Originally posted on Housakicks
This is where a lot of brands and boutiques are headed- enhancing and giving the consumer to ultimate experience when shopping. A few days ago, Nike launched the Virgin Abloh collection and my facebook feed was overflowing with people complaining about Nike’s entire site crashing. Chris Burns from ARCH alluded to this issue in one of his posts, see link below. Allow me to share one of his predictions,
Nike created their own Trojan Horse (I know I’m mixing allusions, just go with it) by establishing the bulk of their growth on a 3rd party platform. When AWS had an outage, Nike went down. If AWS has any issues Nike doesn’t utilize its own servers for web hosting. 80% of North America will run through Nike’s online business on a company’s platform. A company that is in the process of creating its own performance athletic private label…
One thing you don’t as a brand is UNHAPPY CUSTOMERS and that’s exactly what took place during the virgin Abloh online release. But Kith understands how this can affect their brand negatively and is being proactive about it. Ronnie Fieg shared the news of the app on twiter several hours ago. According to Kith,
This mobile device application provides an easy-to-navigate platform for the KITH Shop and Blog, as well as a variety of exclusive features. Solely viewable via the KITH App are exclusionary pages including the KITH Archive, which details our previous work, as well as a comprehensive list of Ronnie Fieg’s past collaborations. Fully rounded, this app is its own independent entity with tools such as Twitter and Facebook sharing, in addition to push notifications for to-the-second updates. It will allow only those who have downloaded the app the ability to acquire special products. The unveiling of the KITH App will coincide with our introductory app-only release – the KITH x Asics “Grand Opening” Collection.
Basically it’s do or die for the consumer to some degree; Kith knows their producst are “DOPE”; my own itnerpretation of this app is as simple as: ” we are going to force you to get the app, because without it you can’t buy any of our exclusive collabs”. And in some sense, it’s facilitating the consumer’s shopping experience by forcing him/her to use it, a gift that keeps on taking. I might be a little confusing but this is definitely great for the brand and its loyalists.
img via footwearnews
