#Workman Joshi: a store without workwear (2020)

The author’s view

#Workman Joshi can be read not as an extension of WORKMAN Plus — which widened the customer base without changing the product — but as a deeper decision: to take workwear out of the store altogether. It is no small thing for a company with a base as solid as the trades to build a sales floor that sets that asset aside. At the same time one can see the shape of a problem, in which high performance, the company’s greatest weapon, became a constraint in an apparel world where people buy on design.

The swing back toward menswear and grown-up casual, and the consideration of a rename to “Workman Family,” show that the original outline of a women-specific format is still not settled. The company itself has said it expects roughly ten years to complete the format, so it is early to pronounce on this decision. Whether a store stripped of workwear can grow a customer base of its own, or drifts back toward the existing formats, is still to be seen.