Probably there are few persons who haven’t heard of Zara, H&M and Mango by now. Revolutionizing with a very different product concept, these three gigantic companies have invented low-cost fashion.

It is generally accepted that the fashion industry invented the word “trend”, and so, fashion couldn’t be expected to miss the latest trend: social media.

High class brands have approached social media with scepticism, but they finally got involved. Burberry launched the Artofthetrench campaign along with the famous blogger Scott Schuman a.k.a. the Sartorialist.  The late, Alexander McQueen decided to broadcast an online show, and shook up the whole fashion industry. Ever since, many questions were raised about the role of fashion journalists, and what attending a show in the era of social media and bloggers actually means. Brands like Marc Jacobs even try to stay ahead of the curve and use social networks like Foursquare to promote their shops.

The largest fashion retail chains also took a stand in what regards social media, and in function of their social media strategy they got involved to a greater or lesser degree. Zara, Mango and H&M have a fan page on Facebook, and even though Zara and H&M have a greater number of fans, Mango has a pretty solid and loyal community of fans also. Mango also launched the QueMePongo By Mango website and the new Keep The Beat Blog. H&M is also experimenting with their Twitter channel that can be followed here.

How Zara fashion could use location based social networks?

Zara doesn’t do advertising. They’ve developed their business model without doing advertising, and practically proved to the world that sales and awareness are possible without investing millions of dollars in high-cost models and adverts. They assure their sales by having a great product concept and tempting their clients into visiting their shops very often. Zara is also present in basically every city of the world, so visiting a Zara shop is an easy thing to do no matter where you are. This is how Zara manages to get their clients in an average 17 times a year into their shops.

Taking into account that the number of visits is a key indicator for the fashion brand, Zara could encourage their clients to check-in, with Foursquare, in their shops. By offering wireless access or even a customized piece of clothing for each mayor of a Zara shop, an efficient tool to easily measure the number of visits could be developed, while reducing costs over the long term.

How could H&M use Foursquare?

H&M releases collections with a high frequency, and by analyzing their Facebook fan page it can be easily observed that fans are complaining about the fact that their pieces are hard to find or disappear very quickly from the shops. Most users also have problems in finding their size, especially if we are talking about really small sizes, and H&M could offer their clients a solution to this problem via Foursquare.

It could invite their clients to check in via Foursquare once a new collection is available. If every person would follow H&M on Foursquare it would be easy to know in which stores their favourite items are, so none would run the risk of finding out that their favourite piece has disappeared until they went to buy it.

How could Mango use Foursquare?

Across the world, and in Spain, Mango aims for a more exclusive positioning than H&M and Zara. They do this by practising a higher price than Zara or H&M, and collaborating with famous Hollywood stars and designers. Even though the price positioning isn’t to be compared to a luxury brand, along the years they’ve had collaborations with famous designers that assured them a spot into the premium low-cost fashion segment.

With Foursquare, Mango could develop a program to nurture their customers, and reward the most faithful ones with customize badges or other special prizes.

Conclusion

Of course, these are only possible solutions that we came across with while researching for this article. Possibilities are far wider, and we think that companies, like the ones mentioned here are going to develop innovative campaigns really soon. We are anxious to see whether the core players of the fashion industry will set the trends once again.