Did somebody say her name?
Beyoncé's Ivy Park, an athleisure line created with TopShop guru Sir Philip Glass, debuted in April and is already a success. This is particularly true for Nordstrom, one of the line’s retail partners, which has found the brand a timely bit of salvation in a punishing retail marketplace.
A Partnership of Equals
Ivy Park debuted with 200 items including sports bras, tops, varsity socks, sweats, leggings, and shorts. Unlike similar celebrity lines such as Kanye’s Yeezys for Adidas and Rihanna’s RihannaXManolo for Manolo Blahnik, these are not capsule collections wherein a celebrity collaborates with a manufacturer for a limited set of items. Rather, in a 50-50 partnership with Glass, Beyoncé has started her own line that sells directly to retailers and online. This isn’t a limited partnership, it’s a new business.
And Nordstrom is happy to be in on it. Department stores writ large are in trouble, and though their luxury clientele has somewhat shielded them from past mall carnage, they are starting to feel the hurt. Over the first quarter of this year, they slashed expected profits and reported that same stores sales were down 1.7%. According to their co-president, "Our first quarter results were impacted by lower than expected sales," which, frankly, is an unfamiliar problem for the department store beacon.
Alright Shoppers, Now Let’s Get in Formation
Like a pop star falling down the charts, Nordstrom needed a hit. They got one. Within a week of its debut, Ivy Park was already atop the store's online sales, beating out such established brands as Estée Lauder, Vincent Camuto, and Nike.
Though the average basket total, $129, is a bit low for the luxury seller, Ivy Park is selling at full price in Nordstrom's flagship stores, something that may prove invaluable: “The clearance and promotional environment is really noisy,” their co-president said. “There’s some heavy, heavy discounting going on. And we’re seeing that effect in our business.” This could explain the proliferation of The Rack, their discount big-box store, which has threatened to undermine the luxury retailer’s high-end reputation.
Indeed, in an era of incessant discounts, the fact that customers are happily paying full price should not be overlooked. Endless clearances and promotions train shoppers to balk at unslashed prices. According to one securities firm director, “It starts to train the customer to expect 30% off or 40% off going forward, and the only way to untrain her is to have a big fashion hit.” Well, Nordstrom found one.
So, why is Ivy Park the most popular girl on the block? There’s a complicated answer and a simple one.
Retail Feminism: It’s Complicated
Complicated first. Ivy Park is tapping into a strain of feminism centered around retail. Beyoncé believes the clothes “push the boundaries of the athletic wear and to support and inspire women who understand that beauty is more than your physical appearance…I was so specific about the things I feel I need in a garment as a curvy woman…to feel safe and covered but also sexy.”
By expanding mainstream, conventional standards of physical beauty, the singer and brand appeal to growing efforts to reclaim the female body from media and fashion, and offer products to fit all the ladies. Nordstrom’s marketing blog extends this thought to its logical conclusion, implicitly linking the line, and Beyoncé’s image, to a new wave of retail feminism: “Maybe in 2016 a feminist act is wearing a killer sports bra, not burning one.”
Of course, not everybody is buying into this transformative power—one particularly descriptive Jezebel headline declares, “I tried on everything in the Ivy Park Line and felt like a cute, stupid, Beyoncé-themed sausage link.”
The Bey-Hive: It’s Simple
Then there’s the simple part: Beyoncé has fans, her most passionate of which are known as the Bey-Hive, and they consume her products. In the weeks before its release, they were already clamoring for details and proselytizing on social media
So it’s not the brand’s superior construction or reasonable cost drawing the Bey-hive, but rather lady Bey herself: Slice intelligence found over 40% of Ivy Park customers own Beyoncé’s music, 25% of them had already bought her newest album, and 11% subscribe to Tidal, which has exclusive Beyoncé content and has only reached .6% of the country.
So, with Beyoncé and Ivy Park, Nordstrom has found a winning formula. Given that the key ingredient is a once-in-a-generation cultural force, it will prove difficult for others to reproduce.
