Red Torpedo Launches New Range of Women's Casual Clothing

 

Following months of deliberation and planning, we’re really excited to be launching a new range of Red Torpedo casual clothing for women. This gear will have the same top end quality that’s always been associated with the brand but we’re going BIG in a number of other key areas that we think will vastly improve our women’s range!

 

Background

Red Torpedo has offered women’s gear since the inception of the Company. The female market has always been important to us and is a growing segment - but it’s one that we’d definitely like to develop further. We’ve a loyal and supportive female customer base with a high incidence of repeat purchase behaviour: women who've bought into the brand and like what we do.

Earlier this year, we carried out a review of our women’s range as part of an on-going product plan. It highlighted that some key changes could be made that would offer significant increased added value for our female customers.

Our women’s t-shirts, for example, largely carried the same designs and colour options as our men’s range. In most cases, only the fit and sizing was different but otherwise, it was largely undifferentiated. This also extended into some other product lines. Basically, we weren’t addressing the fact that the women’s market was a discrete segment with specific likes and dislikes.

 

Taking a New Approach

In April 2021, CEO Bill assigned a team involving Alison, Customer Service Manager, Helen, Operations Assistant & Robin, Red Torpedo's designer, to start making the changes. We put together a list of objectives to overhaul our current women’s casual clothing range and identified several key areas that we needed to investigate in terms of potential change. We set about to specifically find out what these were so that we could give our women’s gear a serious revamp for 2022 / 23.
 

 

Customer Research

Our starting point was to conduct a research programme amongst our female customer base which would provide the necessary consumer based information to shape a new plan for our female range.

We identified a sample of some of our most loyal female customers and sent them a questionnaire to explore their opinions, attitudes and views covering a number of key areas. These included garment fit and sizing, colour preferences, graphic design placement and possible new product line development.

This consumer based research elicited a really positive response and generated some clear themes regarding what our female consumers wanted to see us doing – all of which we’ve taken on board and implemented in the development and creation of the new women’s range.

 

Time for Change: the New Women’s Range

One of the most significant changes we’ve made to the new women’s gear is to completely alter our female sizing structure across t-shirts, shirts and hoodies. Instead of offering sizes 8-20 we’ve changed the structure to S-XL.

The individual fit and styling has also significantly altered. Arm apertures in t-shirts, for example, have been widened and the torso straightened rather than being slightly “fitted” at the waistline. This new sizing and styling therefore provides a more comfortable and relaxed fit.

Red Torpedo tee shirts

 

Colour Pallette

In response to feedback from the survey, we’re also launching an exciting new colour pallette for all female garments. Again, rather than restricting the female colour options to essentially the same as our men’s range – (predominantly greys, black and white / off-white), we’ve introduced several new colours exclusively for women which will launch in Spring 2022.

 

Graphic Design

We were also largely applying the same men’s designs to womens’ garments. The research clearly indicated that female customers wanted to see more designs that were different to the men’s gear and so the new range will have more designs exclusively for women.

Design placement on individual garments has also altered slightly. In some cases it was found to be too high or placed in the centre of the chest which ultimately distorted the design when on body, due to the tight fit of our original t-shirts.

 

 

New shirts

As well as a raft of new tees, we will be introducing some mega new long sleeve shirts and hoodies. Again, sizing for these product lines has been changed form 8-20 to S-XL, again resulting in a more “relaxed” fit. Increasingly, female customers aren’t looking for a tightly, body shaped look but prefer a garment that they can quickly pull on and instantly feel cosy and comfortable in.

We will also be introducing some completely new product lines which will appear in 2022. This will initially take the form of a limited run but depending on how they’re received, we hope to continue to expand this into Spring/Summer 2023.

 

 

We want to thank all our female customers who responded so positively to the consumer research and who helped us to shape what we feel are some great new changes for our women’s gear. Our marketing team have worked tirelessly to put the new range together and are really excited about how it’s looking and how it’s going to be received.

New products are in the sample stage and will be launched in Spring 2022, but in the meantime we have a limited collection of 4 t-shirts and a brand new zipped sweatshirt launching December 2021.

 

 

 

 

 


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