The idea began as a joke: a few friends amusing themselves one night in 2003 by dreaming up ever more hopeless startup strategies. But something about the crazy notion stuck with Jonah Staw long after the chuckles had subsided. Lying awake a few nights later, Staw saw more than a lonely sock in search of a mate. He saw a character — “LittleMissMatched” — who granted girls permission to express themselves.
LittleMissMatched Founder Jonah Staw
Fortunately, Staw had learned to trust his own instincts on branding. He had tested those instincts as director of corporate development at Frog Design, an innovative Web shop in San Francisco, while working on creative strategies for companies such as Target and DaimlerChrysler. Now, as Staw contemplated his own vision of mismatched socks, his gut kind of took over.
“I knew it was a good idea because you can’t not smile when you hear about it,” says Staw, now 34, the co-founder and CEO of LittleMissMatched Inc. “I knew that if there’s an emotional reaction, it’s a good concept.”
That was back in 2003. A year later, the first LittleMissMatched merchandise appeared at Linens ‘n Things and Nordstroms across the country: a pack of six mismatched socks for eight dollars. The company’s Web site, littlemissmatched.com, launched a few months after the socks. The next year, LittleMissMatched was offering pajamas, pencil pouches, books, bedding, flip-flops, furniture — and, of course, socks — in boutiques and specialty stores, among them FAO Schwartz. By Christmas 2008, the products were in more than 80 Macy’s stores nationwide, and retail sales hit $32 million for the year, a 30 percent increase over the year before. Never mind the Great Recession.
The first of four permanent LittleMissMatched stores opened in May 2009, in New York’s Grand Central Terminal. That was followed a month later by outlets in Downtown Disney in Anaheim and Myrtle Beach, S.C. When the company opened its store on New York’s Fifth Avenue, in August of this year, some 500 fans — median age 10 going on 11 — paraded down America’s favorite shopping street in gloriously mismatched attire.
So what can you learn from an offbeat retailer born in a late-night bull session?
Staw says a lot depended on faith in the fundamental concept. He encouraged potential partners to dream with him. “We’ve always pretended we’re bigger than we are,” says Staw. “We were always trying to present the brand in the best possible light and allow future partners to imagine where LittleMissMatched could go, rather than where it was at the moment.”
The brand vision was Staw’s guiding light. As the mismatched socks caught on, the company forged ahead with new products emphasizing a kind of measured individuality, allowing each girl to stand out, but not too much. All the company’s products — from the stocks to the flip-flops to the bedding — are designed to be fun but not aggressively different. The patterns don’t match, but they kind of do, too. And they provide nearly endless opportunity to customize. There are 384 possible design combinations associated with one LittleMissMatched bed, so a girl can redecorate her room every day, without repeating, for more than a year.
Staw stuck with the vision, even when outside marketing experts questioned whether it could really be pushed as far as he wanted. They wondered whether LittleMissMatched wouldn’t be better off concentrating on socks. They wondered whether the customer could be defined a bit more conventionally. After all, the nonconformist might be a pretty tough customer to target. “I said no,” Staw recalls. “We’re about inspiring emotion. We’re selling creativity, fun. And we are reinventing categories.”
The next challenge was the more daunting. How to get the message — and the merchandise — to the masses?
Where Staw had favored simplicity and daring in the branding scheme, he leaned toward complexity in marketing and distribution. The result is that LittleMissMatched today has a presence in five different markets: e-commerce; independent retailers (more than 2,000 nationwide), established chains (Macy’s and JCPenney), licensing, and the LittleMissMatched retail stores. “All of our revenue channels are equal,” says Staw.
The varied distribution efforts benefit from a cohesive marketing program, with heavy emphasis on word of mouth, or word of Web, or both. LittleMissMatched is active on MySpace, Twitter and Facebook, but supplements those networking efforts with real live promotional stunts, notably ice cream carts festooned with socks and banners that read “matching is overrated.” When a new store opens, the company distributes "Lost Sock" posters. The posters direct customers to a Web site, lostmysock.com, where they get a coupon for free socks that can be redeemed only at the new LittleMissMatched store.
Staw’s marketing strategy gets an A-plus from David Bell, an associate professor of marketing at Wharton. “First and foremost, it’s a cute brand that flips the conventional on its head, he says. “It’s quirky and unconventional in a fun way, and it’s highly differentiating.”
Bell applauds the distribution strategy, as well. He believes that a variety of distribution channels can complement each other, and that companies are unwise to rely heavily on just one. “The way people buy products on the Internet interacts with their physical location,” Bell suggests. Stores work great in cities, where the sheer variety of retail outlets ensures that the target customer will have access to the merchandise. “But if you live in Bakersfield, California, where you have fewer offline options, then a Web site is more valuable.”
Bell believes that brick-and-mortar stores help communicate cultural values, as well. “It’s why Apple has stores; they’re selling a whole experience and lifestyle, and having a physical retail presence is a big deal.”
LittleMissMatched was a startup that did a lot of things right, from Bell’s point of view:
- Be true to your brand. Differentiate your product, then stick with the brand.
- Know your customer. Know exactly what the customer wants to buy (in the case of LittleMissMatched, different but not too different), and make sure your marketing and design efforts connect with those values.
- When it comes to distribution, be careful about putting all your eggs in one basket. Recognize that you may need to reach Customer A with strategy A and Customer B with strategy B.
And finally, never get complacent. “Customers love our brand, but in this economy, mom will only spend so much,” Staw says. “Major retailers are marking down their prices. Our biggest challenge is figuring out the right product mix.”
Of course, that’s a challenge for anyone these days. Judging by his track record, though, Staw should be more than a match for it.
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