I wanted to look at ASOS’s direct competitors and after my research I found BOOHOO are one of their biggest competitors. I looked into all different statistics that are featured in my book and found that on almost all platforms ASOS comes out on top. I found they have very similar websites and products, both featuring male and female clothes and tabs. After looking this competitor I looked at Instagram ASOS’ compared to River island and New Look. They all post similar things including products and inspirations, but neither competitors are on the scale of ASOS they have about 6 times the followers and therefore reach a much wider audience.

ASOS have already collaborated with GLAAD to create a gender neutral range that is sold on ASOS. Obviously this is a positive move for ASOS but when I saw the collection all I could think was how boring it is. Yes there is genderless clothing but ASOS is all about fuelling your fashion discovery and T-shirts and jumpers in black, white and grey aren’t very inspiring. I would like to take the concept of this collection but make it 10x better, more exciting and much more adventurous.,

Facebook- 5.5 million followers, they mainly use this to describe themselves and what they do but they also post their products and reply to their followers and customers comments. Facebook is a very interactive platform where brands can post something, receive comments and reply to them. A customer may use this platform to ask questions or generally see what the brand is about.

Twitter – 1 million followers, personally I would say twitter is not as big as a platform compared to Facebook and Instagram. ASOS mainly use twitter for mems, funny quotes and retweets with a few products here and there. Its not as personal as Facebook, you can reply to customers but it is not normally the chosen platform to do this on.

Instagram- 7.1 million, on this platform they have the most followers and this is because a lot of Instagram users are the similar age and demographic as the ASOS target market and typical customer. They post more products and fashion inspiration, this is probably because they have the most followers on here. Again this platform is very interactive with customers and the target audience, they can comment, like pictures, private message and view stories. They can even create hashtags and be part of the community.

I wanted to analyse every aspect of the website so that I know their themes and ideas. I noticed the website was very basic and easy to use, this makes it user friendly and means people are more likely to return to the website. most retail websites have an ‘about you’ section, the ASOS about you section is very clear and outlines what they do, who they do it for and their aims. It is a positive thing for a retail website to outline their aims so their target market understand what they are doing. This gives me inspiration for my manifesto writing. This strategy is important for employees also because it insures everyone is on the same page so the outcome of the work is correct. ASOS say they are the one stop shop for young people in their 20s interested in fashion. They aim to be different from competitors and have a unique selling point, they don’t say what exactly this is but I think its the massive range of products and the different brands that they stock.

I wanted to see what was on the market in the genderless themes so that I could differentiate my sub-brand to the existing.  I was disappointed to see that any genderless range on the mainstream fashion market was a tiny collection that just sort of ticks the box for the brand. They seem to have consisted off tee’s and jumpers and in my opinion boring. The whole point of these ranges is to express who you are but these ranges do not allow that. My sub-brand will be unique because it will fuel the exploration of fashion for the target market.

Online brands rely a lot on press and how they are portrayed in the media. I wanted to look into how ASOS are viewed to see if any areas needed improving and I could them bring that into my sub-brand. I found that there was a mix of views about ASOS the negative was mainly about interesting products like crotch less jeans but there was a couple of articles about how some of their products were shown offensive to some people. obviously you’re going to get this in any brand especially because ASOS has such a wide range of products someone is bound to get offended by one. positive facts that were mentioned are their positive Christmas sales and their new release of a fitness range. Overall I can see a mixture of negative and positive articles which is normal for a online brand, I cant see anything that needs changing other than making products more inclusive for all and not offensive.

I needed to make sure that the brand I chose was suitable and able to link in with gender neutral clothing. I looked at puma with ideas of doing a genderless sportswear sub-brand, but this proved tricky thinking about sports bras and support. I then looked at Burberry but decided this was not what I wanted because I wanted the genderless ranges to be in mainstream fashion and not high end. This led me to looking at ASOS as a mainstream brand, I thought this was perfect for my concept to reach a large audience and bring to light the new trend and looking to the future. I also haven’t seen any high-street shops or mainstream shops have whole genderless brands.

Immediately I knew I had to look at trend reports for 2020 in fashion and in general. I found that a key feature of these reports was inclusivity and this is what fuelled my ideas. I started thinking about how brands could be more inclusive and have less boundaries. This led me to the idea of gender neutral and unisex clothing, I found in the 2020 trend reports gender was a big thing in the way how we cant always specify stereotypes. In clothing there is a very separate line between male and female, on most fashion websites there is a completely separate tab for males and females. This got me thinking that in 2020 my predictions are that clothing websites will be less specific about gender.

I close to include these illustrations because they were some of my favourites. They also portray the message I want to convey to the audience. 

The overall message I want to portray through this zine is’ why do we care what we wear’. The facts are that what we wear is one of the first things we see when meeting a person, this can create part of their identity. Clothes tell somewhat who you are, what you like and how you want to present yourself. A way to present yourself that will impress others is by showing off designer brands. This is really what I wanted to explore.