Thai Wacoal introduces more modern lingerie brand for the teenage market

The company is planning to bring out a new range of fashionable lingerie under a new brand called Girly by Young Wacoal.

It launched the Girly Collection in March.

"The target group perceive Young Wacoal as an old-fashioned brand because the name Wacoal has existed in the Thai market for 36 years and some of its designs look outdated. Changing the brand name and image will help us to build strong loyalty, which we hope will continue when our younger customers become adults," managing director Amnuay Bumroongwongtong said yesterday.

The company has set a sales target of 500,000 Girly items this year.

To build awareness of the new image, he said the company had allocated a marketing and advertising budget of Bt30 million, 50 per cent higher than last year. Thai Wacoal is negotiating with shopping malls to allow it to change its displays by separating teenage lingerie and adult lingerie showcases.

It expects to adjust 20 of its 390 sales points nationwide, at a cost of Bt10 million.

Amnuay said the teenage lingerie market, which makes up 30 per cent of the overall Bt12-billion market, saw 10-per-cent growth in the first half, while the adult lingerie market experienced flat growth.

"Adult women tend to spend less in an economic downturn, while teenage girls continue spending because they want to be fashionable," he said.

However, although teens continue buying lingerie, many of them have switched from buying premium items to cheaper ones of lower quality. But Amnuay said this was unlikely to affect the company as it targets teenagers from affluent families.

He said Thai Wacoal had major plans to tackle the current flat growth in the adult women's lingerie business, but declined to elaborate.

However, he said the advertising and marketing budget for the whole company this year was Bt100 million, or 5 per cent of expected sales. The proportion was 3 per cent last year.