Cover Story: Apparel and the City

A recent Twitter campaign coinciding with the opening of Brooklyn Industries' Philadelphia store this February exemplifies the dual purpose of the retailer's social media efforts. For 13 straight days at 2 p.m. EST, Brooklyn Industries tweeted a unique code. The first person to go into the Philadelphia location with that code won a free tote bag. The campaign was extremely successful, helping Brooklyn Industries build a community of followers in a new market, while at the same time driving in-store traffic.

Brooklyn Industries actively seeks feedback from consumers on its social media sites, from what they think about a product to their thoughts on a marketing campaign. It's all done in an effort to create an ongoing dialog with customers and prospects. And their feedback isn't disregarded; Brooklyn Industries listens and responds.

This March, for example, Brooklyn Industries launched a marketing campaign promoting its spring apparel. While the campaign was a success commercially, the company quickly learned from fans on its Facebook page that it wasn't perfect. A number of people commented that the female model used for the campaign was too skinny. So Brooklyn Industries took that feedback into consideration when it planned its April campaign: Employees from inside the company's headquarters were photographed, and a half-Nigerian, half-Thai model was used.

"That was done as an expression of diversity, both in terms of body types and people from different backgrounds and places," recalls Funk. "That's an example where something that's even vaguely negative can be turned into something very productive."

Committed to the 
Environment
Entrenched in Brooklyn Industries' culture is a commitment to the environment. That commitment is reflected in the company's retail stores and headquarters, which are powered with wind energy. A strong believer in "upcycling" — creating useful products from waste materials — Brooklyn Industries' stores contain warehouse pallet wood that serve as wall fixtures; reconstructed vintage tables used to display products; and window displays featuring recycled materials such as handbags and clothing from previous seasons.

The company communicates its sustainability efforts to consumers via its blog, press coverage and signage in its stores, which inform shoppers about what upcycling means to the brand and what's upcycled in that particular store.

"Because our first product was a bag made out of recycled billboard material — that's how we got into the clothing business — we believe that that's very much a part of our roots and something we want to express to our customers," Funk says. "And as an organically grown company, we don't have a lot of extra money to spare, so we try to do things in very logical, reusable ways. If we're building a window display and don't have a big budget, we use materials that already exist, whether they're being thrown out or are old materials that we used to have. That way we can become very sustainable."

Expanding its Retail Horizon
While many retailers last year were fighting just to survive the worst economic environment since the Great Depression, Brooklyn Industries was busy investing in its future. Taking advantage of an abundance of unoccupied retail space to negotiate lower lease rates, and the fact that landlords no longer could afford to push aside smaller retailers in favor of larger corporations, Brooklyn Industries opened four new brick-and-mortar locations (Portland, Ore., New York City, Philadelphia and Boston) within the last 16 months.