H BY FRETTE WHEN LUXURY GOES DTC
How do you go from 160 years of luxury, supplying the royal houses of Europe, the Titanic and the Orient Express to catering to finicky Millennials? Frette, the legendary linen house, partnered with Chaco to answer that question.
OBJECTIVE: create a DTC brand from scratch. From positioning and naming to visual language, packaging and ecommerce.
CHALLENGE: Fueled by venture capital, DTC brands like Parachute and Brooklinen had become household names. In just four years, their annual sales had grown from zero to $40m: millennials were hooked.
INSIGHT: In their origin stories, founders of both companies made reference to their desire to recreate the linen experience of the luxury hotels they had stayed in. What they didn’t know is the sheets they had slept on were made by Frette.
SOLUTION: Embrace Frette’s heritage. After all, others just talked about recreating the linens of luxury hotels, but Frette had been dressing the beds of the Ritz even before Chanel took residence there. While Parachute and Brooklinen wanted to be “in the know”, Frette actually “knew”. And if Boll&Branch talked about saving the world, we’d embrace our hedonistic legacy: “The Discerning Pursuit of Pleasure” became the strategy.
The visual language was then distilled from Frette’s archives, reinterpreting its rich visual history for the 21st century.
“We were a 159 year-old luxury company that decided to launch a DTC brand for millennials. Chaco's rigorous approach to strategy and design was instrumental in achieving that vision”
– Filippo Arnaboldi, CEO Frette.
Raised on Amazon and Spotify, the majority of millennials now shop from their mobiles: a frictionless brand and shopping experience was crucial, regardless of the customer device of choice.
Launch HbyFrette.com
We also knew that once delivered, boxes would sit in building lobbies where neighbors would see them before being picked up by addressees. So we kept them intriguing and elegant, adorning the top only with the brand’s monogram, leaving the url small on the side panels. The unboxing experience was designed to be simple and rewarding, like a beautiful wedding present.
We then created a series of one-page ads to launch the brand on the New York Times. In an age of soundbites and instagram stories, we adopted the classic long-form style favored by other legendary names: a style we knew would only appeal to the discerning, the ones that soon all others would follow.
“Chaco’s team is passionate about their job: they do their best to learn everything about the brand, to interpret the needs and match them with the market’s…the best way to create the magic of the team work through effective cooperation.”
– Barbara Fabbrini, Product Develpment Director, Frette Milan.
★★★★★