Multinational Fashion Marketing: The Discipline of Staying Relevant When Your Brand Crosses Every Border and Culture

ASOS lost £10 million trying to enter China. Amazon, the most powerful logistics company on earth, retreated from the same market entirely in 2019. Both failures shared the same root cause: the assumption that what works in 1 market will work in another if you simply translate the language and adjust the currency.

Fashion punishes that assumption more brutally than almost any other industry. A color that signals sophistication in Paris may carry mourning associations in Bangkok. A silhouette that flatters in New York may feel wrong on a body in Jakarta. A marketing campaign built on individual self-expression may alienate consumers in cultures where identity is communal rather than personal. The variables are not just numerous. They are invisible to anyone who has not done the work of understanding them.

The Good to Great Podcast, hosted by Masrur Rahman and Timea Héjja, dedicated a full episode to this challenge, asking the question that every fashion brand expanding internationally must answer: How do you remain globally recognizable while staying locally relevant?

Their guests brought complementary perspectives. Iftekhar Mallick, General Manager at Beximco Group and former member of the senior leadership team at Bata Group, has spent more than a decade shaping fashion and footwear brands across South and Southeast Asia, with experience spanning McKinsey, WGSN, Ipsos, and DDB. His work has taken him through fashion weeks in Milan, Paris, Dubai, and Jakarta, giving him firsthand exposure to how cultural nuance determines commercial outcomes. Emma Pritchard, Senior Lecturer in Fashion Marketing and Innovation at Southampton Solent University, brings 16 years of academic research combined with practical experience in buying and production for both UK and Japanese brands. She has examined programs for institutions including the London College of Fashion and Istituto Marangoni, and her work connects the dots between consumer psychology, cultural theory, and commercial strategy.

What they delivered together was not a survey of best practices. It was a detailed examination of why multinational fashion marketing is so difficult, what the brands that succeed actually do differently, and where the intersection of technology, culture, and ethics is heading next.

01. Cracking the Code: Entering New Markets

Market entry is where most international fashion strategies succeed or fail, and the failure usually happens before a single product reaches the shelf. It happens in the planning, when brands confuse market data with market understanding.

"Fashion is deeply tied to identity," Iftekhar emphasized. "Before we even touch the 'what,' we need to understand the 'why' behind consumer choices."

That distinction between "what" and "why" is the fault line that separates brands that localize successfully from those that spend heavily and fail visibly. The "what" is observable: income levels, population demographics, retail infrastructure, digital penetration rates. Any consulting firm can assemble this data. The "why" is experiential: the emotional relationship a consumer has with clothing, the social signals a purchase sends, the cultural narratives that determine whether a brand feels aspirational or alien.

"You have to walk the streets, observe how fashion lives in their daily routines. That's where you find the hidden stories that numbers can't tell," Iftekhar said.

He pointed to Zara's entry into India as a case study in getting this balance right. When Zara launched its online presence in the country in 2017, it entered a market where international fashion was aspirational yet price-sensitive, where consumers wanted global brand cachet but expected value that reflected local economic realities. By positioning itself as simultaneously accessible and aspirational, Zara captured a broad audience. The strategy worked not because Zara had better data than its competitors, but because it understood the psychological positioning that the Indian consumer required.

Emma added the critical counterpoint: entering a market without understanding its invisible cultural architecture can be catastrophic regardless of resources deployed.

"A community-led culture will want to see community-based marketing," she said. "If you ignore those signals, no amount of budget will save you."

ASOS's Chinese failure was not a logistics problem, though logistics contributed. It was a cultural misread. Amazon's exit was not a technology deficit. It was an inability to adapt an operating model built for individualistic Western consumers to a market where social commerce, group buying, and platform ecosystems operated on entirely different principles.

The lesson is not that international expansion is too risky. It is that the risk is misallocated. Brands spend heavily on supply chain infrastructure and digital platforms while underinvesting in the cultural intelligence that determines whether anyone will actually buy the product once it arrives.

02. The Balancing Act: Global Consistency vs. Local Relevance

Every multinational fashion brand lives inside the same tension. Push too hard toward global consistency and you become rigid, offering the same product and message to consumers whose lives, values, and aesthetic preferences bear no resemblance to each other. Push too hard toward local adaptation and you fragment the brand, losing the coherent identity that justified international expansion in the first place.

"Maintaining global consistency while being locally relevant, that's the puzzle few brands solve well," Iftekhar observed.

He pointed to Bata as a case study in long-term adaptive success. Bata originated in Europe but built its strongest commercial presence in South Asia. Over more than 125 years, the company adapted to local tastes, pricing structures, and cultural contexts so thoroughly that many consumers in Bangladesh and India consider it a domestic brand rather than a European import. That depth of localization is extraordinarily rare and took decades to achieve.

Yet even Bata faces ongoing challenges. Rising input costs in India have pressured the value proposition that made the brand a household name. The lesson is that localization is not a 1-time achievement. It is a continuous negotiation between brand identity and market reality, and the terms of that negotiation shift constantly.

Emma framed the challenge through a different lens, describing successful multinational brands as "flexible ecosystems" rather than rigid hierarchies.

She cited Chanel as a brand that maintains absolute consistency in its core identity, the CC logo, the tweed, the specific vocabulary of French luxury, while allowing its storytelling and cultural engagement to adapt through local influencers, regional collaborations, and market-specific content strategies. The logo never changes. The conversation around it constantly does.

She also highlighted LVMH's investment in structural capability, specifically the Data and AI Academy created in partnership with Google Cloud in 2021. The initiative uses machine learning to enable hyper-personalized marketing across the group's luxury portfolio. "It's about keeping the core intact," Emma explained, "while letting the brand breathe differently in different markets."

The brands that solve this puzzle share a common characteristic: they distinguish clearly between what is non-negotiable and what is adaptive. Brand values, design DNA, quality standards, and ethical commitments are fixed. Product assortment, marketing tone, channel strategy, pricing architecture, and cultural references are fluid. The fixed elements create recognition. The fluid elements create relevance. Neither works without the other.

03. Consumer Quirks: The Details That Determine Everything

The phrase "consumer behavior" sounds clinical. In practice, it is anything but. The differences between how consumers in different markets relate to fashion are granular, emotional, and frequently counterintuitive.

Iftekhar drew on his experience across Southeast Asia to illustrate this granularity. In Indonesia, modest fashion is not a niche segment. It is a mainstream lifestyle category that shapes everything from retail strategy to runway programming to influencer selection. A brand that treats modest fashion as an add-on rather than a core consideration has misunderstood the market at a foundational level. In Thailand, consumers gravitate toward bold colors and playful, expressive designs that would feel excessive in more restrained markets. In Bangladesh, practicality and affordability are primary purchase drivers, and brands that lead with aspiration over function lose relevance quickly.

He recalled working with the Islamic Fashion Council during Jakarta Fashion Week, where the challenge was to infuse campaigns with religious and cultural elegance without alienating broader audiences. The solution required a sensitivity to nuance that no market report could provide, a feel for how far to lean into cultural specificity and when to pull back toward universal appeal.

Emma recommended that brands complement this experiential knowledge with structured analytical frameworks. Tools like PESTEL (political, economic, social, technological, environmental, legal analysis), Porter's 5 Forces, STP (Segmentation, Targeting, Positioning), and the CAGE model (which measures cultural, administrative, geographic, and economic distance between markets) help brands decode not just visible differences but underlying structural gaps.

"Frameworks don't replace creativity," she said, "but they give you a compass in markets that otherwise feel overwhelming."

The practical insight is that consumer understanding requires both immersion and structure. Walk the streets, as Iftekhar advises, but also build the analytical scaffolding that turns observation into strategy. The brands that fail internationally tend to do 1 without the other: either drowning in data without cultural intuition, or operating on gut feeling without systematic analysis.

04. Resilience and Ethics: Safeguarding the Brand Soul

International brands face crises that domestic brands rarely encounter. A political controversy in 1 market can ripple across every market where the brand operates. A cultural misstep that is forgiven locally becomes a global social media event within hours. The speed and interconnectedness of modern communication means that brand resilience is no longer a regional capability. It is a global requirement.

Iftekhar shared a revealing example from his time at Bata. When the brand faced political backlash in Bangladesh, the response that rebuilt trust was not a crisis communications campaign. It was a sustained demonstration of community commitment.

"Resilience comes through emotional connections, programs like Bata Children's showed we stood with communities," he recalled.

The insight is that brand resilience is not built during a crisis. It is built before the crisis, through years of genuine community engagement that creates a reservoir of goodwill. When that reservoir exists, consumers give brands the benefit of the doubt. When it does not, every misstep becomes an indictment.

Emma expanded the discussion to the ethical dimensions that increasingly determine brand survival, particularly among younger consumers who view purchasing decisions as moral statements.

"Partnerships with local organizations," she explained, "are far more credible than flashy global campaigns that feel disconnected."

She pointed to Reebok's Futureverse project, launched in 2024, which allows users to design sneakers from personal memories using AI. The initiative blends technology with emotional and cultural input in a way that feels authentic rather than extractive. It succeeds because it gives consumers creative agency rather than simply targeting them with personalized advertising.

The broader principle is that ethics in multinational fashion marketing is not a compliance function. It is a brand architecture decision. Companies that treat ethical commitments as constraints to be managed will always be vulnerable. Companies that build ethics into their value proposition create a form of competitive advantage that is extremely difficult for rivals to replicate, because authenticity cannot be faked at scale.

05. Tech and the Future: AI, Data, and the Human Element

Technology is reshaping every dimension of fashion marketing, from trend forecasting to customer engagement to supply chain transparency. Both guests engaged with this reality seriously while refusing to treat technology as a solution in itself.

Iftekhar sees practical promise in social listening tools and custom AI models, which his team at Beximco aims to integrate by 2026. But his framing was deliberately grounded.

"It's not about the technology itself, it's about how aware you are. Technology is a co-pilot, not the driver."

This metaphor captures something essential. AI can process consumer sentiment data at a scale no human team can match. It can identify emerging trends weeks before they become visible in sales data. It can personalize marketing messages across thousands of micro-segments simultaneously. What it cannot do is understand why a particular color resonates in 1 culture and repels in another. It cannot feel the social dynamics of a Jakarta street market. It cannot read the room when a campaign is approaching the boundary between cultural engagement and cultural appropriation.

Emma reinforced this point while adding an important dimension: the ethics of AI deployment itself have become a consumer concern.

"Gen Z expects transparency," she noted, citing research showing that 32 percent of young consumers factor responsible AI use into their brand evaluations. Without fairness frameworks governing how AI is trained, what data it uses, and how its outputs are reviewed for bias, even the most sophisticated technology can erode the trust it was deployed to build.

She also stressed that global KPIs like sales revenue, while necessary, are insufficient for measuring success in multinational fashion marketing. Brands must also develop metrics for cultural sentiment: how consumers feel about the brand's presence in their market, whether the brand is perceived as respectful or extractive, whether its localization efforts feel genuine or performative. These are harder to measure than conversion rates, but they are better predictors of long-term brand health.

The future belongs to brands that deploy technology in service of cultural intelligence rather than as a substitute for it. AI that amplifies human understanding of local markets is transformative. AI that replaces human understanding with algorithmic assumptions is a faster way to make the same mistakes that sank ASOS in China.

06. The Discipline of Relevance

As the conversation drew to a close, both guests converged on a theme that unifies every challenge discussed: relevance in multinational fashion marketing is not an achievement. It is a practice.

"There are no cheat codes. Relevance is not a 1-time win, you have to make it a daily discipline," Iftekhar said.

Emma echoed the sentiment, adding that the brands which thrive internationally are those that embrace complexity rather than attempting to simplify it away. The markets are different. The consumers are different. The cultural contexts are different. The brands that succeed are the ones that find this diversity energizing rather than exhausting, and that build organizations capable of learning continuously rather than executing a fixed playbook.

From Zara's localization intelligence in India to Bata's 125-year adaptive evolution in South Asia, from LVMH's AI-driven personalization to Reebok's consumer co-creation experiments, the examples shared across this conversation point toward a single conclusion: global success in fashion does not go to the brand with the biggest budget or the most recognizable logo. It goes to the brand that does the hardest work, the work of understanding people in their own context, on their own terms, with genuine respect for the differences that make each market unique.

That work is never finished. And that, more than any strategy or technology, is what separates brands that cross borders from brands that truly belong in the markets they enter.