Jousipaita case study
Jousipaita is a Finnish up-market men's shirt brand. Today this 90-year old family company is the only shirt manufacturer in Finland. With modern, well automated production (yearly production facilities of approximately 90,000 shirts) the company holds a competitive position in Finland's local shirt market.
In the middle of the 1990s, Jousipaita wanted to clarify its objectives on how to differentiate a traditional Finnish shirt brand versus global high-quality brands. In addition, the company wanted to explore how to tempt Finnish men to buy more than their usual 1 ½ shirts per year.
On the Finnish market, Jousipaita, is a very competitive brand. Produced locally, they use only European quality fabrics and have developed cuts which fits perfectly the Finnish / Nordic bodytype. The secret of the men's shirt quality is "behind the seams". They need to tell their customers these details in order to differentiate their brand.
The Jousipaita team took time to educate retailers and launch a new visual brand image with an advertising campaign for customers. The challenge was to broaden the brand's customer base. During the long history of the shirt maker's brand, the average customer age had climbed a bit too high to maintain a competitive image. To optimize design and marketing, it was essential to define a customer by his lifestyle instead of his age. And the goal of the brand strategy was to get into the best department stores (and put the two biggest competitors on the offensive).
The Jousipaita brand reform required an entire brand strategy process. This called upon my skills in fashion design and visual image design management starting with the logo and going 
all the way to the stand design at fashion fairs. The company studied consumer demand and replaced product-based segmentation with a needs-based segmentation. In the search for brand differentiation, Jousipaita applied my recommended methods to intensify fabrication, balance the quality-price ratio, and increase retailer and buyer coaching.
