"
. With Selling Deere
Posted Under: Appearances
Brandweek says John Deere jeans, among other things, are on the way, to be unveiled at Magic, the apparel trade show, this week:
The clothing line, which will also include jackets and shirts, is the first produced by John Deere, which until now was best known in style circles for its green caps donned by farmers and celebrities alike.
Actually, there was a big John Deere push at Magic in spring 2005. I’m not sure how this arrangement differs, exactly, as I can’t recall who the company was [2/8/08 update: see comments for details] that was doing this back then — it was some sort of a licensing deal, so maybe this is different. (Although Brandweek says Deere “this week announced, that the Buntin Group, Nashville, Tenn., will now handle its licensed product strategy.”) Or maybe back then it was just T-shirts — that’s all I remember — and thus not an “apparel line.” Although you’ll notice that in the pic above, which I happened to snap at the time, they were calling it an “apparel line.” Whatever.
Back then they were peddling Deere T-shirts and so on in the “Street Wear” section of Magic. This seemed ludicrous to me, but I guess it was a hipster-irony kind of play. I have no idea if that went anywhere. I do remember the company pushing Deere back then had an immense booth, and also had stuff with the FFA logo on it, which I thought was pretty funny.
Coincidentally, I was reminded of all this just a couple of months ago. We were at a truck stop, in Alabama I think, and I was astonished at all the Deere-branded merch for sale — I wish I’d had my camera on me. I remember thinking that while I never saw any evidence of Deere merch taking off with hipsters, whoever owns this place sure must believe that it’ll sell to the actual truck stop demo.
Brandweek says “John Deere merchandise sales, which include hats, watches, golf umbrellas and clocks, hit about $300 million last year.” That’s the kind of stuff they had at the truck stop.
But wow, $300 million — that’s a much bigger number than I would have guessed.
I won’t be at Magic this time around, but I’m curious if the new strategy has them pushing Deere as something other than “Street Wear.” Seems like that might be a good idea?
.
.
Kim Fellner's book 
.
A
Reader Comments
Ben Davis
Dickies
Carhartt
Sailor Jerry (merchandise)
PBR
Budweiser
Tecate
Sal Barbier’s “man’s shop”
Emerica’s Wild Ride (pro skaters buy Harleys, in 92 it was Honda Civics)
John Deere…
The young American male’s quest for authenticity navigates by a handful of signposts, from Latino culture, African American culture, working class white American culture, American-made consumer goods, the heartland etc etc.
I’ve wondered the same thing about the Deere merch I’ve seen. By no means do I follow retail in depth you do, but my presumption seeing the racks of Deere shirts and hats in Austin’s Academy Sports was that Deere tried to ride the coattails of the trucker-hat craze, but found a niche among red-state hunters and boaters. The shirts often have non-ironic “ironic” slogans like, “Will trade wife for tractor.”
In high-school in the early 1990s, I would wear a mesh John Deere hat to school, as a statement against my middle-class milieu in suburban Tulsa. My parents grew up on farms in Minnesota, so, for me, Deere was a fetish for Blue-state work ethic and community, contrasting with the red-state world of consumption I found myself in. To find the brand associated with appalling sexist slogans is a bit of a disappointment to me.
Do you have a sense of the construction of Deere’s outerwear? I wonder if they’re trying to do a workwear crossover like Dickies or Carhartt. Except, of course, that they want to launch it as streetwear at the same time, rather than wait for rappers to don Carhartts in music videos.
Of course, the semiotics of those crossover can be fraught. I recently bought a Carhartt jacket, associating the brand with West-Philly anarcho-punks and the like. At my local food co-op, the cashier asked me about the jacket, saying she associated Carhartt with “homophobic rednecks” in her hometown of Comfort. In Austin, anyway, Dickies doesn’t seem to have the same kind of baggage.
Cool Raoul: Thanks for the reminder. I’ve written about that broad point, and quite a few of these specific brands, although not lately. The point of this post was … well, I don’t see any reason to repeat it.
McChris: I think your guess is probably right, though I can only guess myself (aimed for trucker hat craze, hit elsewhere). I have not seen the newer garments, don’t know anything beyond that Brandweek piece. Funny about Carhartt — they’re kind of a perennial, sort of always being rediscovered by these disparate groups. I actually know very little about their business, though, and whether it’s chance or design that it’s worked out this way for them.
I know people who collect John Deere stuff. They’re older, midwestern men who grew up on and around farms. They also collect John Deere miniature trackers, sort of the same way some men collect model trains. They’ve been doing this for, like, 25 years or so. Probably the attempt to lure ironic hipsters came later but I will note that these old guys (and their wives) would be able to laugh at a “Will trade wife for tractor” shirt.
I think the Brandweek article implied that this new apparel line would be sold at feed stores or places like Tractor Supply. So I’m hoping this means that it’s real-deal stuff for people who actually own a tractor.
Caterpillar might be the closest comparison here. They have an extensive line of clothes, bags, shoes, etc. I’ve seen them do advertising in hipster magazines like Giant Robot.
Since people actually responded to this one, I got un-lazy and looked up my notes from Magic in March 2005. The company pushing licensed Deere merch back then was Earth Tones Trading Co. This brief articlefrom that period mentions jeans, sweaters, and jackets and claims Deere “has a fair amount of “buzz” for a 168-year-old tractor manufacturer based in Moline, Ill., according to Earth Tones. Clothes with the John Deere logo have been spotted on celebrities and sold in high-end department stores such as Nordstrom.”
The Earth Tones booth also had licensed merch for Four-H Club and FFA.
So anyway there was clearly an earlier run at Deere apparel that fizzled, and this is (at least) a second go at it, with a different(-sounding) strategy.
I think Irene and McChris are probably right, and the strategy has moved from the quasi-ironic hipster target, to the person for whom Deere actually has relevance. And Irene is right that such people can, indeed, actually have a sense of humor and laugh at that “Will trade wife for tractor T.”
It’s interesting how often the first instinct is, “If you want to exploit a brand, sell it to hipsters.” And then belatedly someone remembers that *other* market — consisting of, you know, immense swaths of Americans who don’t shop at Urban Outfitters! And really, I am pretty surprised at that $300 million figure, that’s a big number for licensing. And to think they did it without the blessing of the ironic hipster tastemaker!
Robert: I’m interested in what you’re saying about Caterpillar. I know they have attempted inthe past to sort of be a Timberland alternative, going back a number of years, but never really (to my knowledge) getting traction. But I am quite surprised to hear they’ve expanded that and are advertising in GR! I’ll have to look into that. I wonder if it’s getting them anywhere?
Thanks everybody… !
Murketing: you misunderstand me — v. interesting post — I was thinking aloud. It looks like the quest has now moved on to whole-heartedly appropriate a notion of unreconstructed masculinity that existed before feminism and before irony — co-option retreating from irony. See:
http://www.blacklodges.com/fire/2008/02/06/the-end-of-metro-sexuality/
and
Daniel Clowes story “MCMLXVI”
Cool Raoul: My apologies, I did misunderstand. Sorry about that and thanks for the link. Cheers –rw