Ch. 11 - Developing and Managing Products

Tory Burch has successfully used a number of methods in order to create innovations within her company and it's products. In 2004, Tory Burch started with general product lines of women's ready-to-wear clothing, shoes, handbags, jewelry and accessories. Over the years she has managed to create many more categories of new products including product lines such as eye-wear, travel socks and beauty products. In 2009, Tory decided to create a partnership with Luxottica and produced a new product line of Tory Burch eye-wear. It consisted of both sun and prescription eye-wear that contained common colors from Tory Burch's brand.

In 2010, Tory Burch tweeted her fans telling them about the experience of taking off your shoes when going through the scanners at the airports and how she would feel so disgusted walking barefoot. She suggested to create a new product line of a traveling sock. Minutes after posting, her fans quickly agreed and told her that it was a great idea. It was amazing how social media influenced product development within her company. In this case, the customer and social media was part of the company's new-product strategy. Since the fans were tweeting about how much of a great idea the traveling socks were, Tory Burch did what the marketing guru would tell her to do; she gave them what they wanted. The traveling sock came in one color and one style which was one size fit all. It was navy blue and orange. It came with a little cute pouch which had a clip that consumers was able to use to clip on to either their traveling bag or create a strap to carry-on. Tory Burch hasn't really mentioned anything about creating any new colors or styles for the product line, however it has been a huge success and a lot of the consumers love the cute fashionable travel socks.

In 2013, Tory Burch decided to find a way to expand her brand. She started to look into new product development for beauty products. The new idea was estimated to bring in about fifty million dollars in sales in only after the first year. The beauty products consisted in a fragrance which was created in partnership with Estée Lauder who was responsible for producing the scent, a color cosmetics collection and a bath& body line. The fragrance came in a gold and orange vintage bottle which was inspired by the perfume bottles that she had seen on her mom's dresser when she was a child. The color cosmetics included a pink nude lipstick, rosy pink lip and cheek tint, a bronzer-blush palette and a retractable all-purpose face brush. The bath& body products included body cream, body lotion, shower gel and a candle. The beauty line was inspired by Tory's memories of her mother, her desire to expand and grow and her goal of attempting to satisfy her consumers needs by creating all products possible. The beauty product line and travel socks are currently still in the introduction and growth stage in the market while the eyewear product line is in the maturity stage of the market.