Creating A Successful Fashion Brand

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design team, fabrics, fashion, fashion brands, Fashion Business, fashion illustrations, fashion labels, fashion sketches, freelance fashion designer, mood board, pre-production samples, Product design, product development, proto, selling price, Size sets, Supriya Ghurye, technical designer

Image courtesy : http://www.imodae.com

Today, several professionals from domains other than fashion choose to set up an apparel or accessories business when they look for a switch in careers.

However, starting and running a fashion label is no child’s play. For one, consistency is important as a certain form of apparel attracts and retains customers with specific preferences. Then, there is the actual design process itself. Moreover, you need to make careful choices about every aspect of business such as operations, production and sales.

Given all these elements, is there a way to streamline the process of creating and running a fashion label? We say yes! This article helps you understand some of the basics.

1. What Is Your Plan?

All those adages about failing to plan stand true in the context of fashion design. Plan out every single aspect of your label, including the ‘known unknowns’, or risks. Here are a few questions to ask yourself:

• What is the niche I will be operating in?
• Who is my ideal target consumer?
• How can I stay consistent with design even as trends change?
• Will I launch the entire collection at one go?
• How do I reach my ideal consumer? Which platforms (online/ offline) are they currently present on?
• How is my production team and process going to work?
• How can I gauge interest for my product?
• What is my distribution plan? Which sales channels will I be selling through?

Asking questions and answering them in granular detail helps you plan your business’s finances, your own commitment and exit strategy if any, your pitch to future investors, and most importantly, your parameters for when your creative business is succeeding or failing.

2. Who Is Your Team?

No one can live as an island, and it holds true for creative services too. The business idea may be your vision, but you still need an execution team. Specifically, in the fashion domain, you have several steps to think of- design, production, marketing, sales and analytics.

This is where a team of experienced professionals can come in handy.

Today, it is more a norm than the exception to outsource design to a skilled team that understands your business considerations and your target audience very well. Such a team can help you plug gaps in your own creative process, work with you to design a saleable product and help you understand the nuances of what makes a readymade garment viable.

3. How Are You Making It Happen?

Now that you have a sound plan and an excellent team, you can shift gears up into execution. You can either choose to create and sell in small volumes or you can go big and outsource manufacturing.

In both cases, your design team can help brief the production team about the expected output, tweak the samples and smoothen out any kinks while manufacturing the products.

Every product requires a storage facility, and this is something you need to think of very carefully. Too much inventory can eat into your working capital, while too little can cause you to lose out on sales.

4. What Is Your Selling Price?

In the planning stage, you would already have considered the pricing aspect. It is always good practice to have an optimistic price point (the standard price a few days’ post launch), a moderate price point (your launch price- early bird offer) and a pessimistic price point (your product price during sales season). Ensure that all of these prices stay above your cost price.

Once the manufacturing process is complete, reconsider your price points and adjust for any incidental expenses you may have incurred.

5. Where Are You Selling?

There’s no doubt that your choice of sales channels establishes your label’s position in the market. A product sold at Harrods is expected to be higher in price and better in quality than one sold at Primark.

Sales channels also determine your operational model itself. Do you have stores of your own, or do you stock products in some other store’s aisles? Perhaps, you’d like to ignore the offline channels entirely and sell exclusively through certain marketplaces.

The choices you make determine not just how your fashion label is run, but also the means you employ to reach consumers and bring them to these channels.

Once all of these steps have been completed and your fashion label is a real, quantifiable business, do remember to review and course-correct. Understanding what your consumers want and tweaking your label to suit those needs is the best thing you can do to build a sustainable business model and a fashion label that everyone is waiting to wear.

Stay tuned as we go into detail about each of these business aspects in the coming months. Subscribe to our newsletter and we promise you’ll be the first one to know when we publish. Meanwhile, here’s something to get your brain cells working on the business aspects of fashion.

 

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Supriya Ghurye is the founder and owner of Fuel4Fashion. She is a Freelance Fashion Designer and Brand Consultant helping fashion brands to create great products from idea to launch. Fuel4Fashion social links: Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram

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Indian fashion industry – Part 1

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apparels, fashion blog, fashion designers, fashion industry, freelance fashion designer, India, pattern, Product design, product development, Ritu Kumar, surface embroideries, tech pack

India has always been the paradise for fabrics and woven cloths. Even the primitive Indus valley civilization in the 5^th millennium knew how to spun, woven fabrics. But with the awakening of fashion sense, the industry began as an exclusives enterprise of independent designers. In this era there have been modifications to the printing techniques and designers started including traditional prints like block printing and tie dye in a very traditional ways which suited only the local audiences then.

Traditional tie and die painting
Image Courtesy: http://goo.gl/I8Z6qJ

India’s fashion industry hits it’s all time high in 2012 with designers like Suneet Verma, Tarun Tahiliani, and Ritu Kumar becoming the interest center of the world. The National Institute of Fashion Technology celebrated its silver jubilee in 2011 and celebrated a time when it has produced its first batch of designers.

Indian Ethnic Block Print Skirt. Image courtesy : http://goo.gl/gDShqV

Batic print Hippie dress in pure cotton. Image courtesy : http://goo.gl/TjXSAe

Ritu Kumar design 1990
Image courtesy:http://goo.gl/xO5D9v

Designers after a while started using mixed concepts to give a retro appeal to their garments. Indian fashion world that we see today have expanded to new horizons with fashion designers using different types of embroideries in a fusion way. The way the traditional prints were incorporated with the modern designs, people became more and more interested in them than ever. While most of the traditional embroidery and prints have not been much favorite of the designers earlier, the Zardozi’s kept the mills running. Beautiful zari work on garments entered mainstream fashion industry but earlier they were considered to be rich and unaffordable. Also traditional dresses became a hit and the embroidery became the U.S.P of the industry.

Indian fashion Industry blooming
Image courtesy: http://goo.gl/E8PJz5

Traditional Bead work. Image courtesy : http://goo.gl/GpGyLQ

Mirror work. Image courtesy : http://goo.gl/FGGzC3

Mirror Work. Image courtesy :http://goo.gl/xYH8N4

Apart from Zardozi, India is also among the top exporter of fashion and its concepts. Big UK fashion houses and Federated Stores have been known to shop from Indian markets. Since India offers cost-effective manufacturing as well as low-cost labor, international fashion houses love to manufacture their fashion products here. A lot of laces, zippers, buttons that are seen sewed on the ‘branded’ garments are actually sourced from India.

Traditional Zardosi work. Image courtesy : goo.gl/IvZhhe

Long Coat with Kashmiri hand embroidery. Image courtesy: goo.gl/hnYpDr

India has always been a warehouse of beautiful prints and skilled workforce. Designers in the 21^st century are utilizing these resources in a more intelligent way to suit their global audiences.

Malini Ramani at Wills India Fashion week. Image Courtesy : http://www.maliniramani.com

To know more about the inclusion of east and west stay tuned for the next post on Indian fashion Industry which is to be followed soon. If you have any questions then sound off in the comments section.

The Product development process

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apparels, buyers, client, cost negotiation, fabric, fashion illustrations, fit sample, freelance fashion designer, garment sourcing, garments, pattern, pre-production samples, Product design, product development, proto, Size sets, Supriya Ghurye, tech pack, vendor

In the previous post while we took you inside the design room and tranquil of thoughts from forecast to mood setting to conceptualization of a range. Now we take a trip to the product development department and sampling room of vendors where the range is given final shape before it moves into bulk production.

Product Development: Once the products are selected for the range, pattern generation and product development is eked out in several stages.

Sample garment development process:
Image courtesy : http://www.future-fashion-design.eu/portals/0/Images/ffd_concept.png

First in line is proto sampling in which proto types are developed and required modifications are incorporated in terms of styling, fabric, trims. Sample garments are developed by apparel manufacturing vendors in sync with development sheets or preliminary tech packs offered by the buyers. Buying here refers to the team which is getting the range developed and co-coordinating with the vendors for its brand for forthcoming season. Henceforth the vendor who manages to develop samples at the most optimum cost and stipulated time frame, thereby meeting all the prerequisites of technical specifications and aesthetics is given the final order.

Style sheet :
Image courtesy : http://goo.gl/k9vcvC

Post a rigorous process of cost negotiations and order placements, final tech packs are designed with crisp information on fabric construction, its properties(GSM, CPI/WPI), fabric body color, trim details with their positioning, measurement specifications, size chart, illustrations with a clear demarcation of each part and point of measurement. This tech pack is developed by product development team in close collaboration with design team. This is handed over to buying team that posts it to the selected vendor.

Sample teck pack :
Image courtesy : http://www.mypracticalskills.com/tech-packs/tab-1-missy-jr/TechPack-Missy-Jr-2.jpg

The vendor refers to tech pack and develops fit sample taking a stringent note of the measurements. It is sent across to the product development team who cross-checks all the technical specifications and provide required comments in case of discrepancies. Also the measurements are re-evaluated and modified if required and sent across to the vendor for redevelopment. This process continues till a perfect sample meeting all the prerequisites is given a full form. Final patterns used for fit samples are replicated in soft copy and hard copy.

Garment fit session on a live model.
Image courtesy : http://goo.gl/Sp0rXd

This maps out a route for bulk production with a prior submission of pre –production samples for validating the bulk fabric, trims being employed.

While sampling activities proceed on order confirmation on one hand, there are series of activities that go simultaneously to enable smooth bulk production. Revisit our blog post to know all that goes on till the final garment is crafted and made available at your nearest retail outlet.

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Supriya Ghurye is the founder and owner of Fuel4Fashion, the freelance fashion design studio for apparels that caters to new and upcoming fashion design labels with a diverse portfolio of design services. She is a member of the Cherie Blair Foundation’s Women Entrepreneurship Program and has over a decade of fashion industry experience with international labels and start-ups.

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The Fashion Design Process

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#fashionstartup, apparel manufacturing vendors, blog, brandconsultant, fabric, fashion, fashion designers, fashion illustrations, fashionbiz, fashionbrand, Fashionbusiness, fashionconsultant, fit sample, freelance fashion designer, mood board, pattern, pre-production samples, Product design, product development, proto, Size sets, Supriya Ghurye, tech pack, technical specifications

“To me, fashion is like a mirror. It’s a reflection of the times. And if it doesn’t reflect the times, it’s not fashion. Because people aren’t gonna be wearing it.”  – Anna Sui

Sometimes, it feels like quite the uphill task to design based on themes, preferences and moods, and do the whole thing over and over again every few months. For any process to succeed, the key determinant is empathy.

Consumers look at fashion as wearable art. For most people, a style is a form of expression. Even those who claim not to pay much attention to clothing are still making a statement- with the clothes that they do wear.

The Design Process

Let’s look at the fashion design process from scratch. Integral to success of the process is also how an understanding of your audience can set you up for superior results.

Step by Step explanation of Fuel4Fashion’s Fashion Design Process we religiously follow to ensure quality deliverance to our clients.

1. The Brief: Failing to plan is planning to fail, they say, and so it goes for the brief. The fashion brief includes everything from identifying the target customer, understanding their needs, the season of launch, the price points and size ranges.

2. Trend Forecasting: This is the part where you give consumers what they didn’t know they wanted! This is how new trends are born, and sustained. Understand data from prominent fashion houses and forecast reports from all around the world. Adapt to suit your needs.

3. The Basis: Once you have a list of trends for the upcoming season, you need to drill down to the trends that you do want to focus on. For example, it may not make sense for a bohemian brand to suddenly morph into vibrant athleisure. However, this doesn’t mean that they should entirely stay away from active wear either. Trends need to be adapted to suit your business’s promise.

4. Collection Planning: This is the step where you decide the number of silhouettes and the number of designs you want to showcase per silhouette. As a business, this is the step where budgets come into the picture. Too wide a collection can increase sales but eat into your budgets, while too few options can put people off.

5. Mood Boards: Your designs are almost ready to come to life. This is the phase where sketches become fabric interpretations. Observe the play of light on each garment.

Moodboard created by Fuel4Fashion, inspired from Disruptive theme for SS’19 Activewear category.

6. Inspiration Board: Now, you have all the material you need to be inspired from! The Inspiration Board serves as a style guide of sorts to help everyone on the team refer to when in doubt, and draw from at other times.

7. Garment Flats, and Customization: The book of illustrations with every piece in your collection will serve as a reference point for manufacturers and team members alike. Make it comprehensive. If your products have print and embroidered details on them, now is the time to get started.

Fuel4fashion’s creative design process from idea to sketch explaining the fashion design process.

8. The Tech Pack: This is the blueprint for every piece of clothing that you will design in the collection. It has details ranging from the style description, trims and fabric details, size range to the placement of prints.

9. Feasibility: Once the samples are ready, evaluate the pros and cons of taking this collection into production. Don’t be afraid to drop the pieces that aren’t up to your standards.

Fuel4fashion’s Range Plan for SS’19 Activewear segment for the fashion design process.

The Human Element

Oftentimes, in sales, it is easy to forget that all products are being created for a very specific consumer with very specific tastes. As a business person, you must understand your end consumer very well. Use personas, mock interviews and even real interviews to understand what they do expect, and also that which they want but don’t know of yet.

After all, some of the most stunning trends in fashion have come from a house that knew what its consumers weren’t saying- think miniskirts, punk rock and even power suits!

What new trend are you gearing up to start? Are you following due process?

Don’t forget to sign-up for our newsletter that brings all that’s fashion design and more, right to you!

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Supriya Ghurye is the founder and owner of Fuel4Fashion. She is a Freelance Fashion Designer and Brand Consultant helping fashion brands to create great products from idea to launch. Fuel4Fashion social links: Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram

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