Is Brand Collaboration Sweeping the Nation?
When thinking about brand collaboration, the first thought that comes to my mind is the partnership between designers and retailers such as Lily Pulitzer for Target or Alexander Wang for H&M. On the other hand, the interaction between a consumer brand and a textile brand reminds me of performance and active wear. After doing some research into textile brands, I found that they interact and collaborate with more than just performance wear. They also partner with hosiery brands like no nonsense, denim brands like Guess and accessory brands like Fossil, just to name a few. In this segment, I will focus on the partnership between the textile brand Lycra and the consumer brand American Eagle.

Finding the right pair of jeans that fit and stretch the way you want them to can be almost impossible to find. Lycra and American Eagle partnered together to create what American Eagle calls their “Best Fit Ever”. This line of denim known as DENIM X, uses the LYCRA® brand’s patented dualFX ® technology to give the jeans extra stretch and shape retention. To highlight this new collaboration, American Eagle placed DENIM X at the front center table of all its stores with the LYCRA® dualFX® hangtag prominently displayed.

The textile merge was also featured on the Lycra website under the fashion subheading of its news and blog section. This type of co-marketing highlighted the functionality of the textile brand while maintaining the aesthetic American Eagle was known for. Lycra and American Eagle both benefit from this partnership. The Lycra brand gets exposure to markets it might not typically be a top-of-mind brand for such as the ready-to-wear apparel market for teenagers and young adults. American Eagle gets to leverage the technology Lycra has developed and incorporate it into the denim. Thus creating a more flexible and better fitting jean for the customer and possibly higher sales for both companies.
When researching the partnership between American Eagle and Lycra, I noticed that I couldn’t find a lot of publicity online about the collaboration. That would be the one thing that they could improve on. While the lack of online publicity could be due to the partnership being introduced in September of 2014, it’s still important for consumers to be able to find information about the joint venture.

What I think the brands did well was the in-store marketing and the informational posts on their respective websites. Displaying the denim in the front center of the store immediately catches the consumer’s attention and makes them inquire more about the denim with the “Best Fit”. The hangtag on the denim also shows customers and competitors the lengths American Eagle will go just to get their customer a better fitting jean. As mentioned before, the Lycra website explicitly referenced the joint venture through its blog. Along with the website, Lycra featured the denim on their Instagram page as well as on their Twitter. As for American Eagle, their DENIM X collection has been featured on their blog along with the shoppable fashion news website, Who What Wear. Lycra also features the denim under Who What Wear’s sponsored content.

