Who's getting it right
In a shaky economy effective marketing is the key to fashion business success. Serena Berine takes a look at how to make your own luck by being smart about marketing programs.
Every week in our business we see textile, clothing and footwear (TCF) business owners on the knife-edge. They have put their heart, soul and savings over several years on the line, in order to make money out of doing what they love. Often visitors to our office have reached a point where passion has been replaced by disillusionment and frustration at their inability to get their business off the ground.
These feelings of failure are poisonous and radically affect creativity - the compelling reason why they were playing around in our fun fashion sandpit in the first place. After a while the poison spreads and they drop in to see us in a last ditch effort to pull their ailing livelihood out of the proverbial youknowwhat.
Myself and my team have been rattling round in this industry for a long time, and it never fails to break our heart to see talented young (and not so young) people in such bad shape. Frequently by the time people get to us the disease is terminal. They're suffering a major cash flow crisis and are so over the whole thing they don't even remember where it went wrong, much less why.
One recent guest at our meeting table - let's call her Flossie X (names have been changed to protect the delightful) - has been in business for three years. Flossie was creating a fresh and fantastic product with huge market appeal and quite rightly was wondering where things had gone wrong. The darling girl had not paid herself a wage once during three years of operations, was working a 60-hour week but was enormously proud of her range's extensive track record of editorial placement.
She was so pleased she had managed to secure a 12 month retainer with a local Fashion PR firm for "the bargain price" equal to the cost of a mid range car. She had no idea of their capabilities, no way of quantifying the results of their involvement in her business but still jumped in with both feet.
Flossie's diagnosis was simple - she had sold her soul to the devil that is PR. Many young designers subscribe to the propaganda package delivered by some unscrupulous fashion PR firms. Their package is delivered to industry entrants all wrapped up in a frothy confection of success stories and boozy lunches. This is irresistible to young talent with an eye on world fashion domination.
Don't get me wrong - there is real value in PR and there are a couple of really fantastic firms out there with their hearts in the right place. These guys are great operators who are genuinely focused on achieving the best profit outcome for their clients. However there are many PR operators that seem most comfortable with their hands placed firmly in the pockets of our young entrepreneurs/designers helping themselves to whatever profit crumbs are realised in the fledgling stages of a business.
Unfortunately for Flossie, and many others like her, the PR tool is no good if you are unsure what your message is. As soon as a small business of any kind (but particularly a fashion business) hangs up their shingle, they must allocate time (and money if possible) to making sure they know who they are and what they are in the business of doing.
Once they have established that then it is time to go through the process to determine whether anyone out there will want to buy it. If the answer is no - then can they adapt their product to change the no to a yes. Next steps are to figure how you are going to tell everyone you exist and give fashion buyers a compelling reason for people to buy your product over others.
PR is only one marketing tool that can be used very effectively to implement elements of a marketing strategy. The problem is you are wasting precious money and time if you use PR before you know what you want to say, whether you should say it and whether anyone wants to know.
There are ways to maximise the use of a PR agency and I am happy to rant on about that when we meet again but for now I want you to take away from this diatribe two points only:
1. Spend as much time as you can doing it yourself or as much money as you can realistically afford at the life stage of your business to get professional help in making sure you have a really smart strategic marketing plan for your business.
2. Don't confuse marketing and PR. Look, I love a good party with free bubbles as much as the next person but spending money on PR is not a free ride to being the next big thing. Success takes talent, dedication and a whole lot of planning.
By Serena Berine