitement and intrigue I was excited to see what Patagonia had to offer but at the same time intrigued by the brand’s approach to this marketplace, knowing from personal experiences how hard it is to bring a new brand to market. When I owned a retail store we were bombarded daily by new and existing brands contacting us to see if we had space in our product range to take on new lines. My issue from this perspective as a retailer is that adding a new brand to your
| 18 | August 2022
product range can dilute the sales for other brands you stock. This increases your capital investment in new products and is taking a gamble to see if it sparks any new sales. If and when you do take on new products, you usually will have to do this at the expense of another line of products. We do however all need new products to talk about and entice our customers to spend. It’s the progression of products that keep the wheels of industry moving. One such recent invention that caused a huge shift in workwear was around 2018 with the introduction of flexible fabrics, however, this was one of these developments in workwear that was tricky to get right. It’s finding the fabric sweet spot with durability and flexibility, the buzzword is still flexible and I would say the largest portion of our customers who were looking for workwear still requested this as the main feature in their new purchases. What was great was that when we did have customers asking
In a new series of articles for Printwear & Promotion, Adrian Burton of Ask Ady will take a look at various aspects of the workwear industry. This month, he provides insight into Patagonia’s move into the workwear market.
for this as the main feature it gave us an opportunity to get them to try a new brand or product line.
However, with fabrics, if you make it too strong and resistant to abrasion, then it can tend to feel restrictive and not breathable. If you want more flexibility, you could make the fabric too thin and it will rip or rub through easily.
Cutting-edge fabrics
Jodie Burton modelling the Women’s Iron Forge Hemp Canvas Barn Coat
However, now that the premium brands have developed these cutting-edge fabrics, the technology is now splitting the workwear industry. The high-end development teams of the corporate giants are taking strides apart from the smaller manufacturers that are trying to keep up with the accelerated changes that are engineered and used now as standard from the premium brands. When I look now at the workwear market from just a few years ago, there was a clear definition between it and professional sportswear, but now as so many companies own multi-brands, the crossover of material technology is now creating a new hybrid breed of clothing. I am sent daily new products to review and assess and I am increasingly stunned at the quality of the products and the materials used from when stretch was first introduced to now. Workwear is now a hybrid mixed product that takes on the engineered fabrics from top-end sportswear to materials used by the armed forces. These coupled together now make for some truly inspiring products. I was keen to see the materials that had been used by Patagonia since it is truly dominant in the professional clothing industry. I guess though as expected, the brand has created its own route to market, and in no way has it followed the trend of the fabrics being currently used. Instead, Patagonia has designed its own, forged from hemp material, working with natural products that were once used for 10,000+ years and are believed to have been the first true fabric ever used for clothing. Patagonia is using this, now
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