DESIGNER TOOLBOX Archives | Page 2 of 8 | FASHION CROSS FUNCTIONAL

February 27, 2018

DESIGNER TOOLBOX: How Newsletters Can Help Your Fashion Business Achieve Solid Results

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Hi guys,
I witnessed a sad situation last week. I saw a fashion brand owner I worked with last year: she was totally exhausted. She has been posting relentlessly on social media for the past 6 months. She got a few likes and emoji comments here and there but in the end, her efforts did not bring the sales she was expecting. She was usually so peppy and full of passion but last week, she just llooked tired and fed up with everything.

I do not know if you have experienced this. That horrible feeling of deep fatigue when you end up questioning your choices. You were in for this whole thing because you were passionate about fashion. Remember? You just wanted to make beautiful clothes and share your passion to the world.
How did you end up there, desperately waiting for people to show up and wondering how to sell your clothes online?
I understand what you are going through: the struggle is real.
And I figured out that many fashion designers who start (actually even the ones who have been on the market for years and still struggle…) have ignored a totally basic tool.
Newsletters and e-mail marketing.

I know…

I am aware that the accessibility of a Facebook or an Instagram platform leaves the impression that everything is so easy. And it can be, if you use those tools properly.
But as you probably noticed, there is a lot of noise on social media and it is getting harder to get heard. According to Statista.com, in January 2018: there were 2.2 billion active users in Facebook and over 800 million users in Instagram. And numbers are going up as we speak, making it even more difficult to stand out.
So you absolutely need to think of an alternative to get your message through to your target audience and inform people about that cute little dress you just got in your store.

#1 – Why you are in a desperate need of a fashion newsletter

Let’s start with hard facts.

The ideal way for fashion brands to generate repeat orders

Here is one thing you need to know: an estimated 40% of purchases in e-commerce stores are generated by repeat customers.
What does it mean?
It means that 40% of the sales in your online fashion shop are generated by people who will buy from you again again and again.
Yes! A few raving fans can do miracles to your sales.

40% is massive: nearly half of your sales! And how can you make sure they keep hearing from your brand? The good old newsletter!

Your fashion brand needs to interact at least 7 times with a prospect before being able to sell

Yep. It is called the rule of 7. A prospect needs to interact and be in touch 7 times with your brand before buying from you. With social media becoming more and more crowded, you absolutely need a complementary way to reach your target customer.
How can you ensure that your message gets heard 7 times? Social media is one way but you can also send your messages directly to your prospect’s inbox.

Do not put all your eggs in the one same unpredictable basket

Thirdly you never know what will happen with social media. Today you have the Facebook or Instagram accounts of your followers but this is not a data you own. Facebook and Instagram own the information. And if for any reason they decide to change their platform, there is a risk you no longer have access to your own followers. It looks unprobable today but you never know!

At least with a newsletter you have an entire database with their email address. And this is at least an information that you own and can rely on.

Newsletters are just efficient. Period.

Emails are at least 4 times more effective in reaching your audience than Facebook for example. Email gets an average 20% open rate while Facebook has 5% talking about that same topic.
So I am not saying here that you need to forget about social media. On the contrary. All I am saying is that it is good to have the good old email to keep in touch with your customers.

A great way to tailor your message to your fashion brand and every single customer

The great thing with Fashion newsletters is: you can personalize the user experience. Because you reach them personally.
You will also be able customize your newsletter according to your brand identity. You can also use your subscriber’s first name.

You can connect on a more personal level and share more about your creative world.
In short, fashion newsletters contribute to create trust for your brand.

#2 What can you communicate with a newsletter?

I do get the issue of not knowing what to tell your audience about. And yet, you have a lot of things that you can talk about. To start brainstorming on this, you can also download our fashion newsletter brainstorming checklist.

Learn more about your audience first

Before you do this I highly encourage you to have an idea of what your customer is into. So even a basic analysis of your audience is enough to understand what kind of content they value.

Then the content also depends on the kind of experience you want your target customer to have with your brand. But basically, you will be able to share more about your lifestyle and create a real connection with your readers. You have a whole space to tell about your brand story and your brand identity.

Show them what they missed on your fashion brand’s social media profiles

You can also get them engage more with you on social media by showing them what they have missed on social media. Depending on what you share but you can also give them a taste of the kind of content you have on your Instagram account (behind the scenes for example or events).

Generate even more trust

You can also show them customer reviews and show them what is trending in your shop right now.

Share news from your fashion business

You can also tell them about a new fashion item or an event that you launched. Basically any news in your fashion business can be shared here. Also news about an upcoming collection or a current campaign that you are preparing or what is in preparation in your workshops. There again, it depends on the audience, you need to get the feel of what they like.

Show that your fashion brand lives

You can share some lifestyle advice. How to wear your piece for example. Where people can wear it.

#3 – How can you get your audience to opt in?
In the service business it is easier to share things in exchange of an email address. With physical products it is more complicated. You are not going to give away a product in exchange of an email. So you need to think about what you can deliver to your customer for free in exchange of an optin.

Here are some ideas: you can do a styling quiz that helps to profile your audience. And in exchange of the results, you get the email.

You can send them the care instructions in exchange of the email address.
You can send styling advice, maybe get inspirations from a celebrity that resonates with your brand and put together a styling booklet to look like that celebrity.
Then of course, you can also give a discount in exchange of the optin. You can also market the newsletter as a priviledge and give the promotions in priority to the people who sign up for your mailing list.

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Enjoyed this article?

Start working on a newsletter for your fashion brand

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February 13, 2018

DESIGNER TOOLBOX: The 3 Critical Steps To Learn How To Price Your Fashion Line

Hey guys,

Finding the right price point for your fashion line is one of the most difficult tasks a designer can work on. So many of you fashion designers come to see me to view the collection and help you price your items.
I get it. It’s not an easy task, especially if you’re on your own.
On the one hand, you are afraid that if your price point is too high, no one will ever show up to buy your items at that price. On the other hand if your price point is too low, you’re afraid that people may think that it’s low quality. And on top of that, you might not be able to make enough profit out of your fashion line. I get it! This topic raises so much anxiety. You feel the fear just thinking about it: is it too high? is it too low? Maybe you’ve even gone a step further and you’ve showed your fashion line to some people who showed some interest. Until you mentioned the price…
Yes trying to find a reasonable price point for your fashion line can feel like a real struggle when you’re figuring out how to start a clothing line.
We need to address the main obstacles that appear during the pricing process. I observed three main obstacles that created fear around pricing your fashion line.

#1 – Get Rid Of Your Mental Limiting Beliefs

The usual traditional methods won’t tell you about this although I see it as the main difficulty you will have to overcome when you’re launching your clothing line.
It’s the first issue that holds you from pricing your line properly: you feel that you and your fashion brand are one and the same.
Since you made the collection, it feels very difficult to put a price on your own time and effort. How much is it worth? You can’t say since you find it difficult to separate yourself from your own fashion brand. I understand, it’s like putting a price tag on your own person. If you have this issue, you will probably feel as affected when people give you a Bad review, it hurts personally as if they stumped on your own heart.
To start with, you need to step back and take some distance. What you need to do here is to clear your head and act as if you were hired by your own brand to perform a job.
Second obstacle is actually a consequence of the first obstacle. Since you feel that you and your brand are one and the same, you totally lack of objectivity. So all your personal issues might reflect on your fashion brand. As a result, if you have a low self-esteem you will probably think that you work is not worth paying a certain amount. So you will probably be asking for a ridiculously low price for a beautifully made product.

And if you are, let’s say unrealistic, you will be tempted to follow a high price point although the quality and the value added you deliver do not meet the level required.
You need to get rid of those mental patterns. They usually come in a form of a little voice telling you that you don’t deserve to ask for that kind of money or on the contrary, you feel that you worked so much on your collection that no matter the market reality, your fashion line should be priced like a high end product. When you hear those voices, you have to reason yourself by saying that you cannot rely on an unverified information that is only based on fear or belief.
Once you put aside the mental limiting beliefs, you have to take care of the actual pricing analysis.

#2 – Compare your fashion line to your competitors’, criteria by criteria

If you carried out a proper market research, now is the time to pull it out. Take your analysis of your competitors and position your brand compared to your competitors. If you haven’t performed any market research yet, I’d highly recommend you do one even if it’s only to be aware of the biggest trends and risks you are facing nowadays in the fashion industry. And you absolutely need to know who your competitors are, what makes them strong and what are their potential weaknesses. Concretely what does it look like?
It means that you will have to pick a few of them, analyse their offer and compare it to yours. In the checklist that I share in the Fashion Fix Facebook group, I’ve prepared a little chart to make the comparison easier and more objective. The idea here is to compare your brand to your competitors’, criteria by criteria. When you do this work, it’s important that you don’t lie to yourself. Otherwise you’ll just end up promising a value added that does not exist and disappoint your customers.

Choose a category you will work on (T-shirt, dress, skirt, trousers etc). And be honest with yourself, don’t just evaluate your product blindly. Also to do this exercise, you need to understand and to read the quality of the work.
When you put your product category in the chart, you need to ask yourself: how do you compare to your competitors on each of those criteria? if there are criteria on which you have a low assessment, can you maybe compensate with another criteria? For example if you are not able to make your products available on as many distribution channels as your competitor, which can make your brand less convenient to access to, maybe you can argue, promote rarity and the fact that you make limited series. Maybe you can even add that it’s handmade if it’s the case.

At the end of this exercise, you will get a price range for each product category as well as a more objective assessment.

#3 – Make Sure Your Price Point Covers The Costs

In the last step, you compare the price obtained to your production costs. There are different formulas out there. The most common you will find is
Production costs X 4 = Retail price
However if in your business model, you consider selling wholesale, you need to have some room for potential price discounts and sales promotions that retail stores will ask you to apply. So in the end, that’s why you can find markup levels of 7.
But what does that mean? It means that your retail price cannot be more than 7 times higher than your total production costs.

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Do you want to know how to apply this pricing method to your fashion line?

Join the Fashion Fix and download the pricing checklist to guide you through your pricing process

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January 9, 2018

DESIGNER TOOLBOX: 2018 – Ending Lame Goals Now!

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Hi guys,
I wish you a HAPPY NEW YEAR.

May this year bring you health, happiness and the success you deserve for your brand.
9 days out of 365 are gone already and I hope you have made plans for the year to come. If you haven’t, now is the time to do that because you may not know but here’s the truth:
Fuzzy goals, fuzzy results.
So in order to start this year in the best conditions, I used the holiday season to take care of my planning for 2018. And since some of you haven’t yet done the work yet, I thought I would share a quick strategy planning for the beginning of the year.
So in this post, we are going to go through the Fashion FXF Quick planning. There is a workbook that you can download as well.

There will be 5 subtopics to go through to plan 2018 for your fashion brand:
1) A reminder of the brand identity
2) Review of the good and bad of 2017
3) Plan measurable goals for 2018
4) Set up an action plan to reach the goals

5) The step by step approach
If you prefer watching a video to reading the post, you can play the video replay of my Facebook LIVE at the top of this post.

#1 – Always start with who you are and what you want to be remembered for

Yep, I told you! We want targeted results. So tell me: who do you want your fashion brand to be?

Take your fashion brand DNA and jot it down in two or three sentences. It should include:

Your brand mission. A brand mission is a statement that summarizes how your fashion line helps the people you serve. In order to have a unique value added, you should first start with WHY.
- So start saying what you believe in. Take your value added and say why this is important for your brand. For example for a classic line of office wear for businesswomen you could say something like: “At brand XYZ we believe that classic elegance still proves to be the most powerful way for a woman in her career”.
- Once you’re done with why, you explain HOW your brand enables to achieve that. So now you explain how you work. If we go back to the example of classic line of office wear for businesswomen, here you can say something like “We love adding a little twist to a classic silhouette. We work with traditional workshops and we use high quality fabric such as pure wool, silk, etc finished with modern elements that are added by hand”.
- Once you are done describing the how, you end up with the WHAT. So you list up the products your line covers. In this case it could be Dresses, pants and jackets for business women for example.
- So when you read your brand statement it sounds like this for the classic line of office wear for businesswomen “At brand XYZ we believe that classic elegance still proves to be the most powerful way for a woman in her career. We love adding a little twist to a classic silhouette. We work with traditional workshops and we use high quality fabric such as pure wool, silk, etc finished with modern elements that are added by hand. Which makes our clothing line highly empowering for active women”.

The reason why you start with why is that from the beginning, it gives power and meaning to your statement. If you want to read more about this, you can listen to Simon Sinek’s TED video explaining why you should always start with why to be inspiring.

Once you are done with your brand statement, write down WHO is your target client: in the examples we took, the target client is “a business woman”. For this area, if you haven’t yet done that, you need to investigate a bit to understand exactly who is your target customer. In this case, you need to know what kind of business women like that aesthetic you are selling. Use social media (Instagram, use Facebook) to find that out.
Then here you name the three adjectives that best describe your brand personality. Be specific, add an interesting personality to your brand. If you use boring and generic words like chic or fashionable to describe your brand, don’t be surprised if people don’t react.

#2 – 2017: Reward Yourself For The Good, Be Honest About The Bad

Once you have the identity right, work on your past year activity, that is if you were already in business.
First reward yourselves. You are working hard and I know that. And maybe you are even working on a 9 to 5 job in parallel to pay the rent. So don’t be too hard on yourself: the first thing you should do is give yourself a huge bravo for all the accomplishments you made in 2017. List up all the good things that you achieved: maybe you launched a social media page that got visibility and engagement, maybe you got some good feedback from customers already. Maybe you could make some sales already. Maybe you could even land a new buyer. So be proud of what you did.

Secondly this doesn’t hold you from being objective. So maybe the sales you made in 2017 are too low compared with the sales you planned at the beginning. In that case, understand what you could have done better? Maybe you could have worked more regularly and consistently on your Instagram? Maybe you could have contacted influencers to gain more visibility on social media? Maybe you didn’t start your brand in the right order and you don’t have a clear image of who you are so buyers and press don’t get your image either?
Or maybe you don’t realize how much work and what kind of work it takes to make the level of sales you plan.

For example, I know brand owners who plan to make a six figure sales online and yet, they don’t understand that they need to implement a whole process (having a clear image, impeccable graphic design and photos, building an online community, having a process to share news with your community, build a sales page and a platform where your customer can shop online etc).
Being aware of that sometimes takes time and a few slaps in the face.

I did a workshop with one designer and she thought that once she has a website, sales would come. So we worked on her DNA concept, then we built her platform, we planned all the actions and events for 2018 and she realized what it concretely takes to sell the bags she was making. So this is your chance to do a reality check and be honest with yourself.
Do you really know what it takes to make the kind of sales you want to do?

#3 – Write Your Goals For 2018 – Be Accurate

Once you are clear with what you did right and what you could do better, you can start planning your goals for 2018.
As we said at the beginning: Fuzzy goals lead to fuzzy results. So the more measurable your goal, the better.

So typically what you shouldn’t write is: ~~“Make more sales”.~~ This will lead you nowhere.
What you should write is for example “Increase my sales from $10,000 to $80,000 by the end of December 2018”.
If you want to increase your visibility on Instagram for example, you should write something like “Increase my visibility on Instagram from 2,000 followers to 10,000 followers”.
Why? Because it will be easier for you to chunk it down in small parts once you have a number. It will be easier to plan your step by step approach. And it will be easier for you to check how well you are doing during the year if you are clear and accurate goals.

#4 – What’S Your Plan To Make Things Happen?

So for example, if you plan to reach $80k sales by the end of December 2018, you can think of the channels through with you will distribute your products. When you name those channels, you need to make sure that they are consistent with your identity defined at #1. We said this year we wanted targeted results. It’s no use to say that you are going to contact stores that do not even sell your style.
If you don’t have any idea of who distributes the kind of style you are selling, you can add that to the area “what needs to be done” in the wrap up area at the bottom of page 4 of the planner.
So back to the goals and channels. For example you can say that in order to reach $80,000 sales, you will sell:

$20, 000 through multiple trunk shows in stores that sell classic and conservative wear for business women in your city.
$40,000 through online sales.
$20,000 through popup stores visited by your audience.

If you need to work on your Instagram visbility for example, you can say that to reach 10,000 followers on Instagram, you need to gain:

2,000 followers using games that you can organize every quarter on social media
1,000 followers that you can engage with using daily interactions on Facebook groups
2,000 Followers you can gain through visibility campaigns that you engage with influencers

And so on.
Then you as I said earlier, in the wrap up area at the bottom of page 4 of the workbook, you enter what actions you need to implement in order to reach the goals that you set.

So for example if you plan to sell through multiple trunk shows in stores, you maybe need to find the stores that sell your style that offer that possibility. Research the email and contact details of the people who select the designers for thoses trunk shows. And you add a deadline for which you commit to get your answer. In this case, the actions to be done would be “Find email addresses of 10 persons who organize trunk shows for my style in my city” and you add a deadline
Or maybe you realize that you have absolutely no clue as what you need to do to reach the goals you set. So you need to be trained or coached on that part. In the wrap up area, you can add the kind of coaching that you need to look for in order to achieve your sales. In this case the actions to be done would be “Find a fashion business consultant I can contact to achieve my goals” and you add a deadline.
So in that wrap up area, you list up the things you need to get done and by when, in order to reach your goals.

#5 – Chunk It Down

For some designers who just start, it’s usually very abstract to have a goal like achieve $100,000 sales in a year or $1 million sales in a year.
I like using this step by step approach with the designers I coach and with my students: now that you have your yearly figure, you can calculate the goals per quarter, per month and per day.

The simplest approach to get the Q1 figure is to divide the yearly sales by 4. In reality this may not be accurate because of the seasonality. So for example, if you sell skiing clothing, you will probably sell more from September to March. Then during the others months, you will need to find other alternatives. Seasonality is something you need to think about when you apply it to your particular brand.
In this article, I simplified it and divided the yearly sales by 4. So if you plan $80,000 of sales, in Q1, it means that you will need to make $20,000 of sales.
Monthly this represents around $7,000 of sales per month.
Daily let s say that we only work 20 days per month. It represents around 350$ sales every day.

So now you know how much you need to sell per day.
There is an area at the bottom of page 5 in your workbook where you can list up all the things that you are going to do immediately to reach your goals. And you will do this step NOW!

For example during this exercise you may have realized that to increase your social media visibility, you need to post every day. So don’t postpone it for longer. Do it now! Post that first photo on Instagram.
Maybe you also realized that the reason why you were not selling online so far is because you have no system in place to let your customers know about your products. So you realize you need a newsletter to inform your customers. Build one NOW!

It’s very important that you do the action plan now. Make it something that you can do immediately so that psychologically, you can already tell yourself that you started working towards achieving your goals.

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Read the article without doing the exercise?

Don’t go before getting your very own quick planner. It’s the first step to achieving your goals this year!

October 31, 2017

DESIGNER TOOLBOX: How Small Fashion Brands Can Use Instagram To Be Featured In Vogue

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Hi guys,
I know how Instagram became important to fashion today, including to small brands. After you having how to get featured by Instagram influencers and the 3 Instagram mistakes small fashion brands keep doing, we decided to end the series of Instagram tools with the main takeouts of last week’s Facebook Live session.
We interviewed brand lover and marketing project manager Sara El Khouya Ali. Passionate by the product development and the client experience in the luxury and fashion industry, she made her debut in retail and marketing in prestigious houses such as Chanel, L’Oréal and Berluti.
She recently worked on consulting assignments for fashion brands such as Ioanna Deschamps, a French Romantic, Chic and Modern brand of handmade hats. During a year she helped the emerging fashion brand to better use communication tools especially Instagram to gain visibility.
In this interview she shared how she helped the French hat brand get exposure in the biggest names of the fashion press.

Sara you helped French brand Ioanna Deschamps get a quite impressive coverage in the fashion press (Vogue Japan & UK, Elle UK, Harper’s Bazaar US, Les Eclaireuses, Socialter, The Hat Magazine) using Instagram. Can you explain to us how you did that?

Thank you Bako for your invitation! A pleasure to share my experience in brand image!
And indeed being visible is one key issue for fashion emerging brands, to attract prospects, their future clients. For Ioanna Deschamps, to develop her brand, there are two axes: the retail approach and the brand image management. I choose to give her some pieces of advice regarding her communication strategy. For your information, I am a Marketing specialist and Communication is an extension of my business skills. I was comfy to help her and to make her brand gain visibility.
Basic advice:

Choose a professional photograph and organise shootings to highlight the features of each hat (packshot and with a model).
Publish some pictures that explain the inspiration of the current collection.
Alternate with posts including quote (fashion, music, literature, paris, women empowerment)

Major results: the number of followers suddenly increased and Ioanna Deschamps was contacted by Direct Messages or by email. She then described her brand, told her story as a hat lover and the magazines wrote an article and published one of the iconic fedoras “Orchidée” or “Pensée”.

So which steps should an emerging fashion brand follow to achieve the same result?

First and major step: deeply analyse your brand DNA, redefine your brand with simple words, if necessary draw a mind map with a lot of adjectives and pick the most relevant and impactful ones. That helps you create your own signature.
Another type of work: make the effort of introspection, close your eyes and remember why you have decided to create your brand, your product, your universe. That will give elements to justify how unique your brand is, how you have been thrilled to launch your brand. This first work is a major step to build one’s own storytelling.
Second: Now you know storytelling is the key. How to make it real?
It depends on your budget, dear emerging brands!

You could make a brand movie or feed your facebook with articles related to your sector or with launching product campaigns. But actually it’s common to first create an Instagram account having a proper biography and a link to your website. Use the hashtags that define your own signature, the ones, which are relevant to easily find your brand on the feed.
Then, as I have said, publish some pictures so that we rapidly recognize the brand signature (colours, the writing or font, mood) and why not create your own hashtag like #hatspiration for D’Estrée.

You worked in the sales and marketing department of fashion and luxury brands such as Chanel, L’Oréal and Berluti. Did it help you obtaining those results? How?

During my missions at Chanel, L’Oréal and Berluti, all the projects I led had to take into account the respect of the brand image. I propose to explain for each brand what I have learned from them, how they deal with their brand DNA.

Chanel (Retail Marketing Manager): there was a training at the beginning to better know the House, it was like a summary of the chapters of Inside Chanel. Besides I always quote the Inside Chanel chapters for the emerging brands, to help them to build their storytelling.

Example of my loyalty project: the French stores were aim at encouraging the purchase of ready-to-wear products. Several tools were at their disposal to contact their loyal customers: emailing (newsletter), mailing (last brochure), private event (La Veste Event, private concert of Vanessa Paradis, after-show cocktail, privatisation of a Museum section…), phone calls, etc

L’Oréal (Product Manager): I joined a brand (Decléor), which just had been bought by L’Oréal. It implied to restructure the brand products collection, to redefine the brand signature as you were supposed to build the 2016 marketing plan. Several changes were expected to make the brand a luxury one and the luxury and fashion codes were reused: the colour (give up the yellow colour, too cheap and go for the gold colour instead), highlight the founder Solange Dessimoulie, starify the iconic product of the brand, the Aromessence, an oil serum, and finally use all the references to nature and vegetation.
Berluti (Special Order Manager, Leather product lines): I was part of the special order and bespoke team at a international scale. I was close to a perfect luxury service propose to clients. The signature of the brand was in the product itself: the high quality of the leather and the use of patina, a total handmade product that makes it exclusive and unique for the client. If you see the Instagram account, there are always references to the leather (calf to alligator skin), it is very light and “male”.

Knowing this, I was inspired to work with Ioanna and to help her to better understand on what she was expected to show on her instagram account to attract magazines, retailers and clients.

If you had 1 top advice for emerging brands to be seen on IG: what would it be?

Be clear on what you are and what you want to show, the brand is part of you, so share a part of yourself, be closer to your future customers.

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Download our Instagram quick checklist for small fashion brands

What to put in your bio to make it compelling, what you should do before posting and a nice app to keep your content nice and cohesive