online boutique Archives | FASHION CROSS FUNCTIONAL

July 4, 2016

Transform A Yellow Spot Into The Sun

Hi Guys,
Monday’s back, time to analyze last month’s sales.

So how did you do this time?
Have a look at your products…A nice cut, a delicate draping on the waist, the way the fabric flows, the excitement you feel when you unpack your leather bag, the atmosphere in a shop you like spending time into…Is it really what it’s about ?
What makes a customer pick you over another brand? What makes a customer come back?
Enchanted customers want an enchanting brand
The world needs you for your vision and your dream. You have to offer the access to a new universe, something distinctive that corresponds to your sole vision.

And the uniqueness of your voice is key. Your customers will not reward you for being an imitation of other brands. You have to cut out. You have to make a difference.
For that reason, you have to give us a taste of what makes you truly unique.
As a fashion designer, your job is to dream. Your job is to translate your inner world in a brand. Your job is to stir up desire, arouse curiosity, make people happy and create an obsession to reach maximum impact.

Show us the most accurate version of your vision
Pablo Picasso said “Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot, others transform a yellow spot into the sun.”

So be that painter. Be that visionnaire.
Your job as a fashion designer is firstly to get the most accurate idea of your vision. Then you have to find the fullest way to translate your vision in terms of design and business strategy.
Maximum impact is reached through the alignment of vision, design and strategy.

So today, THINK BIG.

How do you want to enchant your Customer?

Happy successful week to all of you!
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How can I transform a yellow spot into the sun?

Find more tools to help you through your fashion business plan, with the number one FXF guide.

Find more tools to help you through your fashion business plan, with the number one FXF guide. “The Fashion Business Plan” by Bako Rambini is available on Amazon.

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June 23, 2016

DESIGNER TOOLBOX: 8 Tips To Help You Improve Your Menswear Brand

Hi Guys,
Men’s fashion has started in Paris, a good opportunity for us to understand what makes men tick. This week we found a very useful resource in « Branded Male : Marketing to Men » by Mark Tugate. They have an entire chapter dedicated to menswear.

To summarize, here are 8 recommandations to help you work on your menswear branding :
1.       Stress technical, performance or quality elements
2.       Heritage engenders trust
3.       Confer status
4.       Create loyalty : men are very faithful customers.

5.       The retail environment : sober yet relaxed with impeccable service
6.       Offer additional services : bookstores, barbershops etc
7.       Write guidelines for « correct » dressing
8.       Boost celebrity endorsement and strong product placement, they are extremely powerful for menswear

Photo credit: Gettyimages: Getty Images Entertainment Thierry Orban

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June 9, 2016

DESIGNER TOOLBOX: How To Use Social Media To Better Know Your Target Customer?

Hi Guys,
After our ‘Social Media Series For Fashion Brands’ series, we thought of another use you can make of social media.

In order to make proper financial estimates when you write your fashion business plan, you need to perfectly know your target customer to justify the strategy you are going to apply. And on top of the method we wrote about in a previous article, social media is a very good tool to help you get a first impression of your brand’s target customer behaviour.
So here is what you can do:

To start with, go on Twitter and identify all the hashtags linked to your brand style
From the result of your research, identify the major influencers for this particular style. Pick an influencer with a reasonably high number of followers (over 5,000 followers minimum).
For each influencer identified, check their public lists and follow any influencer with a reasonably high number of followers, who shares valuable information
For each post with the related hashtag that received many likes and repost, try to identify trends by answering those questions :
- Where are the pictures taken?
- What is the scene described?
- What colors are used?
- What references are used? (magazines, art, books, music, movies)
- To which magazine/social media profile do they refer to?
Repeat this exercise with Pinterest and Instagram
To finish, research the keywords in Facebook groups and fan pages. Join the groups in questions and like the fan pages.
For the posts that got the most likes and shares, identify the common elements and do the same exercise as with the previous social medias:
- Where are the pictures taken?
- What is the scene described?
- What colors are used?
- What references are used? (magazines, art, books, music, movies)

To which magazine/social media profile do they refer to?

Photo credit: Social Media Sign by Peter Freer – Creative Commons
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How to better know your target customer?

Find the complete version of this article as well as other tools to help you through your fashion business plan, with the number one FXF guide.“The Fashion Business Plan” by Bako Rambini is available on Amazon.

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June 7, 2016

MARKETING: How Can A Small Fashion Brand Best Define Its Marketing Strategy?

Hi Guys,
We know how being a small brand competing can feel challenging sometimes. You have the impression to compete against giants who have all the means to launch the campaign you can’t have to sell the clothes in the boutiques you don’t have. So you end up focusing on all the things you can’t or don’t have.

And what if you focused on what you actually have?
Because as an independant small brand, you have a voice and unlike many large brands that will be tied by policies and money at stake, you have the entire freedom to express it and translate it into something different and exclusive.
To help you think about your marketing strategy, here is an extract of an interview of Karan Khurana from The Fashion Business Plan by Bako Rambini.

What makes you unique?

In spite of the ever increasing share of fast fashion in the pyramid of segmentation I believe that there will always be space for small fashion brands which have very strong reason to sell. In the last decade we saw that brands with sustainability as a tagline got substantial share in the fashion market. The consumer began to buy more sustainable brands instead of fast fashion ones. This is an example which highlights a very old marketing strategy of developing a Unique Selling Preposition (USP) in terms of the 4P`s (Product, price, place, Promotion). For a small brand this could be a very competitive advantage as when the marketplace gets crowded with repetitive product there’s always a niche consumer market looking for variety, novelty and most essentially a meaning attached to a product. A USP immediately helps a brand to develop differentiating features then other and hence a brand identity. In many cases it’s observed that consumer gets attached to a small brand and even pays a premium price. To elaborate a little more here the luxury brands of today were the small ethnic brands of yesterday such as Hermes, France or Bvlgari, Italy started off with very small but products of very intricate design detailing which became their USP and are bestsellers as they have maintained it over generations.
Get inspiration from other consumer brands
In order to develop a winning market strategy small fashion brands should keep a very close watch at other consumer brands such as electronics or may be any range of fast moving consumer goods companies such as Unilever or P&G. These companies keep on trying and testing on various USP`s and you shall be surprised to know that many of such experiments fail miserably but at the end it keeps the brands moving in the market place and secures a place in the mind of the consumer which is also a big challenge in the huge market sphere for a small brand.

Source/Photo credit: Anja Rubik & Iselin Steiro, Hermes FW 2006 fervent-adepte-de-la-mode – Creative Commons

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How to define a proper marketing strategy to raise capital for your fashion brand?

Find more tools to help you through your fashion business plan, with the number one FXF guide. “The Fashion Business Plan” by Bako Rambini is available on Amazon.

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