More than ever major fashion retailers are facing the challenge of creating authentic private-label products and bringing more revenue through sales. Follet the largest campus store operator in North America was looking to drive more revenue and develop private-label brands that are unique to the campus community to drive access, affordability, and student success across 1200 campus stores.

We fulfilled a critical role in driving revenue, with a focus on innovation and developing seasonal merchandising plans for private label apparel within Omni-Channel retail operations in the Men’s, Women’s, Accessories, and headwear categories.

KPI’s

  • Led the fashion product development for the Fall Rush house brand.
  • Generated $5M in sales in the first year with an initial investment of $1.5M
  • Built a strong Customer Acquisition strategy.
  • Projected growth of $80M in new revenue by 2026
  • Increase Product margins from 55% to 65%
  • Built a self-operated PL division
  • Improved operational efficiency

Highlights or key focuses:

  • Led the concept, design, and development of the Fall Rush national house brand in under 9 months as a strategy to connect with the consumer and acquire customer data, and maintain them as a lifetime customer.
  • Developed a national lifestyle private-label brand that generated 5M in the first year and was forecasted to generate $80M by 2026.
  • Build supply chain and delivered products securing an average sell-through rate of 70% YTD and a 72% margin.
  • TBD: Build PL Division from concept to (completely operational) under 9 months with a $1.5M initial Investment
  • Built an end-to-end process to operate PL from design to fulfillment that was a separate entity seamlessly integrated into the core company operations.
  • Assisted in implementing the NGC PLM system, securing an award for accelerated implementation.

More about the project

YAY  helped them to achieve their goals:

We began with an initial discovery stage where we determined the root cause of their challenges. We prepared a road map of three phases- Define / Measure / Analyze, Improve / Design,  Implement and Control, with key deliverables and timelines for each phase.

We defined the scope of the project by measuring past sales and applied the 80/20 rule to identify the core product that drove the most sales. This is the product we used to build the Fall Rush national house brand foundation. We analyzed their systems, current vendors, and product assortment to implement the best assortment plan and product development process.

After designing the private label apparel brand Fall Rush including all brand identity across neck labels, hang tags, packaging, and finishes, we implemented the systems and tested them on a few stores before rollout. Once the verification process was complete our strong customer acquisition strategy led to $5M in sales. Within two years the brand was available online and in 300 campus retail stores.