Mr. Porter - An Illustrated ReportThe Executive Summary

Within this illustrated report of the company and brand Mr. Porter, there will be an analysis of the strengths and opportunities, as well as contrasting this with the weaknesses and threats facing the brand. By creating a PEN Portrait for the average Mr. Porter customer a valid assessment will be attained as to the brands success. As well as this, the competitors of the brand will be mentioned.

The Company

Mr. Porter is the award-winning global retail destination for men's style, combining the best interna-tional menswear with editorial content. The site sells over 200 leading international brands, with content and new products added weekly. Mr. Porter offers express worldwide shipping to 170 countries (including same day delivery to London and New York), and a free collection service for returns and exchanges. Designers available include Alexander McQueen, Givenchy, Raf Simons, Lanvin, Loro Piana, Maison Kitsune, Boglioli, A.P.C, Beams Plus, J.Crew, Church's, and Common Projects.

The website is read, viewed and shopped by two million men every month, with around twenty-five million views of the website every year. With 60% of men buying their overall clothing online, a strong web presence is key, supporting the positivity of Mr. Porter’s social media following of over 2.3 million across 9 social media platforms (Mr. Porter, 2014).

The Shopping Experience

The target market for Mr. Porter is relatively specific, due to the fact that solely designer men’s items are sold. With this in mind, the target customer is a male around the age of 35 years old with an average household income of at least £152,000 a year, with a monthly spend on fashion of, on average, £1000 a month (or £12,000 a year). The online retailer seeks out customers who are style-makers, innovators, premiums seekers, influencers and explorers, expecting their target cus-tomer to be taking around 12 holidays a year. (Very niche, limiting profit)

With a global reach of 2 million men each month, Mr. Porter sees most of it’s business coming from the UK (22%) an the USA (28%). It is surprising to see that there is not more of a presence within Asia and the Middle East.

Due to the fact that Mr. Porter only operates online, it is very important that their content be power-ful and stimulating in order to beat their rival competitors. With the use of world-class editorials, Mr. Porter is able to successfully fuse content and commerce, allowing for a stimulating shopping ex-perience, even if it is just through a screen, or on paper, and lacks reality. These editorials were in-spired by the editorials featured on the sister brand, Net-A-Porter. (Does not buy collections that are in season, but rather buys capsules of different years collections that it believes will sell. Com-pare Slowear catalogue to Slowear on Mr. Porter. Fashion lovers cannot find all the clothing from the latest season on the website)

The Competitors

Although, at first, it does not seem that Mr. Porter have any competitors, due to the specificity of their target market and what they retail, this is not the case. Once the horizons of what defines a competitor are broadened, it is clear to see that Mr. Porter has more competitors than first sus-pected.

Farfetch is the closest competitor to Mr. Porter, retailing many of the same designers seen on Mr. Porter, still maintaining that designer niche. Farfetch also maintain the same price architecture, selling the many of the same items as Mr. Porter at the same price. This be noted, the styling of Farfetch is not as effective, or minimal, as that of Mr. Porter.

matchesfashion.com is, once again, very similar in what it retails to Mr. Porter, although, as well as Farfetch, it also retails womenswear on the same website. matchesfashion.com maintains the same clean aesthetic in the way it styles the clothing on the website, as well as keeping to the same pricing as Mr. Porter, although the website somehow manages to decrease the look of the quality of the clothing through the use of poor lighting.

luisaviaroma.com, once again, retails many of the same designer brands as Mr. Porter, and has a larger mainland Europe web presence than Mr. Porter. Interestingly, although the website sells some of the same products as Mr. Porter, it retails them at a higher price. An example of this is a pair of Alexander McQueen cotton Bermuda shorts, retailing on Mr. Porter for £395, compared to the retail price of £420 on luisaviaroma.com. Mr. Porter brings a slightly more affordable luxury to the market.

Luxury department stores such as Selfridges, Harrods and Harvey Nichols are also close competi-tors to Mr. Porter, offering concessions of hundreds of designer brands. The department stores of-fer online shopping as well as the in-store experience, which some customers prefer. Although the cost of running a physical store is much higher than running just a website, the fact that an experi-

ence rather than merely just a store is offered to a customer, means that these physical stores will experience a comparative higher foot-fall than the Mr. Porter. Selfridges experiences a daily con-version rate of over 20%, along a yearly footfall of over 20 million customers, ten times that of the Mr. Porter website.As well as this, obvious competitors of Mr. Porter are the designer stores themselves. Again, many of the designers offer an online store as well as a physical in-store experience. Angela Ahrendts, former Chief Executive Officer of Burberry stated, “Digital marketing is having the greatest impact on the business and we know that it will continue to drive brand momentum. Guys have very differ-ent buying habits depending on where they are from and in some countries they actually prefer to shop online. Last month, the men’s wear show in Milan was live-streamed to hundreds of thou-sands of people. Once the show was over they could click and buy the styles straight off the run-way, getting them delivered in just over a month.”

The Financial Times identifies other competitors of Mr. Porter as being; www.oki-ni.com, which stocks such labels as Alexander McQueen, Levi’s Vintage Clothing and Mismo bags (£545); Paris-based www.studiohomme.com, which stocks Alexis Mabille, Pierre Hardy, and Pringle of Scotland; and www.thecorner.com, www.yoox.com’s successful sister brand.

The Trends

Trending in menswear at the moment are; prints, pastels, denim, sports luxe, as well as the return of an Ivy League style of dress with a return in popularity of the Penny Loafer and Oxford Button Downs. This information comes from the ‘Trends’ section of the Mr. Porter website. As well as having a ‘Trends’ section on the website, Mr. Porter also has an ‘Essentials’ section. These sec-tions allow customers to decide whether they wish to dress for style or for fashion. Within the sec-

tions, Mr. Porter also groups similar items of different price ranges together so that a customer is able to decide the amount they are willing to spend on an item.

The Best Sellers

Best sellers on Mr. Porter include chambray shirts, white and blue oxford, polo and t-shirts, raw denim indigo and black jeans, grey crew neck jumpers and beige and navy cotton twill chinos. All of these items fall within the ‘Essentials’ section, allowing customers to quickly locate and pur-chase them. Mr. Porter is the only website that organises it’s website in this efficient way, creating a powerful placement of stock. This all increases ease of purchase for customers.

Through interviewing regular shoppers of Mr. Porter, a deduction has been made that customers love the fact that Mr. Porter offers the same day delivery of it’s products. This allows customers to shop for an outfit that they need for an event that same day, a very beneficial factor for lazy males.

The Collaborations

Mr. Porter recently collaborated with the Savile Row tailoring brand Huntsman on the film ‘Kings-man’. The website allowed customers to shop all the outfits found within the film, the first time that cinema and fashion retail has been connected in such a way. As well as this, during London Col-lections: Mens an event was held in the Huntsman store sponsored by Mr. Porter, at which cus-tomers were able to pick up a special edition copy of the editorial, as well as meeting the cast of the ‘Kingsman' film.

The SWOT Analysis

Strengths:

• High customer base due to the fact that Mr. Porter is currently at a high level of popularity• Strong online social media platform with over 2.3 million• The visual representation of the products that Mr. Porter retails is very strong. The products are

styled in an extremely aesthetically pleasing manner.• Good lighting and photography increases the customers willingness to buy the products from the

Mr. Porter website.• Although Mr. Porter is a luxury online retailer, the fact that it matches it’s competitors prices,

along with the fact that it is well known, means that more customers are likely to buy from the Mr. Porter website.

• High level of customer interaction with regular emails sent to subscribers on latest trends, offers and sales.

• Stock is organised in an efficient and visually stimulating way.• Same day delivery separates them from their competitors

Weaknesses:

• Very niche customer base which could potentially limit the potential profit of the company• Mr. Porter does not buy the designers full collection of the season, but instead buys many dated

items and capsule collections that it believes will sell. This means that fashion lovers cannot find all the popular products from the latest season on the website.

Opportunities:

• Due to the lack of presence in wealthy mainland China and the Middle East, Mr. Porter could po-tentially aim more campaigns towards these areas. By potentially setting up advertising cam-paigns in these regions consumers could gain more of a knowledge of the company, allowing them to shop the website more freely.

• There is an opportunity for the buying department to buy the full current season of a designers collection in order to become more of a fashion forward company.

• Mr Porter could consider opening physical stores, incorporating powerful visual merchandising as well as the same opportunities offered to their customers as are online, such as; free shipping for international customers, advice on current trends and the availability of editorial newspapers in store. Through the use of strong visual merchandising, Mr. Porter would be able to maintain its success in the physical retail market.

Threats:

• What happens when the trend of online shopping ends?• Innovation is key, there is a risk that Mr. Porter will run out of ideas that will keep them on top.• There is a lack of physical Mr. Porter stores, limiting the customer base possible.

References

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