In Good Company (IGC) is a local ready-to-wear brand that creates timeless wardrobe essentials and classic silhouettes to last beyond seasonal trends and suit modern lifestyles. Started by a team comprising designers Sven Tan and Kane Tan, and managing directors Jaclyn Teo and Julene Aw, the brand offers womenswear, menswear and childrenswear. It has since expanded with three brick-and-mortar stores located in prime shopping malls and has broken into the international market with stockists in Hong Kong, Indonesia and Thailand. A personal interview with co-founder Sven Tan was conducted to collect and pursue in-depth information for the purpose of research. During the interview, Tan noted that IGC is “a brand above clothes” that aims to provide an experience to prolong customers’ time spent in stores, instead of being purely transactional. This is seen through their collaborative spirit with the in-store cafes run by Plain Vanilla and Birds of Paradise within the spaces of ION Orchard and Jewel Changi Airport boutiques respectively. By doing so, the brand is extended into a new product and service in a category completely different from the firm, supporting a crossover between clothing and food, and this is known as horizontal brand extension (Kim et al. 351). The introduction of these cafes has enabled the brand to diversify its business by capitalising under an already established recognition, reputation and brand equity of IGC, hence penetrating both the fashion and food industries, and raising brand awareness.

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Food is a common ground that draws people together, hence the cafes attached to the IGC boutiques act as meeting points to deliver a universal experience for their customers. Not only do they exist to satisfy the hunger of hungry shoppers, but also provide a space for accompanying family members or friends to hang around while waiting. According to Tan, the brand has once encountered a situation where it unexpectedly catered to three generations of grandmothers, mothers and daughters who were all shopping together and buying into the brand. Customers who seek a more intimate experience in an independent space can also patronise the cafes to have their meetings at an affordable price point. Such experiences and interactions in these spaces “act as catalysts for a powerful relationship between a customer and a brand and forge a deep sense of customer community” (Stephens 134). On top of that, IGC emphasizes excellent service as part of a full package to set them apart from fast fashion. The staff are trained rigorously to understand every collection as well as body types so as to better serve customers who might face any fitting or styling issues in view of the high technical finesse of tailoring and drape work integrated into their designs. With all these elements coming together, the store in turn becomes a destination that “celebrates the activities and lifestyles associated with a range of products” to motivate interaction amongst like-minded individuals who share common interests (Stephens 134).

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References
 

Kim, Youn-Kyung, Pauline Sullivan, Judith Forney. “Experiential Retailing: Concepts and Strategies that Sell.” New York. Fairchild Publications, Inc. 2007. 

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Stephens, Doug. “Reengineering Retail: The Future of Selling in a Post-Digital World.” Vancouver. Figure 1 Publishing. 2017.