GANNI

Article published in Naive Magazine

Unlike what most people think, the growth and evolution of the Danish brand GANNI has been slow and gradual. The ready-to-wear brand was founded in 2000 by the gallerist Frans Truelsen as a cashmere clothing line, which only made a couple of sweaters and some t-shirts each year. In 2009, the husband-and-wife duo Nicolaj and Ditte Reffstrup took over the company. Ditte — a former clothes buyer for Parisian and Danish firms — started working on the brand to help Truelsen to design some shoes. During her career, she had realized that the Scandinavian style was associated with being either very androgynous or very bohemian, and she couldn’t recognize herself or her friends in any of these styles: there was a new Scandinavian style that the world needed to discover. Knowing she had something very important to say, she got involved in making the brand grow and take this new style — a more playful and effortless approach to fashion — to the international stage.

Over the years, GANNI has gone from a small Danish cashmere label into a cult favorite under the leadership of Ditte as the creative director and her husband Nicolaj — a former technology entrepreneur — as the chief executive officer. The couple, a ‘killer combo’ with great ideas, talent and ambition, made the brand took off and start a solid and sustained growth during the last decade. Their business philosophy, always focused on creating value, guided them from the very beginning and has made GANNI grow from an insider’s secret to a global phenomenon.

The three points

GANNI’s success is the result of many different factors, but there are three key aspects that characterize the brand’s game plan. The first one is the distribution strategy. As mentioned above, the brand has experienced a sustainable and organic growth over the last years, growing by 50% each year. As Nicolaj Reffstrup states, the brand could have grown much faster, doubling its income overnight and accepting every single wholesale account. However, the ambition of the brand has never been to grow fast, but to grow in a relevant way. To do so, one of the key points is to sell in stores that really contribute to consolidate its brand image.

Secondly, it is interesting to consider the price strategy, which reflects the brand’s way of thinking and supporting democratic fashion. According to Nicolaj, the fact that the Copenhagen girls can actually afford GANNI is one of the success factors of the brand, which has — as he calls it — honest prices. As reported by fashion analysts, GANNI is a luxury brand with a middling price range, sitting between fast-fashion retailers and high-fashion brands, also known as “sweet spot”. As a consequence, the challenge is to find the perfect balance: to be strict with the distribution strategy but manage to sell enough to have a good volume of income. In this way, it is possible to maintain the appeal of luxury but also the feel of affordability.

Lastly, what actually makes GANNI such a successful brand is its essence. Ditte defines the brand as a state of mind: the GANNI girl is relaxed about fashion, she doesn’t try too hard and she just wants to feel cool and comfortable. The brand “doesn’t take itself too seriously”, which captures the idea that we all want to have fun and that women want to experiment with their style without worrying too much. The clothes mix different prints and fabrics, the shapes are surprising and comfortable and the prints are are always original and colorful. As Ditte states, the process of designing the collection is entirely emotional, they do not work with trends and they design what it feels good and fits their way of living.

GANNI Lab

As a member of the Sustainable Development Goals Accelerator programme, GANNI is commited to launching a so-called guilt-free clothing collection. The affluence of innovative and ambitious ideas and the determination to achieve this objective led GANNI to create a separate platform where to experiment and innovate away from the pressure of the day-to-day fashion business. It is called GANNI Lab and promotes sustainable solutions across the value chain.

How ever, GANNI does not identify itself as a sustainable brand because they recognize the inherent contradiction between the fashion industry and the concept of sustainability. Instead, they strive to do better everyday and focus on becoming the most responsible version of themselves. On the GANNI Responsability Report 2019, Nicolaj states: “Over the next three years, our game plan is to focus on 44 clear, tangible and measurable goals around our focus areas to ensure every employee and area of GANNI is invested in our responsability efforts (…) We can’t be complacent and as they say, the time to act is now”. The brand has already worked on 3 UN Sustainable Development Goals: Gender Equality, Responsible Production and Consumption and Climate Action. During 2020, the brand has implemented more than 30 responsible initiatives, including, a rental platform, a take-back scheme and more certified, organic and recycled fabrics into the production chain.

Their initiatives are certainly original and open new paths to bring the fashion industry closer to sustainability. For instance, their rental platform called GANNI Repeat, whose main objective was to reduce textile waste and extend the lifecycle of fashion pieces by rethinking the way we shop. As the initiative was originally intended for Denmark, the brand took advantage of the launch of the Spring 2021 collection to announce an expansion of GANNI Repeat in Europe and the United States by teaming up with Levi’s. The capsule collection is titled “Love Letter” and consists of three pieces made of upcycled denim. A great initiative to refresh the wardrobe and make a solid commitment to the planet. Another inspiring action was the GANNI Customization & Repair Station, which took place the past October at the Bremerholm Flagship store in Copenhagen to help and remind their community to prolong the life of their clothes. There was a space where you could bring your clothes and arrange or customize them to give them a new look. According to a study by Movinga, danish people only use 1/4 of their closet, so it was a good approach to cut back on consumption and get more use out of the things people already own.

GANNI Girls

Everything adds up, but the brand’s public relations strategy is one of the great pillars of its game plan. The #GANNIGirls phemomenon has arrived to stay and to show us that when it comes to fashion, everyone is welcome. That is the reason why is #GANNIGirls, in plural: artists, dancers, cooks, teachers, entrepreneurs… Anyone can join the movement, which is a state of mind rather than a way of dressing: these girls view personal style as a form of self-expression and just want to feel confident and have fun. As the Reffstrup state, the success of the movement is not the result of a well-calculated strategy: it happened organically. The couple knew influential profiles such as Camille Charriere, Pernille Teisbaek or Veronika Heilbrunner personally and felt their support from the very beginning. These girls felt cool and comfortable wearing the GANNI clothes and they shared it to the world through their social media platforms. With these actions, the brand gained a lot of exposure and managed to reach larger and more compatible audiencies.

An interesting learning from this whole experience is that relevance is key. The couple realized that working with the right profiles can really make a difference. It is no longer important how big the audience is, but rather its relevance and affinity to the GANNI’s DNA. According to Ditte, when the brand started to become popular, some celebrities were seen wearing a GANNI’s iconic dress or blouse and she expected to see the sales soaring, but the impact was much less compared to what a smaller but well-segmented profile could make for the brand. From this experience they took out their golden rule for working in the digital world: in ordewr to achieve a solid and sustained growth, every little connection you make in your brand needs to be relevant.

You can read more of my articles here.