Harrington Colletion: Sizing Up the Active Wear Market

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Harrington Collection: Sizing Up the Active-Wear Market

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Harrington Collection: Sizing Up the Active-Wear Market

Within the U.S. women’s apparel industry market Harrington Collection competes with divisions in the higher-end better, bridge, and designer categories. Each category targets customers with different needs and different price ranges, with divisions ranging from $150-$500 to $500-$1000+ (page 12, exhibit 7). Harrington Collection's target costumers are women who are affluent, fashionable, and college-educated professionals from ages 25 to 60. The four divisions of Harrington Collection cater to different market segments and consumer needs: Harrington Limited’s target customer was interested in “sophisticated elegance,” Sopra’s customer was described as a “status seeker,” Christina Cole consumers wanted to be “office chic,” and Vigor consumers were labeled “trend setters” (Page 5, Para 1).

As of January 2008, Harrington Collection was facing low profit margins and slowed sales growth (page 1, para 1). Based upon Harrington’s reported retail sales of $806 Million (page 11, exhibit 6), out of the $133 Billion industry retail sales (page 2, para1), Harrington Collection had only 1.83% of the market share. Furthermore, total revenue decreased from $1,390 million in 2005 to $1,344 in 2007 (page 11, exhibit 6).

The initial problem facing the management team is how to reverse these negative trends. In order to correct this and influx new profits into the company, Harrington Collection's decision problem is whether or not to expand into a new product line of active-wear, which is "more casual, lower-priced fashion" (page 1, para 4). There is tremendous growth in the active-wear segment, which is considered as stylish, comfortable, and less expensive (page 5, para 4).

The economic downturn in the early 2000’s has influenced the clothing...