Global trade partners in Germany has been my favourite class. I have learned a lot about brands , consumer , trends , problems in Germany. Its not difficult to sell in Germany difficult is to build a brand image. They are facing a young fashion problem because majority of the population is dependent. Another problem is they don’t have production in Germany, only the sample designing is done here. The target group here from the company’s prospective are –

1. Age

2. Look of fashion

3. Size.

Companies are targeting one of the above group.

Age group target brand are street one, S. Oliver girl , Madonna (25-35) etc

Comma , Marc Aurel , more and more (35-50) etc

Size group target brands are Betty Barclay, Cecil etc

Look for fashion is brands which have short fashion and they are the one who initiate new fashion and within 4 months the rest of the brands copy the fashion.

Germans are very brand conscious. 61% of them are individualistic, 35% of them follow group fashion (peer pleasure) and only 4% of them don’t care what they wear. Brand name and brand image are very important here and so is who owns the company.

It is said that if you need to be successful in a company first thing is dressing sense. To proof your style people spend huge on shoes and watches here.

Germany has 6 sizes in merchandise

Normal size

Tall size

Short size

Normal belly

Short belly with short legs

Normal with short belly

So every company follows their own sizes. They don’t have any as such standard german size. They follow one of the above size. Germans are the biggest fashion consumer.

Germany has three distribution chanel. Retails , departmental store and internet /vertical shops.

Some of the vertical companies are new yorker , zara , mango , zero , c&a . System companies are street one , cecil , s.oliver , spirit etc.

They have a pyramid of brands

Alpha – those brands which are dominant in their own sector. Example male fashion – hugo boss

Beta – brands which go down.

Gama – brands which are in crisis.

Companies have huge amount of advertisement budget . germans come across 3000 advertisement in a day.

In the later half of the class we had german class. Where mrs copper taught us some basic greeting manner in german , how to communicate while shopping . it was really sweet of her to get us a menu card and help us translate it in English.