Retail is a tough industry – I know: I’ve been there, many of my clients are there. It’s competitive, it’s relentless and it’s often thankless. But it can be so worth it. You just need to figure out what key difference your label can offer customers that will set you apart from the thousands of others and have customers returning for more and more, year after year. But how do you choose what that key difference is?
As always, it’s a good move to analyze what it is that your competitors are offering as their USP. And by competitors, I don’t just mean NZ businesses but those overseas too. It’s a good idea to read about good fashion brands and why they’re winning at what they’re doing – see if there’s any best practice that you can learn from and adopt for your own brand. But it’s bloody tricky when a successful retailer’s turning points seem to include a cowl neck or wide-brimmed cap or some other fashion statement that caught the eye of thousands and made them an “overnight success” (hardly ever actually overnight, but it can seem that way, when it takes just one thing to set a brand off on a huge ascent). Unless your clothing range has the next-big-thing (which you’re currently unaware of), then this advice can’t be used to help your business.
But today I read an article that was helpful. It was about a woman in America who owns an US$11 million clothing company, which she started from her kitchen bench. Brandi Temple owns a kids’ clothing line called Lolly Wolly Doodle, which she started when times got tough in her household. She’d make dresses for her girls, and instead of chucking away the fabric remnants she’d make something else, photograph it, pop it on her Facebook account and ask if anyone wanted to buy it. No paid advertising, no big plans of brand, no real plans at all – but now it’s worth $11m and the company employs 250 people. Their secret to success? Perhaps one your brand could learn from.
Their real innovation is that they rely on social media to sell their product, but they use it like you would use a drive-through to order dinner. Here’s how: they make a sample product, post it to Facebook and Instagram (they’ll be in Pinterest and other platforms soon), and ask people to place an order. Like a takeaway joint, only once they have the order do they make the products so there’s no overstock, no wasted materials, no storage issues. And like at a fast-food restaurant, the seamstresses come in in the morning and work to the individual job tickets: 1 size 6, 3 x size 8 etc.
If the team notice that one dress is particularly popular, they’ll send the pattern to China where they mass-produce it and sell it from their lollywollydoodle.com site – here, they offer to customise orders with a monogram and other details so that customers are happy that they’re getting something unique. The company will also discern if a popular design has the potential to spawn a new product pod, where a few designs will be expanded from that initial design, with different fabrics, lines or details. But like the rest of their clothing, manufacturing complexity is kept to a minimum.
Can your retail business utilise such a great feedback loop about what works and what doesn’t to help you make smart design decisions? Can you immediately respond to customer demand, taking a leaf from fast-fashion companies like Lolly Wolly Doodle and Zara? Can you manufacture some of your items in NZ so that you can be nimble and strike while the iron’s hot, making small product runs to order?
Read the entire article here and see if you can glean any tit-bits that will move your retail company to be worth a $11M in a few short years – wouldn’t that be great!
http://www.inc.com/magazine/201406/tom-foster/lolly-wolly-doodle-explosive-growth-from-facebook-sales.html
And of course I’m always keen to talk retail and how you can improve. Call me for business coaching or advice: 021 775 660 or Zac@businesschanging.com
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