Wardrobing is the act of buying, wearing and returning clothes and it’s terribly damaging to the fashion industry. The biggest fashion retailers have gone as far as blacklisting serial returners. So when everyone was trying to fight wardrobing, Diesel embraced it by turning the actual return policy into an integrated global campaign and Enjoy Before Returning was born. What others thought would be a business suicide move, it actually helped Diesel increase sales, attract a new, younger target and actually lower the global online and instore returns.

Wardrobing is the act of buying clothes, wearing them for the occasion and returning them within 14 days for a full refund. Wardrobing costs the fashion industry $15 billions/year. How can a brand fight it? Some fashion retailers go as far as blacklisting customers who usually return items.

If nothing can make people stop wardrobing, then why try to stop them at all? For the launch of the FW19 collection, Diesel embraced wardrobing and encouraged people to ENJOY BEFORE RETURNING.

Some fashion retailers even go as far as blacklisting customers who usually return items. Does that work? No. People still return clothes. It’s a behaviour so deeply embedded into this generation DNA that maybe the best way to fight it is to not fight it at all.

Diesel’s return policy became the central part of the global communication, whether it was turned into a song for the launch film or slapped all over fashion visuals, while portraying consumers planning on returning and wearing the tag out unapologetically. The campaign was timed to the global Fashion Week events, when wardrobing spikes, and Diesel’s parties were accessible only to those who kept the labels out, no matter the brand. People’s photos with themselves wearing DIESEL item’s with the tag out counted as VALID discount coupons for their next purchase on ecommerce.

People called us crazy. Competition called us crazy. Well, besides becoming the talk of town, the approach helped to actually REDUCE the Diesel returns by 9% globally and the sales went up with 24% GLOBALLY, where more than half came from new customers – people in the younger age groups who never considered DIESEL before.