Case Study on Celine Fashion Brand
Celine is a famous French brand specializing in the production of men’s and women’s clothing, accessories, shoes, perfume, and other goods. Currently, the company is a member of the Syndicate of the Paris Haute Couture. One can consider it one of the most customer-oriented companies in the luxury field business.
History of the Brand
The history of the brand Celine dates back to 1945. According to Tungate, the founder of the studio making children’s shoes Celine Vipiana opened a small shop, Celine, le bottie pour enfants in Paris (133-134). Despite the lack of experience and education in the field of design, Vipiana’s business scored a success. Soon, even the Princess and Prince of Monaco became regular customers of the store. Gradually, the brand Celine became more recognizable and its assortment was replenished with models of women’s and men’s shoes. In 1955, it held the first fashion show at the Paris Opera School l`Ecole de l`Opera. In addition, the company launched a small advertising tram at the Botanical Garden.
On its roof, it installed the red elephant, which is the symbol of the brand. The elephant held a shoe with his trunk and invited everybody to visit the company store. As Granger and Sterling state, in 1959, Madame Celine created the famous women’s moccasins with “pigtails”, which are a distinctive feature of the Celine style to this day (123). In 1966, Celine developed the first women’s wear collection, which consisted of classic and sports models. The public perceived the show with delight and the brand has become truly famous. A year later, Fashion House Celine launched a line of sportswear Couture Sportswear. In the middle of the 1970s, brand products by Celine appeared in Japan, Korea, the US, Switzerland, Italy, and Russia. In 1996, the brand Celine became the property conglomerate LVMH, which is the largest supplier of luxury goods in the world. Currently, Jean-Marc Lyube is the president of the company. Today, the annual turnover of the company is over one billion euro (Hancock 44).
Location and Customer Profile
The company owns more than one hundred and ten boutiques around the world. One can find Celine shops in New York, Madrid, London, Rome, Monte Carlo, Monaco, Lausanne, Geneva, Moscow, and St. Petersburg. The location of the biggest brand boutique is Madison Avenue, New York, which area exceeds 2,400 square meters. The products of the brand Celine are called “the Parisian luxury which is available to everyone.” These are luxury goods, which have underestimated prices for their class. Products by the brand are popular among star personalities, such as Gwyneth Paltrow, Celine Dion, Sharon Stone, Rene Russo, and others. However, the audience of Celine’s admirers consists not only of VIP customers. It also covers a huge number of people with an average income and great aspiration for high fashion and elegant style. According to observation by Bickle, Celine’s customer profiling comprises the following factors. The average age of the customers is between 27 and 58. The majority of the clients are women, comprising 70% of the total guests. Concerning social status, the consumers are from the middle and higher class with an average household income consisting of three thousand dollars and above. As for marital status, 70% of consumers are couples while 30% are bachelors, unmarried or single women. Most every consumer (accounting for 90%) has higher or at least specialized secondary education. Finally, nearly all of the customers (95%) reside in the city.
The main priority of the brand is the quality of the materials. Parisian luxury, elegance, and sophistication, combined with not typical for the luxury brands’ price is one of the benefits, which brought fame and love of millions of people around the world. Celine follows its motto “Beauty plus intelligence” and creates gorgeous things that do not eclipse, but profitably emphasize natural beauty. Thus, beauty, clear and concise form, combined with high-quality materials and reasonable price are the main company’s unique selling propositions.
In addition, Celine creates a line for people with average income. For instance, the shirt chosen is the part of winter-fall 2015 collection created as a part of the casual styling line. One can note all the features that are inherent to the Celine fashion brand and its company style in the shirt’s design. It has a classic but unusual look, as all the items from the Celine collection have. The sophisticated but simple and concise design is the characteristic feature of the shirt. The celine brand has a special direction, which deals with the creation of casual clothes that have a lower status than pret-a-porter deluxe collections. Celine cares about people who are admirers of the brand but are not able to visit fashion shows and buy something there.
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The Process of Clothes’ Design and Creation
Today, the British designer Phoebe Philo, famous for excellent sleek, simple, and austere casual clothes, successfully creates collections of Celine. A significant number of people engage in the process of creating clothes at Celine. Every single shirt goes through plenty of departments and the hands of various workers before getting into the boutique shelves. In the company, the process of creating of the item starts from the work of the designers’ team. They define the future look of each single item and the collection, in general. The fabric procurement specialists, who work closely with designers, play a special role in the process. They choose and provide the most qualified fabric, leather, and accessories. Like any other huge fashion brand, Celine has plenty of manufacturers all over the world. Various experts in the field of production of clothing are working there. In addition, there is a department of technical quality control. It has high and strict standards applied to every single item. As Burns and Bryant argue, when clothes go to the store, a number of sales experts, who are the fashion brand ambassadors, assess them and make sure that the goods have a personal appearance appropriate for a brand dress code (45).
According to Corbellini and Saviolo’s study, birth of shirts and any other goods at Celine begins with the selection of high-quality fabric purchased in European countries, such as Italy, Spain, France, and Germany (99). Wolfe describes the manufacturing process as following: when the designers define the model, sizes, fabric, and other details, they send all the data to the internal company mail. Production staff enters data in a special program, where it turns into patterns, by which the shirt will be sewn. Further, patterns are printed on a special industrial printer – a plotter. The printed sheet is applied to the fabric and a pattern is immediately made. The printed curves, by which the shirt is sewn, are stored up to three months. Their electronic version is stored indefinitely. Then, the curves are superimposed on the fabric and all the details of the shirt, mainly the back, sides, sleeves, collars, cuffs, and others are cut out. If there is a need to do embroidery on the cuff and collar, it should be done before the parts of the shirt get to the tailors. In this case, a special device fixes the cuffs placed in a special machine for embroidery. The special program sets a pattern, which can be –a letter, symbol, or figure. After this process, the parts of the shirts are gathered and numbered to avoid confusion with other shirts. At this point, there is a sheet with all the dimensions and characteristics of a shirt together with the future sleeves, cuffs, collars, and buttons. The cuffs and collars are denser than the rest of the fabric of the shirt. For this purpose, the special adhesive duplicates fabric. After that, it is loaded into a press where it is fixed with the help of pressure and temperature. It is important to mention that sewers perform only their specific task, which contributes to the high excellence of performance. The next step is when the cuffs are sewn to the sleeves. At this stage, one can say that the shirt is almost ready, as the sewers only have to make the final changes. The special machine grinds buttonholes on the cuffs and collars. Afterward, buttons are sewn manually. After this operation, the shirt goes to the control department. The shirt is checked for compliance with all the parameters of the order, and if something is wrong, then it is returned back and needs fixing. Finally, after the approval of the quality control department, the shirt is ready and goes to the boutique. This process describes how the chosen shirt was made.
The Boutique’s Team and Activities
As Easey argues, the selling process at Celine boutique is totally customer-oriented. Buyers of luxury goods are special people. They know exactly what they want and are well aware of how they can get it (14). The assistants treat each customer with all attention and respect. There is a team, which consists of one manager and two assistants, who work with the customers and have different roles. The manager maintains a contact with the client while assistants perform a technical work. The latter speaks in a low voice with the seller and works proactively selecting kits and alternatives that the manager may need.
Without a doubt, measures to stimulate sales are important for the success of the boutique. According to Ellinwood, highly qualified personnel is a key factor characterizing Celine boutique (154). Managers provide individual work with each client. The requirements for the professional level of seller-managers and their assistants are especially high. Celine staff members are not just polite sales consultants; they are vendors-stylists, who know how to satisfy all customer requests. Celine boutique organizes training activities for personnel, invites specialists from the field of the fashion industry, and holds lectures for the staff. Regular special events for customers have been a part of Celine’s boutique practice for a long time. These are the so-called fashion-days when regular customers are invited to the boutique for the demonstration of new collections. During these events, customers are given a 25% discount. In addition, Celine provides birthday greetings accompanied by granting discounts. Besides, the company’s president, Jean-Marc Lyube, pays great attention to the design of Celine commercial buildings to conform to the highest standards.
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Conclusion
In conclusion, one can perceive Celine one of the most successful brands in the world, the annual turnover of which exceeds one billion euros. Campaigns brand products are published in the most prestigious glossy magazines, which indicates its popularity and success. The main objective of the brand is to create things that are elegant in themselves. Clothes do not overshadow owners but only emphasize their best side. Style of Céline is feminine, sexy, discreet, and natural. Perhaps, that is why Celine products can be seen on the most elegant and famous women of the present and the past centuries.
