Fashion Designers, Are You Using Community Mentorship to Grow Your Business?
A look at how finding your people can help every single fashion designer out there build and grow thriving businesses.
Posts in: business-advice
Fashion Business Owner Musings: The Challenge of Half Done
Reflecting on how many of us have a lot of half done projects in our fashion business, making ourselves feel unproductive and scattered. And we can do to fix that.
15 Things Successful Fashion Designers Don’t Do
Successful fashion designers know that growing a business is really hard. A lot goes into it and there are things that they stopped doing in order to succeed.
Fashion Business Owner Musings: When You’re Embarrassed to Call Yourself a Business Owner
Reflecting on those early days of owning a fashion business when it felt wrong to call ourselves business owners to the point of being embarrassed.
4 Tips for Figuring Out Which Fashion Business Events to Attend to Avoid Wasting Time and Money
A look at what makes a fashion business event worth attending, how to know if it's right for you, and details on one exciting event we'll be attending!
5 Things You Can Do Today for Self Care and a Thriving Business
If you don't take care of yourself, how can you take care of business? You can't. At least not for long. This is something I tried to ignore; and for the first 2 years of my business I actually did so. I won't go so far as to say "successfully" because the effects of it are still with me a bit even today, two years later.
Promoting Mindful Consumption: Is It at Odds With Being a Retailer?
Lately I’ve been feeling tension in my work as an ethical fashion entrepreneur: How do I balance promoting slow fashion, minimalism, and mindful consumption, with the sales I need to sustain my business? Am I just contributing to more “stuff” out there in the world?
5 Questions to Ask Your Audience While Building a Fashion Brand
Building a fashion brand requires constant iteration, strategy, and customer service in order to build a brand that really resonates with your customers. With my background in design thinking— building products and services that meet human needs and desires, not trying to create a desire for your already-existing product— I always advise entrepreneurs to build their businesses using customer empathy.
Building a Fashion Business: What’s in a Brand Name?
First impressions matter, and for your brand that first introduction is your name. So make it meaningful, memorable, and smart. Make sure it conveys the right message about your business and that it relates to your style and audience.
Unearthing a good brand name is challenging and takes time, but the process not only results in a name, but a deeper understanding of the brand’s DNA. It will force you to answer questions about the business, such as key differentiators, or core values, that set the foundation of the company.
So where do you start?
THE GOAL
The goal of naming your business is to discover a name that all at once is thoughtful, reflective of your brand and your audiences, and is available (website, social, and trademark). It also needs to differentiate you from competitors and be memorable. A brand name can go in three basic directions:- Helps: Indicates a clear association with the product. Example: Spanx
- Neutral. Example: Vince
- Hurts: The name is confusing and distracts from the product itself. Example: Twenty8Twelve. Apparently, this was named to denote actress Sienna Miller’s birthday. Not only does it fail to make an interesting association with an attitude or aesthetic, the choice didn’t reflect long term plans - Sienna Miller has left the company, which makes it less meaningful.