John James Wilson plays down his marketing prowess with a half laugh and a sly smile. Having graduated from Ryerson University with a degree in business communications, he says had he elected to study marketing the school would have denied him admission.
“I don’t know if I would have gotten into the marketing program,” says Wilson, 26, who minored in entrepreneurship and retail management. “They probably would have told me I had to leave.”
All jokes aside, and despite a lack of formal marketing education, Wilson is doing just fine building Canadian clothing label Kit & Ace into a successful global retail brand.
As co-founder and chief brand officer, Wilson, the son of Lululemon founder Chip Wilson, developed the branding and oversees consumer touch points from digital to traditional advertising, in-store design, ecommerce, PR and experiential.
Wilson cut his teeth working with retail brands such as Wing & Horns, Holt Renfrew and, of course, Lululemon providing advice to the latter on how to best target the illusive male market (“I made the logo black… and a few other things,” he says with another sly smile).
Wilson, alongside his stepmother Shannon Wilson (the former head of design at Lululemon), launched the Kit and Ace line of machine washable cashmere basics only two years ago. The pair started with a location in Vancouver’s Gastown neighbourhood, but now operate 32 stores in Canada, the U.S., Australia and the U.K., with a goal of growing to 150 brick-and-mortar locations within the next five years.
Discussing his recent success as an entrepreneur and retail marketer, he doesn’t shy away from questions about the company’strajectory, which some retail experts believe is moving at an unsustainable pace.
“I don’t know if growing too fast is a bad thing,” he says in response to critics’ skepticism. “There’s a lot of companies that grow really fast and don’t know how to manage it – they don’t know how to put the systems and processes in place. We have that experience.”
Indeed. Wilson has had the privilege of learning from both his father’s successes and failures while also, he acknowledges, enjoying the benefit of his sizable financial clout. Kit & Ace is reportedly self-financed, with the Wilson family investing more than $7 million.
“We’ve benefitted a lot from our past,” admits Wilson. “For me, it’s choosing to do something with it and to do something cool with it. So that’s what I’m excited about.”
While he (and every other retailer out there), tries to navigate the uncertain waters of mobile, digital and ecommerce, and how to determine the right combination of each, he says PR has proven to be the most “successful, organic marketing vehicle.”
In August, Kit & Ace ran into resistance when it applied for building permits in San Francisco’s Hayes Valley – a historic small-business friendly neighbourhood with a BIA that is vehemently opposed to formula retail occupying its store-fronts.
So Wilson bought NoKitAndAce.com to highlight the retailer’s commitment to working with local craftspeople and fostering relationships with the communities in which it operates.
“It’s nothing to do with marketing,” he says. “I just want people to connect and have Kit and Ace be a shop in terms of experiential retail and as a platform for connection,” he says.
For example, Kit and Ace partners with local talent artisans to design and create one-of-a-kind pieces including tables, chairs, lighting fixtures or displays for its stores. And the stores also host regular supper clubs for influencers and artists featuring emerging chefs and fare from local vendors.
“I guarantee it’s more than what the local merchants are doing to build their local markets,” he says. “I want my shop to be a place for people to connect, for locals to partner with us and do more than just open up a formula retail shop.”
Agility is a luxury Wilson can afford, but his try or die attitude is what makes him a great marketer. He’s open to making mistakes and admits his biggest challenge is “figuring out the balance between how many stores to open versus ecommerce versus brand awareness.” But with unbridled excitement for the retail industry and marketing, and a hunger to be the best at what he does, we don’t doubt Wilson will find the right fit.
