This month has seen the launch of new advertising campaigns in Ireland for a number of leading jeans companies, all of which must be worried about maintaining their respective market positions in the light of reports last year that denim sales were threatened with a slump. The crisis in the jeans business, if it exists, is based around image. Associated with teenage rebellion since the late 1950s, these clothes now tend to look distinctly staid and not at all daring. The teenagers who first wore denim as a statement of youthful defiance have continued to espouse this dress in middle-age. Once British Prime Minister Tony Blair was photographed wearing jeans, their fate was sealed; they were as much a symbol of establishment authority as a pinstripe suit.
A report compiled for the British clothing industry by researchers AC Nielsen showed that last year sales of jeans fell to 17 million from a figure of 23 million in 1996/1997. Part of the problem was that the present generation of teenagers prefers to wear other trouser styles, particularly baggy cotton combat pants which have now become ubiquitous. Cotton chinos have also made inroads into the casual trouser market, as have tracksuit pants from sports companies such as Adidas and Nike. Then there is the wide range of branded items from English soccer teams which youthful supporters prefer to wear. Nor has the handful of big players - Levi's, Wrangler, Lee, Pepe - been able to maintain its monopoly. The jeans market has become much more diffuse during the 1990s, thanks to the addition of new names such as Guess and the arrival of denim diffusion lines by every major international designer and manufacturer. The outcome is that anyone planning to buy a pair of jeans is now overwhelmed by choice of names, although the actual item varies relatively little from one brand to the next.
Here is another challenge jeans manufacturers have had to face of late; their product has remained largely unchanged for the past 50 years. Levi's may produce hundreds of different styles but the differences between one and the next is likely to be recognisable only to a handful of denim cognoscenti. Most customers are simply interested in finding a pair of jeans in the right size and at the best price. Irish distributors of the major jeans brands insist sales here have not suffered the slump seen in Britain over the past year. While the level of growth witnessed in the late 1980s and early 1990s - when denim sales exploded - has not continued, the market in Ireland is at worst static. Both Lee and Wrangler have released figures for 1998 showing an 11 per cent increase in "bottom sales" - that is, sales of trousers. However, this figure would cover not just denim jeans but also combats and chinos because diversification has become a crucial feature of every jeans manufacturer; today, Levi's would be as well known for sweatshirts as denims.
Because image plays such a vital part in jeans sales, a great deal of money is spent on their advertising campaigns each season. The Irish budget for Wrangler's last campaign based around American rodeos was £750,000 and Lee is spending £250,000 here on its newly-unveiled poster campaign for spring/ summer 1999. The other feature shared by all jeans companies is irony; Lee's advertisements, based around five "Tips for a Happy Lifestyle" rely heavily on an ironic dichotomy between image and text and the newly-released Levi's campaign for Sta-Prest clothing shares the same characteristic. It would appear too much earnestness is considered bad for sales and that companies prefer to give the illusion of not caring too much. However, considering the sums of money involved and the profits which have been made in the past, jeans manufacturers do take the business of selling very seriously indeed.