Easy, the fundamental model of Reserva that touches the Hering market

Reserva is launching a basic clothing brand, a move that puts the Arezzo&Co-owned retailer in close competition with Hering and more than doubles its addressable market.

The new brand — called Simples — goes on the market tomorrow, with a product line focused on knitwear and sweatshirt. There will be 142 SKUs, including t-shirts, coats, pants, shorts and dresses.

For the time being, sales will only be made through e-commerce and some multi-brand stores, but a first own store should open in Rio de Janeiro before the end of the year.

“We are moving down the value chain a little bit,” Rony Meisler, the founder of Reserva and partner at Arezzo&Co, told the Brazil Journal. “At Reserva, our focus is on audiences A and B1 and we ended up scratching a little bit on B2. With Simples, we are going to focus on B1 and B2 and scratch a little on C1.”

According to him, while the Reserve’s addressable market is around R$45 billion, that of Simples is over R$115 billion.

Simples is the result of a year and a half of work by Reserva in developing the collection, registering the sourcing and brand building.

Two months ago, the company began an acceptance test with the launch of the Simples T-shirt — a quarterly subscription to a basic T-shirt that costs around R$89. The T-shirt-service has already gained almost 20,000 subscribers.

Reserva also opened some Simples ‘store in stores’ in 20 of its stores, and presented the brand’s first collection at Pulsar, the show room of Arezzo&Co for the multi-brand stores, which took place a month ago.

To lead the new brand, Reserva chose João Souza, who started at the company as an intern just four years ago. According to him, Simples will start with monthly entries of new collections until entering the traditional model of biannual collections.

“We’re going to start with knits and sweatshirts, but then we’re going to launch shirts, twill and jeans,” said João.

Naturally, Simples will generate comparisons with Hering, the Grupo Soma brand that has been synonymous with basic fashion for decades.

But Rony says Arezzo&Co “doesn’t think of a brand based on what others players do.” For him, “a brand has to be born with its own purpose and we think there is space and demand in Brazil for a basic brand with quality and democratic products.”

In addition, Simples has a slightly higher price positioning than Hering. While a basic Hering t-shirt costs around R$60-R$70, a Simples shirt costs R$89. A basic Reserva shirt costs R$140.

Given the volume of the market, in the medium term Simples could even become bigger than Reserva itself, said Rony. “If we are successful, this could be huge.”

The new brand comes a few months after Reserva launched Reversa, a line of women’s products within its stores. According to Rony, Reversa already represents around 5% of sales in stores where it is present.

Source: Brazil Journal