Fast facts
- Name: Tommy Hilfiger (formerly Tommy Hilfiger Corporation and Tommy Hilfiger Inc.)
- Type: Subsidiary
- Parent company: PVH Corp. (Phillips-Van Heusen)
- Headquarters location: Amsterdam, the Netherlands
- Founding date: 1985
- Key people: Martijn Hagman (CEO) and Tommy Hilfiger (Founder)
- Key stakeholders: PVH investors and consumers worldwide
- Revenue: approx. $9.2 billion in 2019
- Trademark designer: George Lois (art director and graphic designer)
- Areas served: More than 2,000 stores in 100+ countries
Strategies
Tommy Hilfiger’s mission used to be to create premium apparel and more with the spirit of classic American style, while respecting and reaching all cultures. This is more or less still the case, but more recently they are pushing forward a new core value, which is “to create fashion that ‘Wastes Nothing and Welcomes All’”.
As a marketing strategy, they really want their brand to be seen. That’s why you’ll see Tommy Hilfiger ads in places such as newspapers and magazines, and they often have celebrities (like Beyoncé, Zendaya, and David Bowie) become brand ambassadors.
What makes Tommy Hilfiger so different from others as a brand is that for so many years they have been able to hold onto their trademark color scheme and style, and now they’re well-recognized everywhere. It’s nearly impossible to have never heard of this brand, and many will recognize it even upon seeing the small rectangle logo on products.
Is Tommy Hilfiger genuine?
With the announcement of their mission to waste nothing and welcome all, Tommy Hilfiger truly meant what they said. To achieve this, 24 goals were set and they are determined to reach them by 2030.
People don’t have to believe in it, because they are already in the process of making it happen. Currently, they have a web page dedicated to sustainability and there you’ll see that they are making use of 100% recycled denim, while 30% is the industry average.
Impressive, don’t you think? However, something to keep in mind is that Tommy Hilfiger is not cruelty-free. For other products, they still use exotic animal hair, leather and wool. So, when shopping for clothing on their website, you can easily see what items are marked by the words: “sustainable style”. But a wide selection of products, especially ones that aren’t jeans, remain unmarked.
Opportunities for the future
To make themselves more believable as a brand who strives for a better and healthier planet, they should make most of their products, if not all, in a sustainable style. Take action setting a new trend where sustainable products are normalized, and to the point where they don’t have to be labelled.
Improving the cruelty-free issue is crucial too, in order to differentiate more from strong competitors like Ralph Lauren, who has objectives to reach by the year 2030 just like Tommy Hilfiger.
Conclusion
All in all, Tommy Hilfiger is doing well and has built a strong reputation amongst consumers worldwide. It’s too early to tell if they’ll succeed in their goals on sustainable practices, but it’s important that they do since it has essentially become a part of their brand identity. If that fails, it’ll bring Tommy Hilfiger a huge disadvantage, especially if their competitors do succeed. Faith might become lost in the brand and iconic logo, and consumers could easily switch brands.
