Why your brand needs a passionate community of consumers and how wholesale can make it happen

Creating community

Define and shape your collaborations with retailers in ways that align with your ardent community of customers.

Define community participation

Work with retailers to define your broader brand community and to set the right benchmarks for measuring membership and leadership — whether through using social media metrics, referral programs, or rewarding promotions and events. 

Brand loyalty is about a lot more than how much your customers spend. Nurture your community with social promotions, ambassadorships, and product lifestyle integrations. You can hire influencers, but give your shoppers the influencer VIP treatment and they may be more valuable to your community. It’s important to ensure that your shoppers feel as if they’re the most valued influencers of all. It’s a shift that can help your community grow with speed.

Design special collections

Build a new community from scratch with the right limited edition and exclusive collaborations. You can use NuORDER to create custom assortment lists to share with specific retailers. This opens the door to deeper, better-targeted collaborations as you can brainstorm with retailers and present your ideas for special or limited-edition products. In addition to standard seasonal linesheets, these custom lists can help you pitch these new creative partnerships. 

One unconventional example of fashion and retail collaboration was J.Crew’s USA Olympic Swimming collection, designed around vintage coastal and swimwear styles. USA Swim athletes modeled the collection and helped promote it to build community around the brand. The brand promoted their USA Swimming Foundation, incorporating their values into the collection and featured events. 

Building community with compatible retailers

When you’re looking at a retailer, consider their past brand partnerships and what they did to foster community. Brand reputation, shopper audiences, and openness to creative partnerships are important considerations.

Courrèges, a French brand, created an exclusive capsule collection last year with Nordstrom, entering the American market through collaboration with a retailer that fit philosophically and culturally with the brand. Nordstrom and Courrèges used a candlelight dinner event to launch the eveningwear gowns, tops, and bodysuits. In addition to the event, a Nordstrom NYC pop-up shop carried the collection, promoting the brand to Nordstrom’s community.