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The Retailing Environment
Friday, May 21, 2010, 2:05 AM


Understanding Charles & Keith Variety and Assortment

Variety: Charles & Keith have 4 merchandise categories. They pay attention to every detail of their 4 different types of merchandise and provide more choices for consumers with wide assortment.

Assortment: Charles & Keith provides Deep assortment on their products. Customers can choose their products based on the preferred design and colour. Each merchandise has assortment that will at least suit the taste of one consumer.



Challenges Faced by Charles & Keith

Challenge 1:


One of the challenges faced by Charles and Keith is the strong competition in the market. The biggest competition identified is the Canadian label, Aldo.



The target market of Aldo is similar to that of Charles and Keith; both targeting at women with middle to high level of disposable income and purchasing power, who seeks to stay ahead of the fashion trend with fashionable footwear and accessories. Aldo has a competitive advantage over Charles and Keith because it also targets the men as it offers a range of leather shoes, bags and other accessories.

Aldo has another competitive advantage over Charles and Keith, is that it offers a wider variety of products to its customers. It has its own line of accessories such as earrings, necklaces, bracelets, rings and watches, thus enabling it to have a bigger market share.

The location strategy of Aldo is also on par with that of Charles and Keith as it has physical shops at major shopping malls such as Raffles City, ION Orchard, Wisma Atria, Suntec City, VivoCity as well as Changi Airport where some of these malls also house Charles and Keith, therefore the competition is very tense.

Another competitor identified is Rubi, which is a fairly new player in the market. It carries out intensive promotions and offers footwear and accessories at prices much lower than Charles and Keith.


Challenge 2:

When they were just starting their business, they decided to break away from the pack,

that is, they need to design their own products. It is when they were helping in their

parent's neighbourhood shop when they were small, that they realise that their then-existing

customers felt unhappy towards the shoes their parents are selling directly from

the wholesalers.

"Many times customers gave me feedback on the designs they wanted and

I'd feed the comments to my suppliers," Charles Wong says. However, manufacturers were

to satisfy customer's preference.

Together with Keith, in 1996 Charles started his own shop

called Charles & Keith.

Challenges faced in their two years is bad, seeing the two brothers

slogging it out as they juggled stocking inventory, designing shoes, tending to the

cash register and devising strategy.

They then slpit up their roles; Keith did designing and

Charles did selling. Their strategy was to differentiate their brand and up till now it is

that their brand differentiation with their own-made designs works which made them claim

a handsome amount of profits.