Didriksons Eyes European Expansion by Way of the Swedish Coast

Didriksons continues its international expansion with a brand strategy that has already made Germany the company's single largest market. The brand is now establishing itself as The Swedish Jacket Brand, with the primary aim of expanding across Europe. Didriksons is doing so with the launch of a marketing campaign called “Finding Spring” – a quest for the arrival of spring, with the entire Swedish coastline playing the leading role.

“As Didriksons enters more and more markets in Europe we are making ever more progress to securing our position as The Swedish Jacket Brand. We are a hundred-year-old Swedish company and we want to celebrate the Swedish coast and at the same time show our new markets how much the arrival of spring means to us up here in the north. This falls perfectly in line with our brand and target audience,” says Marc Eastmond, Global Brand Creative Director at Didriksons.

The brand, founded in the small fishing village of Grundsund on the west coast of Sweden, has a close connection with the coast and the sea. In the spring campaign, Didriksons takes that legacy even further to embrace all of Sweden's long and beautiful coastline. It captures the transition from darkness to light, cold to warmth, winter to spring, depicted all the way from Haparanda at the very north of the Swedish coastline, via the High Coast and all the way down to the country’s southernmost tip at Smygehuk.

The campaign was devised by The Bond Communication Agency, which also developed the new brand platform and communication strategy together with Didriksons. The commercial was produced by Cameralink and director Andreas Lind.

“The film grew out of Didriksons’ mission to enable more people to spend time outdoors regardless of the weather. The inspiring promise ‘See you outside’ sets the direction, introducing the brand to consumers in a modern context where we invite comfort-minded city-dwellers to brave rain, wind and cold temperatures. With clothes that speak to that yearning, Didriksons now moves further out across Europe,” says Martin Ahlgren, strategist at The Bond.

Didriksons enters 2022 following a successful year where many new doors opened to the company, not least collaborations with several major fashion stores and strategic retailers in Europe. In 2021 Didriksons broke new sales records and gained a tremendous boost in the brand's consumer appeal. Germany became Didriksons’ largest market for the first time ever and at the same time the brand entered France with an online e-tail store and a pop-up boutique in Paris.

In Sweden the company continues to invest in stores that open for the summer months on both the west and east coasts, with the addition this year of two new shops in the popular tourist destinations of Trosa and Smögen. In addition, the pop-up store in downtown Stockholm now becomes a permanent fixture.

“Our growth is driven by the increased brand awareness that comes from having a distinctive visual expression allied to our innovative and functional fashion design. What’s more, we’ve invested heavily in our digital presence, which ultimately promotes a boost in physical retail sales. But the journey has only just begun and we are continuing to build steadily on our long-term strategy,” says Petra Sabo, Head of DTC at Didriksons.

The ad campaign starts in February, mainly running online in Sweden, Norway, Finland, Germany, the United Kingdom and France.