IRIEDAILY Men’s Streetwear 21/22 Preview

Retail Buyers Guide: Men’s Streetwear FW 2021 Retail Buyer’s Guide
Brand: Iriedaily
Interviewee: Patrick Kreßner, Head of Design and Product

MARKET

How is the situation in European boardsports retail from your perspective?
Patrick: The whole market is facing a very tough situation due to the Covid19 pandemic. People are forced to stay at home, many retailers don’t know how to survive the next months. The politicians across Europe have hard decisions to draw. They need to balance between economic interests and the health of people. No one can foresee how long this pandemic will go on and how hard the impact on our economic will be. At the moment we just can hope that the situation will be better soon and continue what we were doing the past months.

The good news are that people seem to have more money in their pockets, because they maybe weren’t going to holidays, concerts, out for lunch or they just saved some money for later. They have to stay more or less at home or in their area. But people are bored. They start or re-start new hobbies like skating, biking, hiking, or whatever they like. Or they simply spend their money for new clothes.

For us it was a surprisingly successful year.

Skateboarding has been booming, does that coincide with more demand for streetwear?
You can find the Info in the Women’s report.

Have your supply chain and delivery schedule been impacted by the pandemic?
Patrick: Not a lot actually. We’re producing in China and Portugal. The relationship with our producers is very close. We work with most of them since more than 10-15 years (partly even more than 20 years) and as a member of the Fair Wear Foundation we have a strict schedule and have to plan all work steps in time to avoid e.g. overtime in the factories. Apropos Iriedaily has maintained the Fairwear leader status again. This makes us proud and we are highly motivated to work together with the FWF for fair working conditions and wages in our factories.

What are your main price points for next season?
Patrick: We’re continuing our path towards more sustainability in big steps. For the coming FW 21 collection that is entering the showrooms soon, more than 95% of our products will contain sustainable fabrics. We try to compensate the higher costs for these sustainable fabrics as much as we can from our margin and if we need to adjust the retail prices, we do it very careful and moderately.

MARKETING

What is your collection theme and which stories are you telling to get customers stoked on streetwear with a boardsports flavor?
“Stay Human”
Very important topics such as our membership in the Fair Wear Foundation, PETA certification, sustainability in the company, our processes in the development of sustainable materials and vegan products, the communication of our political stance, unisex and the important theme diversity should and must be communicated “gender-unrelated”, because it is about all of us: the human being and our planet earth. That’s the reason why our collection claim is “ Stay Human”

What makes this product category important to your brand? What is the “must have” boardsports look (head-to-toe) for next season? Are you designing any specific products for the pandemic (facemasks, etc.)?
Yes, since April 2020 we do offer facemasks.

STYLE/MATERIALS

Is there an overarching trend identifiable this season?
Patrick: The main trend for us this season is called Urban Nomad. For us urban nomads are people that like to travel self-determined. Aside from flat-rate tourism they discover the countries and their people, cities and nature on their own. From every place they visit they take inspiration for their wardrobe. That’s why the urban nomad look is a wild and colourful but stylish mix of ethnic inspired patterns, basics and functional garments.

How are fits evolving in tops, bottoms, outerwear? What are you doing with materials, colours and textures?
Patrick: We’re developing our very own materials and patterns. As we are producing them sustainable, we need to control the process from beginning till the end. As mentioned above we take our inspiration from traditional ethnic patterns all around the world. With this inspiration we create a very unique and outstanding look.

Seasonal colours are powerful natural, warm autumn tones in many shades from caramel, warm reds, browns and greens. We combine them with super dark and intense colours.

What are the trends in prints, graphic designs and patterns?
Patrick: Our intention with the t-shirt graphics is to wake the customers awareness for environmental and political themes that people in our company care about. Further we also feature funny and self-ironic graphics that Iriedaily stands for.

The printed patterns are matching to the woven and knitted jacquards patterns of our fabrics.

BEST SELLERS

Please name and describe your 3 highlight pieces and items that retailers should definitely order.
Patrick: We have so much more highlights in the collection, that I just can’t point out only 3 items. After we presented the collection to our salesteam, we got a super positive feedback. The collection is packed with highlights and commercial items.