The Thriftys Family of Brands has launched an integrated brand model for some larger format stores to carry all of the retailer’s banners.
Overall, the company has 129 stores across Canada under the following banners: Bluenotes (100), Thriftys by Bluenotes (nine), Aeropostale (eight) and Lucky Brand (12).
“The way we’ve kind of built this multi-brand model is really around Bluenotes, Aeropostale and Lucky Brand,” said Sean Goodall, Director of Marketing and E-Commerce.
“When Bluenotes first started introducing Aeropostale into the Canadian market, we did open some Aeropostale specific storefronts and we still do have them coast to coast. But were kind of tasked with the brand problem of reintroducing the brand to Canada. It had exited the country. A lot of people were still under the impression that it was no longer a Canadian retailer that they could see in malls.
“One thing that we introduced off the bat was an Aero collection into Bluenotes stores. Due to the success and how we saw our customers responding to Bluenotes and Aero products together, we upped the ante if you will and really started integrating Aeropostale within our stores. And then when you shop our stores we’re now at a point where all of our Bluenotes and Aeropostale products are all integrated into one.”
That includes co-branding on window fronts of stores.
Josh Graham, Director of Visual Presentation, said there are a variety of storefronts based on the square footage of the store.
“Our real strategy lately is to obtain larger square footage in shopping centres. So if a store is over a certain amount of square footage we might call that store a Thriftys and really the plan there is that in a Thriftys store to be able to carry all of the different brands,” said Graham.
“Depending on the mall, most stores are called Bluenotes but in our most recent strategy to get larger square footage stores we have been opening more and more Thriftys stores which also carry Lucky Brand, Aeropostale and Bluenotes.”
Recently, a store in the Scarborough Town Centre in Toronto launched the multi-brand concept.
“Our Bluenotes store in Scarborough was much smaller and we moved to a larger store which allowed us to integrate more the Aeropostale and Lucky Brand products,” said Goodall.
Graham said at Scarborough Town Centre the store was originally 3,500 square feet but moved to a 10,000-square-foot store to showcase more of a variety of the retailer’s brands.
“We can really create that multi-brand experience within a large square footage store. Because we do have a variety of different sizes of stores, anywhere from 2,500 square feet in some cases all the way up to a store that is 40,000 square feet, the assortment will vary based on the square footage.”
The retailer is starting to take over larger real estate spaces in malls to expand this multi-brand store model.
The Scarborough store for example is the same experience as a Bluenotes store but the company has really focused on creating departments within the store and within that department can be found the different branded items together.
“We’re very much of the model that online needs to play and within in-store very, very harmoniously. It’s one website for all the brands. We have the Bluenotes tab, an Aeropostale tab, and Lucky Brand tab so the shopper can easily flip back and forth between each of the tabs,” said Goodall. “And to kind of further mirror what we’re doing in-store if you shop the Bluenotes site you are actually shopping both Bluenotes and Aeropostale products.
“You have the ability to just shop the Aeropostale collection and then you have the ability to just shop the Lucky Brand collection but it’s all within one on the website interface.”
