Third Boi founder and former Country Road homeware designer Bianca Latorre discusses how her label has pivoted during the pandemic.
All businesses will probably need to pivot at some point, but never has it been more pressing than this year, in this fiasco that is 2020!
Being reactive in business might seem counter intuitive, after all, aren’t good businesses built around a solid plan?
However, being adaptive and fluid whilst maintaining your vision and staying true to your core values might need to be the actual plan; at least these days, in this ever-changing world in which we live.
I think the idea is to not completely ditch your customer and head down a new path.
Unless you give them reason, their loyalty might be the one thing that doesn’t waver so finding out what has shifted in their lives and delivering on that is the key.
At Third Boi, I’ve tried to adapt a few different ways during this health crisis.
Being a loungewear label, it wasn’t that much of a stretch.
When the concept of working from home became a reality for a large group of the workforce, I was quick to pitch Third Boi to that market.
I heralded our ‘work from home style’ using trending hashtags, useful gifs and focused on creating visual content that showcased the comfort of our pieces to those in search for the perfect loungewear set.
The biggest advantage of running an e-commerce business is that the world is at your fingertips, and you are only limited by your imagination so it’s hard not to take advantage of these easily accessed business tools.
Encouraging the importance of isolating during the early days of the pandemic was twofold.
I could use my platform to share what I believed to be an important social message, whilst spotlighting my fortuitously relevant range of casual clothing.
Taking care not to be too righteous about it, hash tags such as #stayhomesavelives, #workfromhome and #stayhomestaysafe took residency in many of my social media posts to help drive home this message.
It was this strong messaging and demand for loungewear that saw a 281% increase in traffic across our socials in March through to September compared to the previous period and a climb in sales by 162% in March alone.
When the Victorian State Government encouraged the wearing of face coverings in public places where social distancing wasn’t possible, I made some enquiries about manufacturing Third Boi masks but the factories were at capacity.
So when mandatory mask wearing was introduced, I acted quickly.
I procured some fabric and dusted off my sewing machine, deciding to make facemasks with my own two hands.
Still not 100% sure if the idea was on brand, if my customers would even respond or if latching onto this felt a tad opportunistic, I decided to just make a sample and put out a poll.
I was quite surprised by how quickly people put their hands up with a firm yes, usually I’d expect this type of encouragement from just family and friends, however the demand was clearly genuine so I knew I couldn’t ignore this product opportunity.
At first I planned to just re-purpose some unsold garments and up-cycle some sampling yardage.
But after being inundated with orders, increasing monthly sales by 113% following a slower April - June period, I had to rush out for more fabric and supplies and begun sewing around the clock.
As pleased as I was with this completely unexpected addition to the range, I was almost lamenting at the fact that this had by far been the most popular product I had ever launched.
However, I have now embraced this new staple item and have since added different colour ways and design variations and plan to keep masks ranged for as long as they’re needed.
Even before the surreal reality of COVID, correcting the course for Third Boi was already well underway.
About a year ago I made the decision to cease manufacturing off shore and become 100% Australian made.
The massive stock commitment that came with overseas factories was just no longer sustainable for my business, not growing at the rate that I had anticipated.
Having the flexibility of smaller production runs and shorter lead times would give me more control and the agility to stay relevant, whilst supporting slow fashion and backing local manufacturing has given me a renewed sense of purpose in the rag trade; something not to just live with but to be incredibly proud of.
So the plan for Third Boi, 2020 and beyond is to stay local, stay nimble and pivot, pivot, pivot – I should get that printed on a t-shirt!