09 Mar Timberland Partners with Crowdfunded Clothing Company
Timberland is collaborating with Betabrand, a crowdfunded clothing company, on a crowdsourced product development project to develop a new collection, called Craftletic. Through this partnership, Timberland is turning to Betabrand and consumers around the globe to help shape its new shoe collection through an inspired co-creation process.
“Partnering with Betabrand gives Timberland the opportunity to engage consumers in a dialogue in a truly innovative way, and test new design concepts in real-time, from their infancy through to creation,” said Jay Steere, senior director Timberland Innovation Lead. “Every consumer has the ability to be a part of this process, not only contributing to Timberland’s style conversation by co-creating the Craftletics collection, but also to see which boot consumers are most interested in buying. We’re excited to see which concept wins!”
This partnership will help inform design and product merchandising decisions for Timberland’s new Craftletic collection, which marries the brand’s hallmark craftsmanship with an athletic ease-of-wear for faster styling. By tapping directly into Betabrand consumers for insights, the collection will be built from the ground up, arriving to market in Fall 2016 to Betabrand shoppers and through select Timberland distribution channels.
How does it work?
Timberland’s internal design collective sketched the shape and structure of 14 styles across three unisex boot categories, which will later become footwear for men and women. A two-phase process puts consumers in the driver’s seat:
- Phase 1 / The Timberland x Betabrand Think Tank: Consumers are invited to interact with the Timberland design collective by voting and commenting on three unisex Timberland concepts they’d like to see come to market, while also weighing in on design elements from materials, color and even if the shoe will be for men or women. The concepts – Modern Nomad, Urbanization and Neorganic – will be up on Betabrand’s site until March 17th. From there, the best-received idea will get made into a prototype based on the actual suggestions from the crowd.
- Phase 2 / Craftletic Crowdfunding: The prototypes becomes available for crowdfunding on May 13th. Consumers will be asked to bid on the footwear they helped create and within a short window, data will determine if the chosen Craftletic design created enough demand to go into production.
“Timberland is the largest lifestyle brand Betabrand has ever collaborated with and we’re excited about the impact our crowd-sourced design process can have on these boots,” said Chris Lindland, CEO of Betabrand. “Together we’re creating an innovative model through a system that gives new meaning to the term ‘fast fashion’ – using a quick crowd sourcing period to inform design decisions and bring first-to-market product in a faster way than ever before.”