The Secrets of Men Who Share Pants: Part 1

The secrets of men who share pants – a 3-part series

Part One: Shirts, shoes, sharing?

Sharing. It’s a powerful human instinct. It’s the driving force behind the success of most B2C businesses today, and it’s the behavior that referral marketing is built on.

But when you think about the act of sharing an online store or product – let’s say, apparel and accessories – who do you picture? A cluster of men sitting around the lunch room discussing where Craig got his new jeans, or where Ryan scored that beard oil that’s gotten him more than one head-turn at the water cooler?

(Source)

Ok, men don’t tend to swap fashion tips. Obviously that’s a generalization, so to ensure our suspicions weren’t purely based on stereotypes, we asked a small study of men ages 20-45, (representing a total of 4 different countries) this question:

Do you ever talk to your male friends about your favorite online fashion retailers, or make recommendations about clothing brands?

Select Answers were recorded verbatim for accuracy:

“No.”

“Never.”

“Men don’t talk about clothes.”

“….uh….”

“No. Absolutely not.”

“LOL!”

Needless to say, 100% of our survey respondents reported that they do not chat with friends about clothing. Generalization confirmed.

While women’s brands have the advantage to be able to compete for ‘viral potential’, the likelihood that men will voluntarily share fashion websites with other men, en masse, would appear rather remote. That said, when it came to growth, menswear outpaced womenswear by 4.5% in 2014.

It’s safe to say that menswear is having a mega-moment. Projected to hit $40B by 2020, the XY set appears to be the fashion industry’s new darling. How?

Well…all those guys that said they’d never talk about clothes? They still have to get dressed in the morning.

With this explosion in sales comes major opportunity to win these new battlegrounds, which are currently under-advertised and still underestimated by many. So how can you capitalize on this growth and activate the customers to do a little evangelizing on your behalf?

Maybe the guys just need a little incentive.

Source: B2C