An interesting Aero leather conversation I had today...

[Navin323i]

So the last couple of days I've been in downtown DC for a Federal IT conference and had the pleasure of meeting some British nationals who are execs for a particular company that was there. During the course of the conversation the topic turned to leather jackets (I was wearing the same jacket that you see in my avatar which they were admiring), so I asked them whether they were familiar with Aero Leather company and none of them had heard of them.

Now mind you, I personally had never heard of Aero until I joined this forum so I assumed it was just me and that anyone with a fondness for leather jackets are familiar with this company (just like we're all familiar with say, BMWs and other automobile companies).

What I found interesting and maybe you UK-based members can comment on this, but they mentioned that marketing works a bit differently in your area there... marketing is more by word of mouth than it is over here in the U.S. One of the gents I was chatting with mentioned that he buys his meat from a reputable Scottish establishment but none of his friends there have heard of this establishment... he himself heard about this place by word of mouth.

Thoughts?

 

[Speedbird]

We have the same marketing here as anywhere else, mostly US driven but not always. When it comes to niche markets for a certain specialist interests or age groups, like a particular style of garment, specific type of vehicle or even food it does tend to come down to a loose interpretation of "word of mouth" in that people will read specialist publications, join clubs, watch niche TV programming, and get to know of certain products via interacting that way.
Outside of this type of forum Aero, Eastman, ALC wouldn't register on the radar. Even today. Back in the days of early Avirex UK (1990/91) there was product placement on primetime TV including Top of the Pops, 2.4 Children and the BBC Children in Need extravaganza and still no one had heard of Avirex. That type of product placement is actually frowned upon and needed quite a bit of subterfuge to attain. I think it is banned outright now. Cockpit Clothing Co of Southampton advertised in Fly Past, Pilot and such like in competition with Eastman and ALC etc ... and developed specific car club links - Morgan, Caterham, Cosworth to pierce the market. The idea was enthusiasts would latch on and market to other enthusiasts.

High end non-couture/fashion label leatherware is a very narrow niche over here, although there is a chance that it will become bigger as kids from the 60's and 70's like me turn into 40-somethings with a desire to relive their youth. I am hugely surprised and pleased that a small company like Aero has so much appeal in the US. I wonder would they have such appeal if they hadn't acquired the Aero brand name which of course is from NY through and through? That's by the by and good on them for making that leap - but I bet any money they have more sales in the US than the Uk and not just because of size of market. It's all about the products and where they fit.

To be honest, these days, outside of certain types of car/bike shows and airshows and re-enactment events you don't see so many traditional flight/bike leather jackets as everyday wear at all anymore.

Streetwear in London is another matter - hip-hop, jeans around the knees and oversize Avirex varsity jackets and randomly logo-ed race replica biker jackets are the very thing for the young man in the 'hood! I blame &^^&^&^&5 for that entirely! Talk about creating a monster that took over the world! lol

 

[Speedbird]

Just to add to the above, what I failed to mention is that because the BBC is publicly funded through our compulsory license fee, no advertising is legally allowed on BBC channels and product placement these days is nigh on impossible.

Our commercial channels carry paid advertising but it is much less frequent, less localised and less direct than US advertising though on lots of our cable/sky channels that type is catching up.

I would hesitate to call all our marketing "word of mouth" ... but the truth is, if you want to shift units in the mass market - YouTube, FaceBook and Twitter are probably now the way forward - viral marketing is King!

 

[Edward]

On point of information re product placement... This has been allowed for years in cinema (see, for instance the prominence of Sugar Puffs ads on bus shelters etc in Doctor Who: Dalek Invasion of Earth 2057), but never on television. Now, however, they are in the process of changing the law to allow this. Ultimately, what has provoked this change is the credit crunch: commercial TV channels' advertising income has been hit hard; this is considered to be a way for them to be able to make that up.

 

[pipvh]

Just to add to Speedbird's points, I think that one key difference regarding products such as those of Aero or Easman this side of the Atlantic, is that they came out of an earlier incarnation of street fashion, specifically the interest in 40s and 50s clothes that sprang up here in the early 80s on the wings of a rockabilly revival. The look we now think of as Japanese - extremely authentic American workwear, esoteric leathers - was what you found in London shops like American Classics, J. Simon, Sam Walker (which sold Aero when they first got started), and tweaked by street fashion brands like Duffer of St George.

My point is that Aero started off catering to a small and very clued-up market, at a time when, if you wanted a leather jacket in the UK, the best thing you could find would be a 70s-styled Schott. This wasn't about nostalgia or quality, it was about a certain twist of culture. I think that Aero have always kept that insider's mystique - the same is probably true of ELC, though they are a more recent arrival, at least for me. The very sharp division that we have in the UK between tribal, obsessive street fashion culture and the high street doesn't seem to exist in the US outside the very biggest metropolitan areas, where I suspect that the appeal of Aero, ELC, Goodwear etc lies more in nostalgia or the emulation of past glories - a different means to what often amounts to the same end. A good way to see what I mean is to order the Langlitz paper catalogue, and then look on their Japanese website. Same manufacturer, same leather, different cultures, the UK in this case being closer to the Japanese.

 

[Fletch]

Don't necessarily assume we aren't tribal or obsessive over here - just probably in different ways. We don't like to focus on class as much over here, but we have our subtle "tribes." And some not so subtle.

As for obsessive, what are British street fashionistas obsessed with? With US jacketheads it's usually pure physical detail - a collector mindset.

Myself, I wear flight jackets because I can't own or operate a plane. And because they suit me!

 

[pipvh]

As for obsessive, what are British street fashionistas obsessed with?

I have no idea any more - just trying to give a snapshot of what spawned Aero Leather, which happened at a time when I was paying attention.

Nothing to do with class, in this case, but very much to do with music and nightclubbing.

 

[Fletch]

Zero to do with it over here. A lot to do with machine/military cultures. I'd say 2 out of 3 on VLJ are either vets, pilots, or motorcyclists. The rest, like me, are warbird and/or vintage buffs. And it's gendered space: 100% male, at least those who post.

 

[pipvh]

Yeah, that is interesting. In the UK we've had an incredible fascination with all things American since the war, but it's a sort of idealized AND stylized fascination. I can remember when I thought that everyone in the US was wearing selvage 501s and union-made shirts - imagine my surprise when I finally got there (1986 or thereabouts) to find they weren't making any of that stuff any more. What can I say? You gave us Elvis, we gave you the Beatles. You gave us California Sportswear, we gave you Aero Leather. Or something like that!

I'm not saying that the vets, military buffs etc aren't also here in the UK, though. I think everything's changed quite a lot since I used to hang out on the King's Road...

 

[Fletch]

Yeah, that is interesting. In the UK we've had an incredible fascination with all things American since the war, but it's a sort of idealized AND stylized fascination. I can remember when I thought that everyone in the US was wearing selvage 501s and union-made shirts - imagine my surprise when I finally got there (1986 or thereabouts) to find they weren't making any of that stuff any more. What can I say? You gave us Elvis, we gave you the Beatles. You gave us California Sportswear, we gave you Aero Leather. Or something like that!

We're a much bigger market, and that means everybody either a. targets mass tastes and quality or b. charges like $400 for a denim shirt to make small runs worth while.

We also value "progress," which usually means obsolescence. What goes out of style never comes back in quite the same way, tho it may be alluded to. It has to bear the marks of current trends, and be made marketable. We also allow the practical to be pushed aside by the easy or the scientific. That creates opportunity and entrepreneurship, but means you can't buy rubber jar sealers after awhile, even tho they're perfectly good. Stuff that breaks or wears out quicker also keeps a consumer-based economy chugging - or so goes the theory.

What results is a tendency to take our best quality for granted. We're too close to a lot of what the world thinks of as "American." We think of it as something else: racial or subcultural (roots musics like jazz or early rock), déclassé (work clothes), once utilitarian but no longer useful (work clothes, plus various leathers & footwear). We couldn't have our selvage denims and such after the 80s, because the very machinery to make them was sold to Japanese interests the moment it became more profitable to do nonselvage.

Work clothes had to follow our idea of what's utilitarian. This meant anything well made or stylistic about them had to be overlooked. They could not be good clothes. Good clothes were by definition fashionable, if not outright fashionista, looking to New York if not Paris or Milan. As I said, we have our class codes, we just don't call them that.

Pardon my seeming to digress. This cuts across a lot of issues in society I think - so many that it is, in a way, literally nobody's business.

 

[pipvh]

Pardon my seeming to digress.

Of course.

This is an endlessly fascinating subject and also relevant to the OP's question (all right, a bit tangentially, but...).

 

[Speedbird]

I think everything's changed quite a lot since I used to hang out on the King's Road...

It certainly has changed .... sort of .... yet not ... sort of!

I think you and I, Pip, are roughly the same age - 40 give or take a couple of years. I think, by the sounds of it, we stalked the same hunting grounds at roughly the same time - American Classics on King's Road in the late 80's and early 90's, Flip on Long Acre, Mash on Oxford Street (the parent company of Flip & Mash was also the UK licensee for Avirex BTW); I used to hunt for my Fred Perry and Ben Sherman just off Carnaby St and movie stuff/comics/books in and around Chinatown/Soho. I moved away from London in the mid 90's but came back in 1999, by then I was looking around Portobello Rd, Ladbroke Grove, Sheps Bush, Camden Lock & Stables of course. Lately, the last few years I have become lazy and find ebay much easier to navigate to!

I no longer have much clue what the fashionista's are wearing and lusting after any more. I never was in with them anyway, since I was (and am) always curiously stuck in one of either 1958, 1968, 1978 or 1988. A bit arbitary, I know. But this does get us back on topic directly to Navin's conumdrum of a question.

Is our marketing in the UK driven by word of mouth?

Yes and no - the more I think about it; our mass market marketing is the same as anywhere else; namely commercial tv, radio, internet, magazine's, newspapers, bus shelters and sides of taxi's etc... and it spreads through one tribe or another like wildfire via peer pressure and emulation of celebrity... but also our niche marketing is still word of mouth as much as it ever was but more widespread than ever before - sometimes cunningly led and guided through subtle and not-so-subtle tricks developed into an artform by 'guerilla' marketeers. Word of mouth spreads the news through clubs, enthusiasts, connoiseurs, afficionados, internet forums, book clubs, supper clubs, estate agents - what and whomever you can think of really! This applies more or less to anything of apparent quality in any aspect of life - food, wine, art, clothes - you name it. I think when the IT bods told Navin marketing was through word of mouth in the UK and that he bought his meat from a company known only to his pals I think he was describing this phenomenon in action. Someone down the golf club mentions he has a new supplier of really good steaks, the word spreads and a little micro economy pops up. This is replicated 100's of times in different little groups and the company has a viable business model.

This isn't new. The only difference between the UK now and 20 years ago is the massive increase in options to release a product to market and get it known. We didn't have whole TV channels broadcasting from Borough Market showcasing organic food produce then to get people switched on to thinking they need to buy their meat specially delivered to their door from a farmer up the road (even if it does turn out it is a big company supplying the whole of Yorkshire or Scotland!), but we do have now. Twice over with time delay!

American Classics is still with us, but in Covent Garden, not King's Rd - it's establishment now. Is the spirit of King's Road - of Mclaren and Westwood and S.E.X. dead - no, I don't think so - but I think it has relocated to cyber space........... hardly any niche product independent traders can afford London rent/rates anymore.

Is word of mouth marketing in the UK really just normal marketing disguised? ... I think so. Like I said in post 1 - viral marketing is King!

Edit: In theory all this should make it really easy to be a millionaire several times over - of course, in reality it probably makes it much harder - too much competition, too much 'chatter' and white noise ..... most new products will disappear into the abyss in weeks without a massive mega-budget campaign behind them.

Still, if we could find some organic Grenfell and Ventile (R) cloth, a good cadet smock or two, a factory who can manufacture acccurately, cheaply and with a clean bill of health morally and socially plus enough steam punk cyber goth skatehead vintage Japanese hillwalkers we could be onto a winner!

 

[Seb Lucas]

Off Topic. Markets are terrible things. In America, for instance, if you sell a book to a moderate audience you can still become rich. A small percentage of 300 million people is still huge. Over here a best selling book might net you $5000. A small percentage of 20 million people doesn't generate a greal deal.

 

[Speedbird]

that's not off topic at all Seb ... it's a good point ... I once met a celebrity chef through work and he made it very clear ... every autumn he knocks out a new cook book ... by Xmas it sells hugely - into the millions, he gets £1 per copy sold and by spring it is remaindered.. by contrast a biography of a sporting hero sells in the tens of thousands ... and can only really be done once... and is also remaindered by Spring

Go figure ... I love cooking ... and sport .... you, I, and everyone else make celebrity chefs more rich than racing drivers and cricketers by accident! :eusa_doh:

 

[Navin323i]

Just to add to the above, what I failed to mention is that because the BBC is publicly funded through our compulsory license fee, no advertising is legally allowed on BBC channels and product placement these days is nigh on impossible.

Our commercial channels carry paid advertising but it is much less frequent, less localised and less direct than US advertising though on lots of our cable/sky channels that type is catching up.

I would hesitate to call all our marketing "word of mouth" ... but the truth is, if you want to shift units in the mass market - YouTube, FaceBook and Twitter are probably now the way forward - viral marketing is King!

Thanks for your very informative post, my friend.

Please keep in mind that I wasn't agreeing nor disagreeing with the folks I met who referred to the marketing in your area as word of mouth... I have no opinion on the subject but figured it would be an interesting topic to chat about here, that's all.

 

[Speedbird]

not at all, Navin. It is a very interesting subject (well, kind of) and as discussed by Fletch and Pip and Seb, it touches all corners of society in general and our 'hobby' in particular - why is it some brands have a life of their own and others perhaps with as much potential wither and die or are unloved?

On the whole, I am inclined to agree with the IT bods you met, though with probably a different perspective and for different reasons.

I still can't get over the fact that a celeb chef (I'm not knocking chefs, I love 'em) can make a couple of million sterling year on year and Lewis Hamilton probably only made £50k for his book. Then again, Lewis made up for it with his salary and sponsorship deals. And Pussycat Doll g/f

 

[Edward]

I found American Classics a bit too Sixties-biased for my tastes, maybe it had moved on, but then I really only checked it out in its last few weeks: it closed at the Covent Garden location at the end of February (not sure whether it'll reopen anywhere else, I had the impression this is it?). I did buy their last pair of own-brand, 50s cut khakis - must get around to getting those cuffed and hemmed.... I'd have bought loads more stuff if they'd had more 40s and even 50s bits. Seems to be much harder for guys to pick up this stuff in the UK than the girls.

 

[Papa M]

it closed at the Covent Garden location at the end of February (not sure whether it'll reopen anywhere else, I had the impression this is it?).

Blimey Edward. I'm astounded to hear this news.

I will be on corporate hospitality in Covent Garden on Thursday afternoon and was planning on calling in on American Classics in the morning.

I haven't been in Central London during the last few months. Last time I was at American Classics, during the autumn, they were buzzing due to their fine stock of Eastman jackets.

I'm sorry if this is their demise. I was about to give them a plug in my Selvedge Denim feature in Men's File magazine.

 

[BigHairyFinn]

Well... I'm a bit biased I guess. I tend use the garage I got recommended by a "honest Joe" car dealer to fix my car. I don't see any advertisements in the local paper for him. So if its by word of mouth only it must be good. The theory being if you have to advertise you must be selling crap and mostly you have persons there hired to "sell" rather than people who "know" what they are selling. Like back in the day when I was buying computer parts I wanted an answer to my question and not a sales pitch. So I rather went to the rude nerds in a basement who told their customers they were too stupid to own a computer if you asked something they thought was silly, than to some glitzy showroom with a "salesperson" trying to sell me a computer as it had a "big nice monitor" when I was interested on the graphics card FPS rate and things like that.

But then again I'm from an area&business culture totally different from either the US or UK, and where customer "service"... hrm... oh and about "returns" - its caveat emptor "you bought it = its yours." So here one has grown quite sceptical over marketing - especially buying "long-term investment" type of stuff. What is a good sales pitch is say "five stars in the Technology World tests" - but if you get a bad reputation you can suffer for a long time trying to get rid of the image. Same works opposite, strong brands can "ride" on their old reputation which is why you have stuff rebranded to something the "locals appreciate" instead of trying to bring in a brand that will have to start from zero.

And I think regardless of the locale some of these "thumb rules" work quite universally.

 

[Speedbird]

I found American Classics a bit too Sixties-biased for my tastes, maybe it had moved on, but then I really only checked it out in its last few weeks: it closed at the Covent Garden location at the end of February (not sure whether it'll reopen anywhere else, I had the impression this is it?).

Nooooooooo .... :rage:

This is an end of an era and my youth for sure!!!!

Edward, you have made grown men cry!!!!

It must be the downturn plus London rents/rates ... it is killing all the good places....