Seasalt Cornwall
Establishing the opportunity within the menswear market for Seasalt Cornwall.
- BUSINESS GOAL -
Seasalt Cornwall is a high street fashion and homewares brand, with a story stretching back to Penzance in 1981, when the Chadwick family popped into a shop selling traditional workwear and fisherman’s smocks and ended up buying the shop and relocating from the Midlands. Today, they can be found in 70 high streets across the UK, as well as through larger retailers like M&S and John Lewis, and have a thriving D2C online presence.
While the brand had primarily focused on women’s clothing, in recent years they had seen substantial interest in their menswear offering and had identified it as a potential growth opportunity. However, the team required a greater depth of insight to better understand the wider market they would be competing against, as well as their target customers’ needs.
- THE SOLUTION -
Our brief was to provide a holistic picture of the menswear category, that would complement the insights the team were pulling together inhouse. Specifically, our research aims were threefold: to understand preferences, attitudes and purchasing behaviours amongst target groups, and how these differed amongst demographic and spend; to uncover opportunity gaps within the market by mapping Seasalt’s competitors and identifying where best to position its menswear offering; and finally, to better understand and prioritise the key drivers to purchase and consequently infer where best Sesalt needed to ‘show up’ to drive salience and engagement.
The quick turnaround required, meant we opted for a quantitative approach. We therefore designed a directional questionnaire for a broad prospective customer base of 2,000 menswear shoppers. We set a maximum quota of 300 women, to ensure our core sample size prioritised the end user. The large sample allowed us to size opportunities across different demographics, behavioural and attitudinal groups, and apply statistical models to provide clear recommendations.
- THE OUTCOME -
We provided the team with a comprehensive survey of the existing menswear market, including the key emotional and functional drivers to purchase. Our findings gave us three core areas of focus, meaning the team had both a comprehensive overview of the opportunity and a clear roadmap for how to build a strong and coherent strategy.