Investing millions, using the best quality materials, hiring the best professionals, and putting a lot of money on influencer campaigns are the right ways of securing a successful brand. But sometimes, even doing all of that, brands are still not selling and not growing their name and engaging with their customers. Sometimes, for a truly successful brand, you need more than the best professionals, the best fabrics, and the best materials, you also need the business mindset, the vision of making money to reinvest the money, and, most of all, you need to be realistic to your product and marketing.
It is easy to say that you are a small business owner, producing everything locally and your products have the best quality. Even if that is all true, it does not matter if your retail price is not correct or you are targeting the wrong customers. The first thing you need to know when developing your new brand is who your customers are and make sure they can afford your price point. Trying to explain this in an easy way: if you are producing a t-shirt, no matter how fancy your fabrics are and how stylish your t-shirt is, it is still a t-shirt!
Using an average type of client, based on working women between 18-50 years old casual business style, as target customers, no t-shirt will sell with a high price point. Especially if you are a new brand that is still trying to make a name on the market. To make successful sales by selling a product like a t-shirt for $180 or more (as an example), you will need to have a strong marketing strategy. What is your differential? Where are your customers? How much can they afford? Another important point here is: where is all your marketing strategy focused on?
We all know that social media is the main and most important way nowadays, especially when working with influencers which sometimes are not cheap, but will give you the audience you need. But even if you have all the budget in the world and can afford the most expensive IG influencer, it will not bring you sales. Sometimes being mentioned on Vogue will not bring you sales… And why is that? Well, again, are you being coherent when comparing your product and branding? There are a lot of new brands which do not see the difference between the product they are selling and the marketing they are using.
Whatever you think about creating and launching in the fashion industry it is already out there. This industry has reinvented itself for a long time, still does and no matter what product you are trying to sell, when things go down to business and numbers, you have to learn how to be coherent and realistic. Hiring the right people and listening to them is the first step, but understanding your brand identity and the products you are selling, who are your competitors, and how the product is present in this industry is the main point.
The biggest problem I can see in this industry is the lack of business-minded people who tend to open a brand "because I want to be in fashion because it is fancy!’’. This is not how successful brands work. You launch a product to a target market and make sure your price point is affordable to their pockets. You make money and you reinvest money in the business instead of keep hitting the same button - like producing the same product, selling with the same price point, and sitting on the same inventory.
I tend to break my clients' hearts every time I say that the price point they are looking at is too expensive. It feels like a cold shower on their dream of having a fancy brand. Sometimes works the other way around… sometimes I have to tell them that the price point is too low for the kind of product they are trying to sell. But no matter what your product is, as a brand new fashion business that is building a name and conquering customers' trust, you have to look to your competitors and to how your product presents itself to the market in general.
Remember: it is not, only, how you see your product, but how the market sees it! The biggest designers of the last decade were designers, but not CEOs or the only owners of their brands. They had business-oriented people to partner with them and be their main rock when things come down to numbers - and not creativity!
That is why you have to take a look at how the market is reacting to the kind of product you are selling and be coherent between price point, brand identity, and garments you are selling.
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