Brandy Melville: A Lot Of Challenges

Brandy Melville is an Italian clothing brand offering clothing with L.A. style and vintage details. Brandy Melville was founded in Italy in 2001, and expanded rapidly to the United States within several years (Scofield, 2009). Brandy Melville’s products can be purchased through both online and in brick and mortar stores. Currently it has more than eighteen stores nationwide (Rubin, 2014). One of the competitive advantages of Brandy Melville is all of its products are made in Italy. Unlike most of the fashion retailers who are mostly made in developing countries, “made in Italy” label provides a fresh option and guarantees premium quality to customers. In Brandy Melville, there is only one size for every outfit. The brands advocates for “one size fits most”. With only providing one …show more content…
Brandy Melville has a negative brand image in many media and customers’ minds because of its “one size fits all” policy. Many press articles discussed the negative impacts that “one size fits all” policy could bring to the society. Brandy Melville has been criticized for not offering sizes to customers with different body types. Its “one size fits all” policy reminiscent of the sizing system of Abercrombie and Fitch, a popular teen clothing brand that was infamous for not offering sizes to plus size customers. However, Brandy Melville takes a step further. It only offers one size. It claims that its one-size is equivalent to regular small and medium sizes. Buzzfeed conducted a test of Brandy Melville’s outfit on a group of females with various body types. It shows that Brandy Melville’s clothing only perfectly fits customers who are “stick skinny”, such as females in size zero or size two (Buzzfeed, 2014). According to Los Angeles Times, it shows that the average size of American is size fourteen, which means Brandy Melville’s products do not cater to most of the body types in the United States (Vesilind,