How Champion Became a Premium Brand | Art of Rebranding

have you ever seen someone who at first glance you don't find attractive but then some years fly by and you see that person again and then you realize you blew it they had to blow up in a short span of time and you're just now coming to terms with the fact that you fumbled the bag what if i told you that that person you're thinking of has a lot in common with a clothing brand yes a clothing brand and that clothing brand goes by the name of champion i know some of y'all are questioning whether i just compared a living person to clothes and the answer is that's not important right here what is important is understanding how champion glue up from the cheap clothes your grandparents used to buy you to becoming a staple of street wear and even being rocked by some celebrities champion has been making clothes for 100 years after being founded in 1919 by the fine boom brothers since then the company has experienced a large growth and by the 90s and early 2000s was one of the major players in the clothing industry however champion wasn't a major player in the clothing industry for jaw-dropping style or anything of that nature in fact it was well known due to being a brand that produced very affordable clothing with pretty modest designs that weren't unique and they really weren't seen as extremely bastable at the time basically if you were to pull up to a party we're not going to champion hoodie like i am right now you probably ain't going to get no compliments to that party which is kind of funny considering that now i've definitely worn champion clothing to parties and stuff like that and i've been complimented on it i just started this video and i think it's about time that i address the elephant in the room which is the current price of champion clothing it is how do i say this overpriced the average cost for a hoodie on their website is about 65 currently which would have been absolutely ridiculous ten years ago when things were more around the thirty dollar mark champion can get away with this though because they're seen as a fashionable brand and have cloud all these things made me look for an explanation for how this occurred and i ended up finding about three major things that made champion the premium brand they are today the first one being collaboration champion has always been in a position to take advantage of popular street rare trends from both a manufacturing and brand recognition standpoint but as we all know champion has always been associated with producing mediocre quality clothes that you can easily pick up from your local walmart they didn't really start to change their image until they had some really key collaborations with popular streetwear brands like kith supreme and one of the biggest ones being virgil at blows off-white champion collection in november 2017. if you aren't familiar with virgil abloh he's an american designer entrepreneur and dj who has been the artistic director of louis vuitton's men wear collection since march of 2018 and he is also the ceo of the milan-based label off-white a fashion house he actually found it himself in 2013. fast forward to 2017 and virgil abloh releases the 10 which was the collection he created with nike this is seen as one of the best sneaker collections of the past few years and it was met with a positive response by the masses and it ended up becoming very popular in the fashion world before you knew it everybody was buying anything and everything that virgil abloh touched this man could have made the dookie collection and so would have moved units i'm telling you that's how much he was popping off some months later the off-white champion collection was released and sold out almost immediately now people are taking a new look at champion by association these new perspectives about champion were only reinforced by some future collabs with brands like supreme and kif so essentially what we're looking at here is champion doing some textbook cloud chasing hey but who am i to judge the strategy worked i know i know but at the same time we all know that just being with the cool kids is not going to mean that you automatically rise up to their level you're going to need to do some things or have some edge of boost so to speak that'll get you to their actual level and this is where publicity comes in this is where it gets real and if i keep the analogy of being popular this is when you start to notice people copy your style a little bit they're trying to talk like you a little bit too etc for champion this is when we start to see celebrities and influencers rock their stuff i'm not talking about some honey boo boo or some woah vicky level celebrities if you catch my drift can we refer to them as celebrities like is that a thing like are they anyway you get what i'm saying right now i'm talking about a-listers like kanye west jennifer lopez asap rocky kylie kendall jenner and more as humans when we see someone we admire or respect do or own something we crave what they have and there's nothing wrong with that so when celebrities start to wear champion clothing it was hard not to notice and respect champion more as a brand this is a very crucial step and champions plan to rebrand when you realize that when a celebrity wears your clothing brand they aren't only exposing that brand to your national market but they're also expanding exposing that brand to the international market on a global scale believe it or not champion is an internationally recognized brand now and a large reason for this is because of champions being worn by celebrities that have audiences worldwide it's hard to hit on champions your eyes and their journey to rebranding has definitely been very eye-catching and i find it very interesting that champion during all this rebranding never decided to make different types of clothes they never decided to change the logo they didn't even want to change the name at all they kept everything the same and honestly staying true to themselves is one of the best decisions they could have made at this time champions staying true to themselves ended up in a lot of people experiencing a specific emotion and that emotion is nostalgia and it happens to be my last point for how champion was able to rebrand successfully as much as we like to make fun of the origins of champion there will always be that part of us that loves that od branding and that loves those memories that we have relatives giving us gifts full of champion sweaters and other apparel that we didn't really want in the first place i think champion is aware the strong nostalgia that many people have for the brand and they made it a point not to change any major characteristics of their clothing in order to cater to that let's look at some new clothing and compared to the old stuff on the left we have a vintage sweatshirt from champion and on the right we have a brand new champion sweatshirt that's been recently released one thing you notice right off the bat is that the iconic champion cursive font hasn't changed at all in addition to this the stitching and the cut style of the sweatshirts are largely the same between the two and both have the same pattern on the collar the wrist cuffs and even the waistband the new champion clothes are purposely mimicking the older champion clothes it's evident that nostalgia was one of the major key factors to help champions successfully rebrand collaboration publicity and nostalgia were the three major things that champion used to become a top clothing brand so basically the whole entire point in this video was just to say that your grandparents were head of the times let that sink in but all jokes aside though i really hope you enjoyed this video it was really fun to make and if you do enjoy this type of content please consider subscribing to the channel these videos would take a lot of time but i definitely do enjoy making them and i want to keep on making them and if you did like it certainly even like as well i hope you guys enjoyed this thank you for all the support it really doesn't mean the world to me and i'm not just saying that and hopefully i'll catch you guys in the next video peace

Channel: Miles Ware

Views: 1,678

Keywords: Champion, champion clothing, hypebeast, champion clothing haul, Why is champion cool again, champion clothes 2k20, why is champion so expensive, asap rocky, kylie jenner, kendall jenner, kanye west, supreme, kith

Id: irsH5cdOHk8

Length: 7min 2sec (422 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 21 2020