GOAL: To become the premier online destination for plus-size fashion.

SOLUTION: Offered a new price category, expanded the separates assortment, and featured unparalleled fit as the brand differentiator.

Discovery 

STAKEHOLDER INTERVIEWS: What does everyone need? 

• CEO - achieve financial business goals 
• Design - understand target customer & trend positioning 
• Marketing - develop and project clear brand identity 
• Operations - maximize space in inventory warehouse

COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS: Where does IGIGI fit in the competitive landscape? 

• Competitive advantage -  IGIGI is uniquely positioned as the only brand in its price bracket that services the career, cocktail, and special occasion / bridal categories. IGIGI's true advantage is in the special occasion category which has limited competition. 
• Competitive opportunity - Many brands offer contemporary and career categories at lower prices. IGIGI's has the opportunity to offer more competitive products and prices in the contemporary and career categories. 

Research: Survey, Interviews with Customers, & Interviews with Customer Service 

PRICE: High prices were the #1 reason for preventing future purchases. 

• IGIGI's median price point for dresses was $40 above competition - with IGIGI at $130 while most competitors with similar products had price points under $100. 
• From a business perspective, all fabric purchasing and manufacturing was done locally. The company cost for each product was significantly higher than competition, most of which produced goods overseas. 
• Customers were willing to pay higher prices for unique products they could not find elsewhere. 

CATEGORY EXPANSION: Customers wanted to see more separates (pants, tops, skirts, jackets, i.e. not dresses) included in IGIGI's product assortment. 

• Customers wanted to find the same unique style they loved in IGIGI dresses in separates that could be worn to work. 
• Customers wanted more versatility in IGIGI's product offerings - there were too many pieces for special occasions that would be worn infrequently with not enough styles that could be mixed into heavy rotation. 

FIT: How a product fit was incredibly important to our customers when choosing to purchase a product. 

• The majority of IGIGI returns were due to wrong or poor fit - solving this issue could have a huge financial impact to the business. 
• The fit challenge was even more difficult for our customers due to the lack of brick and mortar stores and reliance on unclear online sizing guides. 
• Finding the right fit was a very emotional and at times taxing experience for our customer. 

Our Persona: Amanda 

Based on marketplace, trend, and customer research, we arrived at 3 facets of our persona Amanda and occasions in her life that would prompt her to shop with IGIGI: 

1. The Working Mom: special family occasions, vacations, girls night out
2. The Single Professional: day to night, date night or late night, work/networking events, cocktail hours, urban weekend getaway, home for the holidays 
   
3. The Partnered Professional: date nights, couples vacations, local cultural events, major family holidays

Brand Identity  

Based on our research, we designed a new brand identity with a focus on celebrating beauty and glamour for all occasions in a woman’s life. 

• Product Mission Statement: Confident, sexy, and statement-making clothing designed for real women with real curves.
• Unique Value Proposition: Accessible luxury delivering consistent fit, best in class product, and incomparable customer experience. 
• Voice: Inspiring, empowering, lifestyle-driven, style savvy.

tagline: “style is not a size, it’s an attitude”

Strategies & Solutions 

1. PRICE: Design a $98 dress for each season. 

• Solution for CEO & Design: The $98 style would be cost engineered by designers to ensure strong margins even with local production prices. 
• Solution for CEO & Operations: The $98 style would be flat-packed (vs. on a hanger) to reduce cost and storage space required in the distribution center. 
• Solution for Marketing: The $98 dress would be a strong marketing hook to compete with other brands especially during highly promotional seasons. 

2. CATEGORY EXPANSION: Grow the separates business. 

• Solution for CEO: Separates categories would sell at a higher margin rate than dresses. 
• Solution for Design: Designers would focus on increasing the style count in separates categories instead of continuing to design new iterations of dresses. 
• Solution for Marketing: The new styles in the growing separates business would provide fodder for outbound marketing. 
• Solution for Operations: Separates would take up less space in the distribution center than dresses yet deliver higher profit rate per unit than dresses. 

3. FIT: Make fit the key value proposition for the IGIGI brand. 

• Solution for CEO: By focusing on fit, the customer's #1 concern when shopping for clothing, IGIGI would be able to attract more customers and increase sales.
• Solution for Design: Designers would focus their energies on perfecting the fit of each and every garment in fit sessions instead of spending time designing new trendy styles. 
• Solution for Marketing: Fit would be the key brand identity and value proposition to share with customers. 

Results 

1. PRICE: The $98 'price point' dress delivered the most successful Black Friday ever. 

• The dress was able to be reduced to $79 and maintain profitability due to cost engineering by designers upfront.
• It was marketed as the key product during the November 2014 Black Friday sale, and was the single best product the company had produced. 

2. CATEGORY EXPANSION: Customers LOVED the new separates. 

• 2014 year end delivered a +20% sales comp in tops (separates) over the previous year, AND a +3% gross margin improvement. 
• Customer service and online reviews had repeated callouts from customers saying they loved our new products. 

3. FIT: IGIGI was featured on Nicolette Mason's blog, saying: 

"the cut is ridiculously flattering...when a brand gets their cuts right, it's hard to deny the impact it makes!"

*Nicolette Mason is an esteemed blogger in the plus community, fashion editor and columnist at Marie Claire, and designer of an all-sizes apparel line in collaboration with Modcloth.