Promoting wool with blossoming Japanese brand

Following a highly successful marketing collaboration with ánuans during the 2023 autumn/winter season, Woolmark has again partnered with the highly popular Japanese womenswear brand during the 2024 autumn/winter season.

With famous fashion influencer Asami Nakamura as its creative director, ánuans has quickly gained a strong following amongst Gen Z and millennials in Japan because of its timeless designs and its attention to quality. Launched in January 2021, ánuans is owned by Dot One Inc, a company that owns four other womenswear brands in Japan.

AWI Regional Manager Japan & Korea, Samuel Cockedey, says ánuans is a thriving brand that is keen to embed Merino wool in its DNA.

“The brand has consciously put Merino wool at the core of its collections and showcases its Woolmark certification to consumers as an assurance of high-quality wool products. The brand sources its wool fabrics from some of the best mills in Japan,” Samuel said.

“Woolmark’s previous collaboration with ánuans was very successful in helping educate the brand’s Gen Z and Millennial customers about Merino wool’s position as a premium fibre and increase sales of its Merino wool products, so we were pleased to collaborate with the brand again during the most recent autumn/winter season.

“The brand operates under an agile and modern business model and benefits from a highly-engaged customer base of digital savvy, young consumers with high disposable income, which is a key target segment for Woolmark in Japan.

“The latest annual sales of ánuans are A$33 million which is a growth of 45% on the previous year. Fostering our relationship with such a fast-growing brand will hopefully result in it continuing to increase its use of Merino wool, which will ultimately benefit Australian woolgrowers.”

Latest joint marketing campaign

Woolmark-certified wool products from ánuans were promoted online and in its brick-and-mortar stores.

The digital and in-store campaign in the autumn/winter 2024 season promoted a range of 28 Woolmark-certified products, including coats and jackets, knitwear and skirts.

There were 25,000 pieces available, a 20% increase compared to the autumn/winter 2023 season, using about 14,000 kg of wool. Many of these items were sold out before they even hit the market at pre-launch on their websites, resulting in the brand ordering additional quantities of the wool products.

There were dedicated pages on the ánuans website, featuring the wool outerwear and knitwear, the wool material used in the products and the manufacturing process, the meaning of Woolmark certification, and of course the range of wool products for customers to buy. Online advertising banners, e-newsletters and social media posts helped drive customers to these hub pages.

In-store sales activations were rolled out at the brand’s growing number of brick-and-mortar stores that are sited in prime locations. A special window display promoting the collection was installed at the entrance of one of Tokyo’s prominent fashion malls, LUMINE, located at Shinjuku Station in Tokyo, the world’s busiest train station that sees traffic of more than 3.6 million passengers a day.

More information: www.anuans.com

This article appeared in the Autumn 2025 edition of AWI’s Beyond the Bale magazine that was published in March 2025. Reproduction of the article is encouraged.