Are you an emerging brand? Do you have an idea and want to know how to get started? Here there are some useful tips for you!
Develop any idea or starting a shoe brand is not very easy, especially for those who don’t have much experience in this field.
Many new startups that begin this process, risk not to see their project comes to life. To reduce this risk you can take inspiration from mistakes of historical brands and avoid repeating them, aiming instead at strategies that have made their success.
Here are some simple useful tips to realize your project:
1. THE IDEA:
““You may have a brilliant idea, but that’s not enough, very often it’s not enough to ensure the success”.
The idea is not always fully feasible, often needs interventions and variations to make it real.
Working on an idea and making it concrete can be really difficult!
The advice is to have your idea evaluated by specialists, to confirm the feasibility, and have a real quotation of development and production costs of the product, constantly keeping the projects secret in every part.
2. MARKET ANALYSIS:
“Many emerging designers that start with their first projects, are an inexhaustible source of ideas, but this does not means that the market is ready or mature to accept them”.
It is very important to make an evaluation of the product you want to create and pay attention to the customers to whom it is addressed and to the interest it may arouse in the global market. Doing so can make estimates on the ideal price that will have the product and the initial quantity to be produced to optimise design and production times.
3.CLEAR IDEA
“A young designer is a continuous explosion of ideas, concepts and new trends, but this can create disorder in the creation of a collection”.
Uno degli errori di molti giovani designer e quello di avere buone idee ma spesso incomplete e dissociate tra di loro, questo può portare ad una discontinuità, oltre che ad un dispendio economico e di tempo maggiore.
One of the mistakes of many young designers is to have good ideas but often incomplete and dissociated ideas, this can lead to a discontinuity, as well as to a greater cost and time. Often the success of a new brand begins with the presentation of a few models, with refined details and in symbiosis with each other, where the stylistic identity of the product is clearly visible. It is more advantageous to focus on a single target, develop ideas and color variations at best, and then add and define other models in the future.
4. TREASURE THE ADVICE
“For a creative talent, who has spent time on an idea or project, it can sometimes be difficult to accept opinions and receive advice but having more information and evaluations on the project can be very helpful”.
Expert advice can help you get more information about your idea, can show you the best way to make prototypes, samples and production, can give you more details about the problems you face.
It is important to have self-confidence but taking advice can make your growth path easier and avoid big mistakes.
Learn from those who have more experience!
5. DON’T DO IT ALL BY YOURSELF
“When you start the path to create your own brand, you need to be aware that your role is no longer just that of a designer, but you will immediately become an entrepreneur with many more tasks to perform and problems to solve”.
Many young designer entrepreneurs believe that performing all the tasks alone is cheaper than relying on experts; this is a mistake that many make without being aware that, doing everything by yourself can be harmful to your brand and surely there will be no economic savings. Increased workload and reduced competence in some tasks can create damage to the new business and increase the stress, which often turns into loss of creativity and fatigue.
Relying on professionals who do some of the work for you, sometimes, is the best choice: the risk of mistakes and waste of resources will be less, you’ll still have everything under control with less stress and more time to devote to finding new ideas.
6.FOCUS ON ECONOMIC RESOURCES
“The enthusiasm to create a new idea sometimes leads us to give less importance to investment planning”.
I saw new designers invest their entire budget in the first collection with the expectation of having immediately a recovery of money to achieve the next one. This is not the best strategy! The fashion system has a very fast evolution with regard to changes in trends, but slower with regard to the monetary return of investments. Therefore, divide the capital that you have available to create more collections in more seasons, in this way you will have a constant presence over time on the market, always offering new products.
7. IDEAS AND MARKETING
“Having a good idea or creating the most innovative collection ever, is not synonymous with success”!
Creating a collection is only the initial part of a larger project, the real purpose of every designer is to create a product that is beautiful, pleasing to the public, but above all that is sold, so as to have a continuous profit in the future.
Remember that no product is sold alone, it is essential to have a marketing plan to make it known, enter into agreements with showrooms, participate at events and fashion shows, and any other useful strategy to launch the product in the market.
Relying on professionals who deal with this, very often can make a difference.
8. WEB AND SOCIAL
“Over the past decade, web product search has grown exponentially, we are constantly connected online and a website is the best business card you can have”.
Starting a new brand or a new business implies positioning in the web, creating a professional and smooth site is definitely the first thing to do!
Even in this case having a site does not mean being visible, so it is good to have a professional who does this job, which improves the position in search engines in order to give a greater boost to the visibility of the brand.
Social media are also very important: to create pages and accounts in the reference platforms of the countries where you want to advertise your brand and to dedicate time to the periodic publication of images, videos and stories, can create good opportunities in markets and in contacts concerned.