Sainsbury's relaunches Tu clothing brand in non-food push

The relaunch includes a new logo, strapline and brand positioning. Tu, meaning ‘you’, will solely be a fashion brand and will no longer appear on any of the grocer’s homewares products.

A marketing campaign, using the strapline ‘Live Your Style’ will support the launch.

Sainsbury’s said the relaunch brings renewed focus to key categories including womenswear, accessories, lingerie and denim. Collections have been streamlined to include more inspiration from the catwalk and global trends, and seasonal ‘must-haves’ will be more widely available.

Ranges have also been designed so customers can distinguish between the tiers of good, better and best products. Everyday basic items will carry orange labels, while core ranges and premium ranges - including real leather products and its linen ranges - will have grey labels. The premium range will carry darker grey labels than the core range.

New Tu lines will land in stores every six weeks.

Sainsbury’s director of Tu clothing James Brown said: “We have a lot of valuable customer insight from Nectar and being out in stores and our customers gave us credit for good value everyday clothing in terms of essentials and quality but they wanted even more newness.”

Brown said Sainsbury’s invested in its sourcing model to make it more reactive, and upweighted the clothing design team and took more influence from catwalk trends. “What is important about the catwalk trends is that we translated them for our customers.”

The retailer will also launch a new girlswear collection that has been made in Britain, featuring fashion-led prints and designs.

Prices will still be good value, said Sainsbury’s, exemplified by leather bags at £35 and men’s lambswool jumpers at £20.

Changes in-store will include easy-to-navigate shopfloor layouts, better merchandising and clear range definition by tier. In larger stores key looks will be shown on mannequins alongside changing rooms operated by dedicated clothing staff.

From September, the new Tu look will be in 395 stores.

Sainsbury’s said last week that non-food continues to grow at over twice the rate of food. Its flagship non-food models in King’s Lynn in Norfolk and Weedon Road in Northampton have performed well, the retailer said, and will be rolled out to 20 stores by September.

Brown said: “Elements will be taken from the concept stores and rolled out to the 20 stores by September. We will now be trialling it in a range of store sizes.”

Tu is the 11th biggest clothing brand by value and 7th by volume. Brown said: “This is an opportune time to reivigorate the brand and give it a fresh look.”

He also said he would continue to work with Gok Wan on its exclusive ranges for Sainsbury’s which has been “phenomenally successful”.

Brown said that while Sainsbury’s does not yet sell clothing online, it has launched a website for Tu where customers can browse a selection of the collection and find their nearest store. He said it attracts 200,000 users a week.

Tu was launched in 2004 and is now the UK’s seventh largest clothing brand by volume.