Strategic Marketing Plan for Stray Rats

Strategic Marketing Plan Overview

After conducting a brand analysis of Miami-based streetwear brand Stray Rats, it’s apparent that Stray Rats is currently at the decelerating end of logistic growth. In terms of what you can do from a grassroots standpoint, Stray Rats is pretty much at its carrying capacity of following. This is why the main point of this Stray Rats strategic marketing plan is centered mostly around attracting fringe customers and further collaborations with not only fashion brands, but the City of Miami, in order to create a strong, yet still authentic brand community.

Looking at the chronology of punk, streetwear, and skateboarding, they cross each other’s paths overwhelmingly, which is why I think the simplest solution to getting more customers is to appeal to the young skater who has yet to delve into skating’s history with punk and streetwear, especially during this second skating boom currently going on in America. Finishing the trifecta between these big three would create stronger associations between Stray Rats and New Balance’s skating subbrand NB Numeric, as well as the newly booming Miami metropolitan area with a skate and punk scene.

If Stray Rats is successfully marketed as a skater’s brand without ditching its roots, this will enable them to create decks with founder Julian Consuegra’s designs, make more shoes with New Balance, which has arguably been the center and sole driver of their hype for the last three years, and maybe even create a skate team centered in Miami with a brick-and-mortar store. Establishing things that are visible and physical is the next step in Stray Rats’ evolution, given that they have focused strictly on e-commerce for the last 6 years, and even more so during a time in which people have lacked physical contact and have questioned the authenticity of brands, even in the realm of streetwear. Additional appeals to fringe customers outside of American skateboarding include those who have yet to make the associative leap between vintage sportswear, youth crew, and streetwear, and a customer base in Japan that’s built for punk revivalism, innovative graphics and designs, and the transfer of our domestic skating boom.

Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats

Strengths:

Stray Rats’ following, also know as the Sewer Brigade, is extremely loyal. Customers feel accepted into a bigger community when they buy into the ethos of Stray Rats.

Stray Rats balances variety in assortment, graphic originality, and limited stock to a point where even though Stray Rats isn’t in the luxury market, owning a piece of Stray Rats feels exclusive in that there’s not a lot of that specific item out there, nor anything that may even resemble it coming from other streetwear competitors.

Weaknesses:

There is a complete and utter lack of touchpoints for the brand. Word-of-mouth, earned media, and people spotted wearing Stray Rats are the only real touchpoints outside of the company’s social media or Julian Consuegra’s social media.

Stray Rats lacks a global presence. There’s no international shipping for online drops, meaning the only way to get Stray Rats outside of the US, Canada, or Mexico is to buy it from a stockist that carries the brand, which is rather limited currently in terms of location and quantity.

Opportunities

Stray Rats has the ability to round out the intersectionality between streetwear, hardcore punk, and skateboarding communities by focusing their marketing on skaters. They could collaborate with New Balance’s skateboarding subbrand NB Numeric to create shoes and decks. With the right people outside of Consuegra and company helping build a Stray Rats skate line, this transition in marketing could still feel true to the brand’s integrity while aiming for new fringe customers, helping break the brand’s current carrying capacity.

As a relatively younger brand in streetwear, Stray Rats doesn’t have a true heritage to stick to, meaning they’re free to experiment in product assortment and graphics without upsetting the lifelong patron type you would get with a heritage brand. Through experimentation, Stray Rats can be drivers in streetwear, whereas most streetwear brands, due to either operating on too small of a scale to produce differentiated clothing or making clothes for a more generalized audience than Stray Rats, are not.

Threats:

Day by day, streetwear is becoming a more saturated market, much of which is bombarded with fast fashion that’s cheaper and a better gateway into streetwear for younger audiences than the likes of Stray Rats, FUCT, FTP, or Butter Goods, for example. If Stray Rats fails to convey its brand identity and signify its importance in the realm of streetwear, it could get lost commercially in the plethora of cheaper, more accessible streetwear.

Bigger streetwear brands like Brain Dead and Supreme already make use of hardcore tropes and references, so Stray Rats has to find ways to prove that they’re either different altogether or further rooted in the movement than others in order to carve out a segmented market that would go to them rather than streetwear giants.

Instagram Post

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Caption: ★Jamie Foy for SR★

A daytime Miami skyline serves as the backdrop. On the edges are Julian Consuegra's signature doodling that's seen in a lot of designs for the company. At the forefront of both pictures in the collage is Jamie Foy. Jamie Foy is a perfect match in my opinion as a Stray Rats model because not only is he a New Balance skater, but he is also from South Florida, specifically Broward County. The pic to the left will be an action shot of him grinding on a rail in Stray Rats gear, stamped with the Stray Rats logo in the negative space. In front of the open Miami skyline on the right, where the silhouette is, will also be Jamie Foy in Stray Rats clothing, deck in hand and smiling. The caption would simply be “Jamie Foy for SR” to stay consistent with Stray Rats’ usually cryptic or minimalist captioning. The shoes worn by Foy in the left pic would be New Balance x Stray Rats NB 827's and the shoes worn in the right pic would be NB Numeric 306's, Jamie Foy's signature shoe.

The idea behind the Instagram post is for Stray Rats to begin marketing towards skaters. There's a lot of intersectionality between streetwear, hardcore punk, and skating communities, so adding that third piece of the triangle could help Stray Rats get out of the standstill they've been at in terms of following. The future goals in the skate realm would be a Stray Rats collab colorway of the NB Numeric 306's, a Miami and New York-centered skate team of young, up-and-coming skaters, concert-skatepark crossover events, and decks of Julian Consuegra's designs.

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Figure 1. Foy's Outfit for the Left Pic (strayrats.com).

Figure 1. Foy's Outfit for the Left Pic (strayrats.com).

Figure 2. Foy's Outfit for the Right Pic (strayrats.com).

Figure 2. Foy's Outfit for