Marketing Aussie wool to consumers in Japan

PHOTO: joka2000

Joint campaign with Japanese online giant drives wool sales

The joint marketing campaign on the Rakuten Fashion e-commerce website featured famous Japanese personalities. Approximately $24 million of wool products were sold during the campaign.

Following on from the previous year’s successful marketing collaboration, The Woolmark Company has undertaken another campaign with the second largest luxury fashion e-commerce platform in Japan, Rakuten Fashion, to promote a massive selection of Merino wool apparel for consumers to buy during autumn/winter 2023.

The two-month campaign, which ran during November and December, put Merino wool at the front of digitally savvy shoppers’ minds – all with the aim to make Merino wool the most coveted apparel fibre for Japanese consumers during the peak selling winter season.

Rakuten Fashion is a huge premium fashion e-commerce platform with estimated sales in 2022 of A$1 billion, and a 40% year-on-year growth during the past few years. Its parent company is the largest e-commerce platform in Japan.

“The objective of our marketing campaign with Rakuten Fashion was twofold: education and action. Firstly, to increase Japanese consumers’ awareness of Merino wool’s eco-credentials and benefits, and secondly, drive large-scale consumer purchases of Merino wool apparel throughout the autumn/winter season,” said AWI Regional Manager Japan & Korea, Samuel Cockedey.

“This was the largest campaign of this type we have ever conducted in the Japanese market. It showcased Merino wool products from more than 750 brands, with two million wool rich products available to purchase, an increase in volume of a third from last year.”

“The campaign performed extremely well, in line with our objectives. Despite a reduction is budget compared to last year, the campaign yielded a significant A$24 million in sales of wool rich products containing in total an estimated 50,000 kg of wool.”
- Samuel Cockedey, AWI Regional Manager Japan & Korea

The key objective of the campaign was to direct consumers to a ‘wool hub’ on the Rakuten Fashion website which showcased an enormous range of shoppable wool-rich products for men, women and children (including coats, jumpers, cardigans, bottoms and accessories).

The wool hub also included editorial content highlighting the benefits of Australian Merino wool including its quality and eco-credentials. The key message of the campaign centred on ‘Merino wool, a fibre you can love and enjoy for a long time’, which resonated well in the Japanese market.

A multi-channel digital and social campaign on Rakuten Fashion’s owned media drove online traffic to the wool hub through advertising banners on the Rakuten Fashion website, push notifications on its mobile application, e-newsletters to its large client base of 6.6 million consumers, and posts on its Instagram channel. Additional online traffic was driven through The Woolmark Company’s own digital and social channels.

The digital campaign performed extremely well, achieving 107 million impressions (which is the number of times the campaign was seen online) and 450,000 clicks through to the wool hub page where customers could buy wool products.

The campaign involved imagery featuring famous Japanese influencers, actress and model Ami Komuro and actor Jin Suzuki, which significantly boosted the drive in sales.

“We are pleased to have collaborated again with The Woolmark Company to highlight Merino wool's many benefits, and to showcase a uniquely wide array of premium wool products to our fashion-savvy large customer base. This year we opted for the strategy of using well-known models for the key visuals, whose popularity successfully helped boost engagement and sales together with the additional advert exposure to our service users, delivering better cost performance," said Jin Iijima, Vice General Manager, Fashion Business Department, Marketplace Business, Commerce & Marketing Company, Rakuten Group, Inc.

“We look forward to growing the awareness and sales of wool products through this continued partnership, with Rakuten Fashion the go-to luxury and designer fashion e-commerce platform in Japan, and Merino wool the luxury fibre of choice.”
- Jin Iijima, Rakuten Group

Promotion of Woolmark-certified ánuans apparel to Gen Z

Woolmark-certified wool coats from ánuans being promoted online and in its brick-and-mortar stores.

The Woolmark Company has collaborated with fast-growing contemporary womenswear brand anuans on a two-month digital and in-store campaign to promote 20,800 pieces of the brand’s Woolmark-certified products during autumn/winter.

Led by fashion influencer Asami Nakamura, ánuans has quickly gained a strong following amongst Gen Z and millennials in Japan since its launch in January 2021, through its carefully managed design, production, and attention to quality.

AWI Regional Manager Japan & Korea, Samuel Cockedey, says ánuans is a fast-growing 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 showcased its Woolmark certification to consumers as an assurance of high quality wool products. The brand operates under an agile and modern business model and benefits from a highly-engaged customer base,” Samuel said.

“Given all these positives, The Woolmark Company was happy to collaborate with ánuans during the recent autumn/winter season to help educate the brand’s younger target customers about Merino wool’s position as a premium fibre and increase sales of its Merino wool products.”

The two-month digital and in-store campaign during November and December promoted a range of wool products, including coats and jackets, jumpers, dresses, skirts and trousers. There were 20,800 pieces available, using 11,500 kg of wool, with all products certified by The Woolmark Company. 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, including a hub page featuring the benefits of wool, the meaning of Woolmark certification, and the range of wool products for customers to buy.

Online advertising banners, e-newsletters and social media posts helped drive customers to the hub page. In-store sales activations were rolled out at the brand’s brick-and-mortar stores with window displays showcasing the products and their eco-credentials.

Aussie lambswool knitwear campaign with popular retailer

Knitwear made from Australian Merino lambswool was promoted in a joint campaign with popular retailer JOURNAL STANDARD Relume.

Knitwear made from Australian Merino lambswool was promoted in a joint campaign with popular retailer JOURNAL STANDARD Relume.

Knitwear made from Australian Merino lambswool was promoted in a joint campaign with popular retailer JOURNAL STANDARD Relume.

The Woolmark Company this winter helped promote the Hamilton Lambswool brand of knitwear on the popular multi brand retailer JOURNAL STANDARD Relume, which is operated by one of the largest apparel groups in Japan, Baycrew’s.

Following a successful collaboration with JOURNAL STANDARD Relume in 2022 on a winter marketing campaign in Japan to promote wool coats, The Woolmark Company once again joined with the retailer, but this time to promote 20,700 pieces of Hamilton Lambswool knitwear during a two-month winter marketing campaign.

Launched in 2009 with a focus on a mature, down-to-earth look, JOURNAL STANDARD Relume has annual sales of more than A$100 million through a combination of online retail and brick-and-mortar stores.

The 6,900 kg of wool used in the knitwear, averaging 17.5 microns, was sourced from Victoria by the third largest trading house in Japan, Itochu, which has become a Woolmark licensee thanks to this project. There were 11 styles of knitwear (for men and women) with originally 18,000 pieces for retail. All the products (comprising 80% wool) were certified Wool Rich Blend by The Woolmark Company. The brand added almost 3,000 more pieces after the collaboration, due to its confidence in the success of the wool collection.

“As well as driving sales of the Australian Merino wool knitwear at JOURNAL STANDARD Relume, the campaign also helped foster The Woolmark Company’s relationship with Baycrew’s and Itochu which will hopefully lead to them using and promoting more Australian wool in the future,” said AWI Regional Manager Japan & Korea, Samuel Cockedey.

The campaign included four co-branded landing pages on the retailer’s website, one featuring interviews with young Japanese creatives promoting the knitwear. The three other pages were features for women about how to coordinate the knitwear with other apparel and the versatility of wearing it on different occasions (café, office, day off).

This article appeared in the March 2024 edition of AWI’s Beyond the Bale magazine. Reproduction of the article is encouraged.