Lisa Seskin's footwear label LMS has just launched its fourth collection.
However, it wasn't without challenges.
Like all fashion businesses during this pandemic, the label has seen its fair share of difficulties during this time, one of which was opening the brand's first retail store right before lockdown.
Another, was trying to shoot a campaign for the new collection while maintaining social distancing.
To understand how the business overcame these challenges, Ragtrader spoke to Seskin about operating her business during COVID-19.
What is new about the fourth collection?
We have released brand new silhouettes in some really interesting materials including: cow print, pink pony hair and green “croc”.
Some really eye catching styles and surprisingly our bright green croc mule is flying out the door already!!
What have been the challenges of launching a new collection and store during COVID?
We delayed the collection by a few weeks as the fear of the unknown was the most challenging part.
We had no idea how long we would be in lock down for and how our customers were going to respond to us launching a new collection.
We waited to see how the situation evolved and noticed that consumers were browsing and spending online.
Our own customers were engaging with our social media and were starting to ask for sneak peeks of the new collection which is the benefit of having a D2C brand.
In regards to opening a new store, this was really hard.
We opened our doors to our Paddington store two weeks before the whole country went into lockdown.
This was a bitter pill to swallow but it gave me the time to re-evaluate and analyse how we were running the business and what is going to be best practice moving forward.
We have just re-opened the store and we are already getting a lot of excited customers coming in ready to find their new winter shoes!
You asked content creator Jessica Roche to shoot the campaign for the fourth collection on her iPhone. How has this performed?
It’s been one of our most successful campaigns because it has had so much social reach.
It pushed our following count up to 10k which is a big milestone for us!
This has been a big eye opener for us and has made me realise that we don’t always have to spend thousands of dollars on campaign shoots.
Today’s customer wants to see real content that they can relate to, rather than professional models in unnatural settings.
What has the business learned during this time?
Just because everyone else does it doesn’t mean you have to!
I think most brands and retailers have learned the hard way that multiple drops a year and excess stock is not the way to go.
The world is so global today and one crisis can affect every person and every business, therefore we can no longer put ourselves in compromising positions.
LMS will be producing fewer collections a year and focusing on our core collection which we know our customers love!
I’ve also learned that we need to be more engaged with our customers, and serve interesting and unique content to really help solidify our LMS community.
All in all I believe the brand has come out stronger from all of this and we’ve learned some really valuable lessons that will shape our new way of doing business.