Adidas and Nike were generally considered serious athletic clothing when I was wee. Most decidedly, Champion and Fila were considered cheaper brands at the snobby schools I attended.
Lots of brands try to raise their profits by raising their price point. These brands now seem pricier, yet more people seem to be wearing them.
Any other well known brands play the more price, more prestige game?
LG electronics used to be a cheap brand called Gold Star.
In the same vane
Stella Artois is marketed as somewhat upscale beer in the US
But as the cheap stuff in Europe
Isn’t the reverse true as well, with Budweiser more upscale overseas than in the US?
A Czech guy told me he liked to see Czech beers available; we were not talking about Budweiser specifically, but I would assume that overseas a Budweiser is more likely to be real than an American “Budweiser”
Not really in the UK, It is seen as pretty much low tier stuff. Not “happy shopper lager-style zesty drink” low tier but perhaps next rung up.
Pepsi started out as a bargain cola, selling at half the price per ounce as Coke. By the 50s, they realized they were better off turning upscale and now are considered a premium brand. One can argue which is better, but they are a solid 1-2.
Pepsi didn’t really start to take off until they got Caril Fugate’s celebrity endorsement.
I’m not completely sure I’m following your point. I think of Adidas/Nike less as ‘serious athletic wear’ and more as fashion brands with an ‘Athleisure’ branding to them. Under Armour is same category, IMHO, and possibly an example of a newer brand that has moved up-market.
Hyundai/Kia is an example of a brand desperately trying to do so, but I’m not sure it’s really working yet (in terms of perception.)
Levi’s. “Modern jeans began to appear in the 1920s, but sales were largely confined to the working people of the western United States, such as cowboys, lumberjacks, and railroad workers.”
I don’t think Levi’s are largely confined to working people now.
Not really a brand but more a descriptor, wasn’t the original concept of the “Vegas buffet” that it was something dirt cheap (practically free) where you got a lot.
Now they’re in competition to see who can have the most elaborate upscale one with a price-tag to match.
Samsung as well. 20 or so years ago, Samsung was seen as sort of a cheap Sony-wannabe. Around the mid-aughts they completely turned their image around.
Volkswagen made their name in the US by selling cheap, no frills cars. After the Japanese and later the Korean car brands came to the US their sales here steadily declined, so in the early 1990s VW reinvented themselves as a more upmarket brand in the US, and saw their sales improve.
For the past few years Mazda has been trying to do the same thing and reposition themselves as a more upmarket brand than they once were.
Banana Republic used to be known for corny tropical wear, they switched to compete with J Crew around the 1990s or so and definitely more upscale
Put it this way. Growing up certain brands had the reputation of being cheap and even shoddy. People in my limited sphere who had alternatives would not buy it and one rarely saw them worn.
One of these brands, I saw six people wearing during a brief excursion today. Yet they have raised their prices from a cheap alternative to as expensive as any alternative, and it seems to be paying off for them in my highly rigorous and scientific study. It is true that this is clothing that merely looks athletic but that is not the point, labels aside it always was.
Subaru. They were completely shit cars through their first couple of decades. They changed up everything in the mid-90s and turned it completely around, and are now producing high-quality vehicles that consistently hold their value the same way a Toyota or a Honda does.
Banana Republic started with mostly army/military/industrial surplus. It was a quite a while before they could design and make their own clothing.
Really? I see Champion as the other way. It used to be the best, thickest, warmest, heavy weight sweatshirts; now it’s cheap crap sold at much lower price point stores.
My parents had a GoldStar VCR for years in the 90’s. I didn’t realize it was LG’s pupa stage. Interesting. I’m sure my dad bought it because it was the cheapest option available. It lasted for years though, longer than any of the DVD players I had in the mid-2000’s which seemed to be manufactured with a specific – and short – lifespan in mind.
Same with The North Face. They used to be a serious, top-of-the-line outdoor gear manufacturer that could easily hold its own against REI or MEC, one that any serious backpacker or hiker would not hesitate to use. Today it’s almost exclusively a fashion brand and while its outdoor gear isn’t exactly crap it doesn’t have the build quality it once did.
In the late 90’s both brands had a well-deserved reputation as junk. I remember one of the automotive instructors at the local community college saying that all car manufactures made a lot decent models, a few excellent models, and one or two shit models – “except Hyundai. They’re all total garbage.” Whether or not that was true in 1998 I don’t know but today both Hyundai and Kia make really good cars and have some of the (if not the) best warranties in the business. I almost bought a Kia Soul in 2019 and only hesitated because (and I realize this counters my own argument a bit) the transmission in the trim model I wanted was a DCT which have a poor track record on reliability across the industry.
Speaking of cars, Toyota entered the US market in the 70’s as a cheap, economical alternative to the big gas-guzzling domestics. Today of course they not only have their own upscale models (Land Cruiser, Supra) but their own upscale division (Lexus).
Toyota entered the U.S. market even earlier than that (1958), but they didn’t have any real success until the mid '60s, with the Corona; you’re right that the 1970s gas crisis is what really helped them (as well as Honda) to expand their car sales here.
Toyota, Nissan, and Honda all expanded into the luxury segment in the U.S. in the mid-late 1980s, but due to continuing perceptions in this country of their cars as being economical, they created new brand names for their luxury lines (Lexus, Infiniti, and Acura, respectively); my understanding is that, in Japan and other countries, their luxury cars are simply part of their main brands.
This isn’t exactly in line with the OP’s examples, but our local grocery store chain’s (Giant Eagle) store-brand naming and packaging gives the illusion of higher end now. I don’t even remember what their store braded/generic stuff used to look like but it’s very good looking now - named “Market District” - compared to, say, Wal Mart’s “GREAT VALUE”.
In conjunction with the name, logo and packaging they opened up some upper-scale stores called Market District which are more akin to a Whole Foods or our local higher-end grocery store, Heinen’s.
So now when you buy yourself a pretty bottle of Market District Iced Tea, you’re thinking “I’m buying the same stuff they sell at the fancy version of Giant Eagle” as opposed to “I can’t afford the name brand”.