Menswear brand Mack Weldon puts a price lock on underwear to drive sales amid tariff uncertainty
In recent weeks, customers have been inundated with emails from brands urging them to buy now before tariffs potentially force them to raise their prices.
But many of these emails are short on specifics about when prices may get raised, and by how much, as brands are still in the dark about how long these tariffs will actually last.
Menswear brand Mack Weldon is taking a bit of a different approach. On Thursday, the company announced that it was putting a price lock on all of its underwear until July 4, calling on customers to “recession-proof your underwear drawer.” From April 24-27, it is also dropping the price of its 18-Hour Jersey Underwear to $14.50, a nod to the current 145% tariff rate on imports from China.
It’s an approach that few companies can take right now. Mack Weldon founder and CEO Brian Berger said the company sources “very few” of its products from China. Most of its products come from various countries across Southeast Asia, which are currently only subject to the 10% tariff rates that all imports face right now. The higher tariff rates that were laid out on President Donald Trump’s April 2 Liberation Day announcement have been paused for 90 days, with products from China as the exception.
Given the 90-day pause, and after looking at Mack Weldon’s current inventory level, Berger said he felt confident the brand could put a price lock on its underwear line until at least July 4. During a time mired by economic uncertainty, Mack Weldon sees providing pricing certainty as the way to stand out.
“It’s really about trying to use this moment to bring new consumers into the brand and to potentially reward existing consumers that might be have a little bit of anxiety right now around pricing,” Berger said.
Why underwear? Mack Weldon chose to price lock this item in particular in a nod to the Men’s Underwear Index, which tracks the sale of men’s underwear as a way to gauge how consumer activity is shifting amid an economic boom or downturn. The idea was born out of an interview former Fed Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan gave to former NPR correspondent Robert Krulwich, where Greenspan said he looked at the sales of men’s undewear as an economic indicator.
Krulwich recalled that Greenspan once told him, “The garment that is most private is male underpants, because nobody sees it except people in the locker room, and who cares?”
So, when sales of men’s underwear dips, “that means men are so pinched, they are deciding not to replace underpants.”
But right now, Mack Weldon is seeing signs that people are actually stocking up on underwear — the brand says that underwear sales were up 90% between March 15 and April 15.
“While some of those sales can be attributed to inventory restock and a strategic promotion, we believe there’s also a clear correlation to the broader economic climate,” Berger said. And the idea behind the price lock is to give customers the opportunity to stock up on an item they know they’ll eventually need to replace, at a good price, at a time when they may be starting to cut back on other items.
To promote the sale, Mack Weldon also did some giveaways in a handful of locations in New York City on Thursday. The goal with the sale, Berger said — beyond acquiring new customers and driving more customers — is to show that Mack Weldon is showing up in a “steady and reliable way.”
Brands are divided right now on how much to address tariffs and economic uncertainty in their marketing and messaging. Some have been forced to address tariffs more overtly than others, depending on how susceptible their business is to them. Loftie, which sells sleep accessories like a high-tech alarm clock, has been warning customers for days that the price of its lamp will go up from $274.99 to $449.99 starting May 1 due to tariffs.
Katya Constantine, founder of the agency Digishopgirl Media, said in an email that, among her clients, “brands are mostly not calling out tariffs directly” and are “taking a wait-and-see approach to see if things get resolved fast.” Polly Wong, president of the agency Belardi Wong, said in an email that she is seeing more “beat the tariff” messaging, adding, “Our e-commerce sales data shows that sales demand is being pulled forward as consumers shop, anxious to get ahead of any higher prices that the tariffs might create.”
Wong said she’s seeing many similarities between how brands are communicating now and how they tried to communicate with customers during the Covid-19 pandemic — that is, brands are trying to strike an emotional connection with customers by trying to emphasize that they’re in this together.
“During the pandemic, we started to see messaging in the tone of ‘We’re in this together,’ and we’re seeing that now with messaging like ‘We’re doing everything we can to keep our prices down,’” she said.