Fabio Trades Book Jackets for Jackets

By Julia Boorstin, Fortune December 2004

Fabio has moved from modeling for romance novels to selling coats through Walmart’s Sam’s Club, which can’t keep them in stock. Fabio says he was always interested in the fashion industry, and learned from his mother that women had the buying power, “even if men have the illusion of running the world.”

The question was “Why coats?” His fans complained about the scarcity of fashionable clothing outside of big cities. When he approached Sam’s Club about it, they were very skeptical, saying that coats were the hardest thing to sell. They test marketed in 2 stores, to see if they could sell 400 in three weeks. They sold 6,000 almost immediately, and Sam’s Club ordered coats for all 600 of its U.S. stores.
Fabio cut his prices in half to $55, and made frequent store appearances. This year their order for his coats has doubled, and he expects to top $10 million in revenues this year. He will star in a romance reality show on Oxygen, and the promos for the show will include ads for Fabio coats.

BRAINSTORM:
What makes Fabio’s coats sell? Is it his name and looks and modeling background? (Is it the commercials where that woman who has won the lottery keeps pretending to drown in her pool so her hired lifeguard – Fabio – can keep diving in to rescue her and carry her out of the water???) How does merchandise that you normally can’t give away suddenly become an item you can’t keep on the shelves? There’s got to be something to it?


Maybe this makes the case for good-looking celebrities marketing merchandise. Maybe if Brad Pitt would show up at a store, I would buy something too. Well, not maybe – most likely. Well, let’s be real – name your price, Brad. You may not impress Shania Twain much, but you do impress me. OK, back to business brainstorming…


Would it be worth it for you to find a celebrity marketer? Or how about finding out what pet charities your desired celebrity supports, and offer to co-sponsor a fund-raiser with them?


Could you talk a major distributor or retailer into “test marketing” your product? If so, which retailer would best fit your market, but who doesn’t already flood the market with your direct competitors?


As a side note, Fabio paid attention to his mother’s advice about women being the money-controllers, and went for women’s fashion. Who controls the money in your industry? I understand that DVD purchasers are mainly men, but that audio book purchasers are mainly women. Who do you need to impress to get their money?