This national retailer is the largest off-price apparel and home fashion chain in the United States, offering name brand and designer items to customers at significant discounts.
A national retail chain engaged Reputation Partners after it became a recurring target of unfair scrutiny and criticism from a large garment worker advocacy group. While the company was already monitoring and flagging posts from the group that were specific to the company, it was not monitoring the activities of the group’s allies in the fashion industry, legislature and elsewhere, leaving it vulnerable to issues that could impact the company’s ability to operate and its reputation.
The Reputation Partners team began with a due diligence phase to identify as many organizations and influencers driving conversations about fashion industry issues as possible, including those focusing on the working conditions of garment center workers across traditional and social media channels.
Following the due diligence phase, the team developed an ongoing monitoring system to help flag areas, topics or issues of concern to the client. Topics were organized into three trend categories, “low coverage/not of immediate concern,” “trends to monitor closely,” and “trends that should be addressed as soon as possible.”
With the monitoring system in place, the team began compiling and delivering bi-weekly monitoring reports outlining new coverage and conversations related to the company’s association with garment facilities. The reports include an executive summary so the client team can quickly understand and identify significant issues that need to be addressed as well as links to the corresponding traditional and social media conversations.
As a result of Reputation Partners’ efforts, the team has been able to alert the client of pending legislation that could impact their business, significant social/activist movements targeting other, comparable companies, and regularly identify new influencers, unions, nonprofits and more that are focused on the garment industry and could target the client in the future.