女性品牌正开始赚男人钱
As gender norms shift, 'women's brands' are going after a new demo: men. When designers Monica Zwirner and Lucy Wallace Eustice launched their women's handbag startup, MZ Wallace, in 2000, they spent a lot of time pondering what they should call their new brand. They considered following the path of many other American designers—Kate Spade, Tory Burch, Rebecca Minkoff—and simply using their own names. But they were worried that approach would make their brand sound overly feminine, something they wanted to avoid. "Neither of us has a particularly feminine sensibility," Zwirner says. "We think of ourselves first as a design company, and we think really good design isn't gender-specific. We wanted to leave open the possibility of making men's products in the future." So they settled on a name they thought would read as gender-neutral: MZ Wallace. All of this forethought has paid off: Now, the brand launches its first men's product line, officially called the Bleecker Collection, which includes duffels, messenger bags, and backpacks, and comes in black and blue camo. And unlike some of the brand's counterparts, who have had to create entirely new brands for male customers (Kate Spade launched Jack Spade, and Rebecca Minkoff launched Uri Minkoff), MZ Wallace now sells both men and women's products under the same brand. Transitioning from a women's brand to a unisex brand can be a smart business move, one that potentially doubles the size of your market. But it's also tricky, thanks to deeply entrenched gender norms. While women tend to be comfortable buying and using products marketed to men, men have been historically less comfortable buying products marketed to women. MZ Wallace is among a very small group of brands (including shoemaker Malone Souliers, which is debuting its men's line this fall, and Lululemon, which expanded into menswear in 2016) taking the bold step of asking men to shop with a brand previously associated with women. Their efforts show how society may be changing—but also how fraught gender dynamics can be. |