Sweating With The Hartford Denim Company

The Hartford Denim Company workshop is very hot. As I hung out with its founders Dave, Luke and Marshall, to discuss some marketing strategies for the clothing company two thoughts persisted in my head:

Thought 1: There’s a lot of denim in here.

Thought 2: Is that musty smell coming from me, since I forgot to apply deodorant this morning and am sweating profusely, or is it just the smell of a factory-turned-office-turned-workshop?

Investigating Thought 2 required the Smell Proximity Test, in which I covertly bent head to pits and sniffed, and then covertly extended my head back and sniffed, to determine pit-odor-potency and hypothetical-odor-source. Results were inconclusive and I didn’t want to risk trying again.

But regardless, the Hartford Denim Company is doing cool things and getting attention–evidenced partly by their 2013 Best New Hartford Start-up award.

The company’s founders Luke, Marshall and Dave grew up in West Hartford and assumed, after leaving their respective nests, that they’d never return to the area. But Fate had different plans and returned the trio to their hometown around 2009, at which point they decided to start making leather goods. “But you’ll make a bag that costs $150 in materials, and then you’ll put 30 or 40 hours into hand-sewing it, and nobody can afford that,” said co-founder Luke. “And we didn’t want to make stuff that was unreachable, so we went with the denim as a slightly more affordable alternative.”

A denim clothing company with $300 jeans would have found Connecticut a hostile environment 10 years ago, but the recent denim renaissance has proven growing demand for high-quality denim and clothing products. And as Luke showed me the labor, materials and hardware that goes into each pair, as well as Hartford Denim Company’s free-repairs-for-life guarantee, the price tag no longer seemed ludicrous.

Luke mentioned the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi, embraced by many denim companies in that objects become much more interesting after wear-and-tear; they gain a story, cease being a simple length of fabric. Indeed, a section of the company’s website is devoted to pictures of heavily worn jeans that customers bring in for repairs.

“We’re going to make the same thing next year as we did this year,” said Luke, reflecting the team’s perception of themselves as an artisan workshop rather than fashion company. Hartford Denim Company isn’t interested in selling you flimsy seasonal items that tatter just in time for the Fall Collection. They want to sell you something that endures adventures, bank robberies, BASE jumps.

Exemplary were Luke’s own jeans, soot-black from adventuring factories and barns, and no doubt home to some heady stories.

Clothing Marketing Strategies – Hartford Denim Company

The Hartford Denim Company needs a new fun clothing marketing strategy to set them apart and gain additional recognition. we have presented some marketing strategies and campaigns for the denim clothing company. Below are some clothing marketing campaign ideas we cooked up for Hartford Denim Company, which the public is welcome to use, modify, thrash.

The Buried Denim Treasure Marketing Stragtegy

The Hartford Denim Company buries a few pairs of jeans in various Connecticut spots, provides latitude and longitude coordinates. The clothing company then tells the public to start digging. Ideally there would be photographers at each dig spot, ready to snap that feral digging frenzy that always accompanies free jeans buried someplace in Connecticut.

Clothing Company Marketing with Hashtags – #CT

The Hartford Denim Company runs a marketing strategy requesting the public submits Connecticut-related photos using Connecticut-related hashtag. Winning photographers get featured on the Hartford Denim Company website, Facebook and also win a piece of clothing.

Historical Connecticutians Marketing The Hartford Denim Company

The Hartford Denim Company along with Response Marketing creates a clothing marketing series of famous Connecticut residents wearing Hartford Denim Company. After all Mark Twain, loved a great pair of jeans! These images are then posted on social media feeds and compiled into a clothing marketing lookbook.

*Pictures taken from the Hartford Denim Company website and Facebook page. Promotional illustrations by Response Marketing.