A Bathing ape

This assessment is aiming to outline the marketing strategies of the â€Å"A Bathing Ape† company from several viewpoints. A Bathing Ape Company, which formed and took off in Japan, they manufacture a mixture of products and service on a global scale. Nigo, a Japanese DJ founded the company in 1993. The brand popularity was one of main purpose of their success, even though they have a high pricing policy. However, their supplies are not equal to their demands their customers desired product and their production is limited. Therefore the buyer has to be fast in deciding if he wants the product before it goes out of stock. A Bathing Ape targets the hip hop and fashion scene (Rocherfort). This scarce amount of manufacturing gives the customers a uniqueness feeling, which leads to a high customer satisfaction. There will be further detailed information on the company’s marketing policies afterwards in the report. This project has been done by a group five student for the module â€Å"Principles of Marketing† and it is based on the marketing tactic of 4 Ps. There have been a number of research strategies such as online sources, observation, articles, interviewing a store manager, and sources from the university library. The report and its allied presentation are due on Monday 22nd of November 2010. Company history There are 19 stores in Japan. The other three countries are Hong Kong, London, Paris, and New York, which will be mentioned about more. A Bathing Ape clothing is produced in limited amounts as they are very exclusive and this enables the company to set their price higher than other brands. Many well-known celebrities such as Lil Wayne, Pharrell Williams, Jay Z, Kid Cudi, and Robbie Williams collaborate with A Bathing Ape marketing strategies (Hall, 2005). The business also manufactures shoes and clothing as well as accessories and toys. These products are manufactured and distributed only by A Bathing Ape and their â€Å"Busy Works† stores around the world. Their exclusivity and celebrity endorsements have been profitable for the brand. People use A Bathing Ape products to their advantage as their constantly changes their products in stores, which makes consumers trade A Bathing Ape products. Kid Cudi (the rapper) used to work at A Bathing Ape store in New York until he made it big in the hip-hop industry. Kid Cudi now has teamed up with Nigo and they use Kid Cudis fame to their marketing advantage. They also release special edition t-shirts at these events. The A Bathing Ape Company also operates Bape Hair Salon and they have cafes known as â€Å"Bape!? † They also have futuristic designed shops with designed glass displays and gives technological shopping experiences. A Bathing Ape was one of the first companies to introduce Kevlar clothing into urban wear as a product. Nigo’s designs foreshadowed the urban hip-hop style that has come to prevail as a dominant youth fashion in Japan. A Bathing Apes product, place, price and promotion will be discussed more in depth. Product The Bathing Ape brand has a wide range of unique products. A Bathing Ape makes products such as toys, jeans, bags, monogrammed condoms, Iphone cases, underwear, watches, t-shirts, polo’s and shoes. A Bathing Ape sets their prices high as there products can be limited and traded. Nigo has designed most of the company’s products. A Bathing Ape clothing is well recognized because of its flashy designs and original artwork. The company also has unique packaging for their products. They introduced the Tee Box, which is a glass metal box which polo shirts come in and have other t shirts in free hanging boxes. A Bathing Ape always collaborates with other brands to combine products. Some companies that A Bathing Ape has collaborated with is Pepsi, M*A*C, and Carhartt. The logo and theme were derived from the original movie â€Å"Planet of the Apes. † A Bathing Apes logo can be found on all of their products. As A Bathing Ape offers the market a wide range of products such as dog clothing to sunglasses it can attract a large market. Nigo labeled â€Å"Ape Shall Never Kill Ape† on most of his products when he was first becoming recognized. Nigo gave his products to famous Japanese artist to wear during their performances to increase the brands exposure. What makes A Bathing Apes products so valuable is that they don’t mass-produce like other companies. A Bathing Ape does not only offer products to the market but services as well. The business operates Bape Cafes, Bape Galleries, Bape Cuts (Hair salon) and they even have Bape TV as well as a record label. A Bathing Ape is known for their camouflage designs as it their classic pattern. The company’s products first began appearing on the back streets of Tokyo’s edgy neighborhood (Pollock, 2008). Place The Bathing Apes stores are located globally . Because it is a high- end brand their stores need to be located in famous central areas. For example London’s Carnaby Street is known for its unique and limited edition clothing. Further these popular areas have brands such as Adidas placed there, with their limited edition stores, as do many other brands. The London store is nothing compared to the interior decor that the other stores use to attract customers. Aoyama the A Bathing Ape store in Japan has very technological designs. Shoes are placed behind a glass cage on a rotating conveyer belt and t-shirts come down tubes with just the push of a button. The emphasis of changing lights and colorful designed clothes attract their customers. A Bathing Ape store also provides their staff with A Bathing Ape clothing to wear while they work. This similar strategy is used by many other brands such as Hollister, Abercrombie and Fitch, and Polo. The Hong Kong Bape store is the largest Nigo owns its 2 levels high and located in the centre of the city. The store has huge pictures of Nigo and A Bathing Ape characters to advertise their brand. The company store De Colette in Paris is the only store that features individual areas for other brands such as Billionaire Boys Club and Ice Cream. De Colette also has a unique designed cafe, which adds to the A Bathing Ape shopping experience. The store in New York uses the same concept as the other stores. Promotion A Bathing Apes style of promotion is very distinctive to other clothing brands as they do not want to tarnish their brand image they never lower the price of their clothing or have sales. The brand knows that many of their products the demand exceeds the supply greatly and they use this to their advantage for example A Bathing Ape shark hoodies were sold for ? 300 but once they were immediately sold out people were reportedly paying into the thousands for them. The main way in which A Bathing Ape promotes its self without tarnishing the brand image is smart they collaborate with other brands such as Adidas on some pairs of limited edition sneakers. A Bathing Ape does promotions like this all the time with many other well-known brands such as Carhartt. By doing these type of promotions they get a lot of publicity as well as more outside interest in their brand and still charge more than their usual price. A Bathing Ape also collaborate with many well-known celebrities such as Kanye West, Kid Cudi and Ian brown on selected items, which would be made even more limited edition. When A Bathing Ape produce all of these items they will make sure they get every detail of their design even into their packaging for example the A Bathing Ape x Marvel sneakers are packed into toy like packaging which makes the product stand out on shelves and look unique. A Bathing Ape is a company which has products on sale which are constantly a promotional products such as during the summer they released A Bathing Ape x Birkenstocks which where A Bathing Ape monogrammed Birkenstock sandals this would be just one of their summer collaborations. By collaborating with brands like Adidas and Birkenstock who already have a large customer base this would attract a lot of attention to the bathing ape brand. With promotions like these help both of the brands market their products for example when A Bathing Ape teamed up with Casio and re designed the classic G-shock watch, which was a top seller during the 90’s era. The watches were first released in ceramic white and mate black they turned out to be top sellers and only 1500 of each were produced many people wanted to get their hands on one of these watches because they were on the front page of magazines and constantly in music videos. Not long after the replica market noticed the demand for A Bathing Ape goods and started producing the replicas of the watches so that most of the public were able to obtain a replica. A Bathing Ape mainly relies on hip-hop celebrities to market their brand via music videos and in their lyrics. They are not just targeting a stereotype they are targeting a lifestyle. Price A Bathing Ape has an effective pricing policy that runs throughout all their stores. The company uses the same pricing range for their product globally. A Bathing Ape does not have discounts on their products making them all valuable. Additionally they do not have wholesale and seasonal pricing. They also keep their exclusivity by not dealing with retail stores. Another good aspect of the A Bathing Ape’s pricing method is that they offer Bape cards in which customers can earn credit points by purchasing products. This also is beneficial to the company as they can study shopping patterns to see which products are in demand. Their limited edition products never depreciate in value which mean even the used good may value more expensive that the brand new of the same products. For instant, because of their limited edition production policy, a used pair of shoes would cost more when it is out of stock. Conclusion: To conclude, the four P’s of the marketing mix play a huge role in the success of A Bathing Ape. The company produces and sells a wide variety of products that attract most target markets. They sell products from t-shirts, jeans and shoes to toys and pencil cases to watches. All of the products the company produces are limited edition so they run out quickly. This technique makes the customers go to the store as quickly as possible and buy the product they want as soon as it comes out into stores. The company also promotes its brand name by making deals with huge multinational corporations such as Pepsi. The prices of A Bathing Ape’s products are the same in every single country that they have stores in. The company doesn’t usually have discounts or sales in specific stores. The prices of the products always remain the same no matter what part of the year it is. A Bathing Ape has stores in many countries around the world including Japan, Hong Kong, United Kingdom and the United States. The locations of the company’s stores are in the very urban parts of the city, especially within large shopping centers.