Technological advancements are revolutionizing the way we travel. We use technology from the moment we leave until we return. Many of us will think of Facebook or Instagram when considering what motivates us to travel. We’ll recall these lovely destination accounts. They inspire us with photographs of places we’d like to visit.

To begin, we must then arrange our vacation after we have the inspiration to travel. We may use airline or travel agent apps. We may also use apps like Tripit, which compile all of that information into one easy-to-understand bundle, so we know where we’re going and where we need to be.

Next, when we’re looking for the best deal, we might use price comparison websites such as Trivago.

Price comparison websites are interesting models because they don’t book the room for you. They only provide you with a pricing comparison. Then, as you click, you will make a reservation with the company you just selected. Trivago makes money in a variety of ways. Every time you click, the individual who actually finishes your booking receives a commission.

Finally, when we return, we may write a review. Travel reviews are critical since they have the potential to impact others’ future travel decisions. TripAdvisor is by far the most popular travel review app, and it has lately expanded its services to include travel bookings.

The entire wheel of travel, as we call it, is surrounded by technology. It’s with us virtually the whole time. Because technology has changed the travel industry, there are now professional opportunities for people we didn’t have before.

Consider how Instagram influences our travel decisions. Influencers are paid to post specific photographs or posts and videos about properties or places. Google Guides might also be an excellent way for people to review and influence the visits of others.

Another area where technology has helped people develop their own company ideas and become a part of a community is reviews. When you consider Google Local Guides, it’s an excellent illustration of how individuals leave ratings that affect where other people go. Someone may hire you as a result of the reviews you’ve published. This may lead to professional opportunities in the future.

Brand storytelling is more than simply sharing the story of your brand’s history from the beginning to the present. Whether you are trying to renew interest in your company or getting a new company off the ground, brand storytelling is as essential to any business as making sure you send the correct orders to the people who made them.

So, if telling customers or potential ones a sequential history of your brand isn’t brand storytelling, then what makes brand storytelling different? And why is getting telling the brand story in a certain way crucial to the success of any business?

What makes brand storytelling unique from laying out a timeline is that it elicits an emotional reaction and creates a connection with people when done correctly. These people will hopefully turn into new customers.

Most importantly, your storytelling must be authentic if it is going to resonate with others. When you think of David Yurman, of course, you will think of jewelry, but you may also feel as though the artist created the particular piece just for you. David Yurman’s brand storytelling reminds you that artists first and foremost are what leads the brand—designed to be both stunning and unique each piece is a reminder that artists show and care about the brand. That type of almost purely visual storytelling, along with written storytelling, allows the brand’s artistic roots to shine through, resonating with artists and art lovers alike.

As humans, we all need to feel understood, to know that someone out there empathizes with us as we empathize with others. While not every person will identify with every brand, the brands you will remember are the ones that tap into that innate human need to connect. If your brand storytelling is relatable and one that people can identify with, even feel a part of, you are doing something right.

Don’t fret if telling a story with visuals or your words isn’t your first choice of jobs to do within your company. You have options to help ensure adherence to the last aspect of your brand storytelling – consistency. It’s imperative to keep the feeling your brand’s storytelling evokes in people the same across all media platforms, from digital, print, and television to influencers you may choose to enlist to promote your products.

A company can choose who tells its brand’s particular story. If it is your company, you will feel that connection to your story. Whether you can convert that into marketable media or not, public relations (PR) professionals and PR firms are there to help. They will extend the reach of your story, acting as liaisons with media professionals who will put your brand and storytelling in front of a wider audience.

Brand storytelling is multifaceted; enlist help when you need it. As long as it remains authentic and consistent, people will identify with it and with your company.

Choosing the name for your fashion brand can be a surprisingly complicated process. While it may initially be simple to come up with a name you love, you also need to perform your due diligence to ensure it’s not already taken or trademarked. When Lafayette 148 New York first started out in 1996, they underestimated the process of securing their name and brand.

Their name, chosen because it was their street address in iconic New York City, was challenged three years into business by a French department store with Lafayette also in their name. Lafayette 148 already had a few stores, branding, and stationery in their name at this point. Luckily, their trademark infringement claim was denied since the department store did not have a brand presence in the U.S.A.

After winning the U.S. trademark case, Lafayette 148 New York expanded their fashion business into Canada and also won their trademark. The process of securing and protecting their brand name was one country at a time and involved costly legal fees. In their case, they must always include the numbers and New York in their name.

When deciding on the name for your fashion brand, it’s smart to look up any potential names on the United States Patent and Trademark Office website and see if they are already a registered trademark. If not, you can apply for a trademark in your specific category as well as secure your website domain and social media handles.

Many people choose to use their own name or initials for their fashion brand. Using online fashion education and noting what makes your brand unique or what words describe your aesthetic can help you come up with a classic name that accurately conveys your brand.

In the head space of the consumers and the industry, brands have a front door. The front door that makes the first impression on the world. This is the name. Coming up with a name that’s going to resonate is super important for your brand. It should be something that people can remember. It should be a name that’s going to stick around.

It’s a mystery why some brand names resonate and why some don’t. We can ask, how did this brand become a huge brand and this brand not? Ultimately, determining why some names stick is hard to kind of quantify. How these brands endure has to do with what’s behind the name. Names are certainly important.

When naming a brand, it’s important to consider a number of factors. If you are starting a brand that you want to have a global scale, you have to consider how the name will translate. For example, you have to ask yourself how this name will translate into Mandarin for a business in China, which is a really important market. Ask yourself: How is this name going to project around the globe?

Thinking about a brand and the name for it can be tricky. “There are certain things that I love for my personal aesthetic. For example, I love genericness, but at the same time it has to be searchable, it has to be found in the world. Like for example, there’s a music group called Men or there’s another music group called The Internet. And I think that’s so fun, but at the same time, it is impossible to find, and it’s not really but it is. Then also, I think personal connections again, make the most sense,” says [INSERT SPEAKER HERE].

What’s in a name? The choice of branding is one that’s fraught with potential pitfalls in fashion business. The eponymous brand means naming the brand after yourself. The world is rife with eponymous brands and some of the biggest brands are named after their designers. Even the great fashion houses of Europe are named after their initial designer.

There’s a precedence for this type of naming, but it also puts the designer in a difficult position once they need investors. Investment comes with degrees of control. If an investor buys into your brand and your brand is Douglas Hand, and you are Douglas Hand, that investor wants 33 percent of the company that holds the trademark Douglas Hand.

Investors will have a lot of input on how the Douglas Hand name is used. You may not agree with those things, but your name is outside of your own control. Now it’s in the control of a constituency that is usually focused on return.

In the 1980s, you had Calvin Klein with his name sewn on really cheap underwear. They made a lot of royalties, but Calvin himself probably wasn’t very happy about it. That is one pitfall of the eponymous brand.

Lawyers and fashion education experts advise clients to come up with something fanciful when deciding on a brand’s name. Why fanciful? You have the benefit of not having to possibly give up the rights to your personal name in the future if you decide to sell your brand.

Another pitfall for names is you can’t choose something that’s purely descriptive. American Apparel, for example, was selling American-made apparel, not the brand. They didn’t have trademark rights until the world recognized American Apparel meant it’s from the Los Angeles-based company run by Dov Charney. It takes a while to build up that name recognition in the mind of the consumer.


Retail has rapidly changed over the years, with some fashion brands opting for alternatives to the traditional brick & mortar, physical store concept. You’ll find brands focusing solely on e-commerce and not having a physical location. Others have a more hybrid approach. Their physical store serves as more of a showroom for potential customers to see their brand in person before later purchasing online.

The innovative use of the showroom concept for fashion retail locations has been adopted by major brands including Bonobos. Potential customers can check out the brand in person, assessing quality, materials, colors, and sizing. Unlike a traditional retail store where you can purchase on site for instant gratification, the showroom concept has customers place their order at the showroom or online for pick up at the showroom.

The showroom model has become a marketing and advertising play for a lot of retailers. Physical retail is also turning into industrial fulfillment, where they’ll do a hybrid model where there’s the showroom and the goods will be at the fulfillment center.

Nordstrom is currently doing this model where half of their stores use this concept called the “bricks to clicks effect.” Through fashion education and trend spotting, a lot of fashion brands are starting to reevaluate their sales channels. Ifthey have a brick and mortar location for consumers to see the styles in person, they’re starting to see in increased online sales in that geographic area – the bricks to clicks effect.

This sales data is being monitored by performance analytics tools like like the Guest platform. Also, point of sale (POS) companies are starting to provide more granular data to their customers and their retailers, so they can use this data to make better qualified buying decisions going forward.

We talk a lot about making customer journey maps. When creating these journey maps, we think about what channels we are operating in—marketing or distribution channels.

So we say, “Let’s design a retail experience travel map.” Then we’ll create another for an entire sale experience where the customer starts in a department store. We might even make a journey map for someone who buys on Instagram. Perhaps we make a journey map that doesn’t necessarily end in a sale. Yet, it could begin with a repair or someone who comes in for a cleaning or an event.

Consider the channels, personas, and touchpoints as you create your journey map. Underneath each of those small touchpoints, write down some of the characteristics you think you’ll be able to capture and identify about that consumer that might be useful for you to market and sell to them.

Make use of any archetype of your choice. When shopping online, consider walking through the consumer journey. A Google search is an excellent place to start. People come across the webpage and visit it. They’re looking through the filters. Consider all of the possible filters that someone would desire. I’d like you to go over each of those processes with me online. Walk through the gaps and consider where you will spend the majority of your time and where you will waste it.

Consider whether they ever make it to the point of purchase. If so, how was your experience? Then give me an overall timeframe because the most crucial factor will be how long it takes our consumer. Are they taking the time to read your blog? Do they pause to read the reviews? Include all of the facts you’ve gathered so far.

Now imagine us moving through a person interacting with an ad on social media, clicking the ad, and seeing where they go, where they land, how they buy, what their feelings are, and what’s going on in their heads.

This is how we choose where we spend our money and what we should prioritize. This exercise will undoubtedly assist you in better understanding your customer journey to choose the most effective route.

Building from a single product to a collection can be a challenge. We’ve seen brands, in particular, that start small. They have one or two silhouettes with a variety of different colorways. They found that one shoe that sticks.

If you look at some of the brands like Yeezy and Allbirds, they’ve come to the table with one or two styles. There is not a plethora of different types of shoes that they’ve come to the table and greeted their consumers with. They have a ton of different colorways. They have also expanded a little bit beyond their original offerings, but at the same time, they’ve had one or two shoes that have carried the day.

All it takes is that one shoe that connects; that Chuck Taylor, that Sperry boat shoe, or one of the Yeezys.

So, trying to create a successful collection, hits at every step of the way, and drives a lot of sales, is often not the model that our companies have. What you can define your company with is maybe one or two types of shoes.

Then, beyond that, you can build out a kind of secondary or supportive offerings that may help drive sales, interest, or meet certain needs of your consumer you’re trying to meet.

However, it’s often that one shoe that drives us and the company to success. We’re able to grow from there.

So, I would focus on one or two things that you do well: One design technique and/or one style; a colorway (or two), or a function that you think is much needed in the footwear marketplace. Then, put all your effort into those areas.

Success will breed the opportunity to expand your line in certain ways, but that just takes time.

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Turning innovation or research into a profitable business model might not be the first goal. The first goal might be solving the problem. Moving away from Milton Friedman’s idea about companies’ sole purpose being money, to E. Freeman’s theory to focus on the stakeholder, because the stakeholder has a need and an expectation from your brand.

One of my favorite ad campaigns ran before Black Friday. Patagonia released a slogan, “You don’t need this jacket.” They think about the planet, the environment, and start to solve a problem that exists in the consumers’ world, but not necessarily in the product world. Releasing a statement to tell consumers to not buy their product resulted in the bottom line of profit. What it allowed them to do is focus on the things they needed instead of material items or to be different.

This goes back to the better piece. You’re going to experiment and innovate your product. Not everything will work. That’s part of accepting good instead of accepting defeat from trying to achieve perfection.
In the past, we used business models called the fashion life cycle. It was profitable and maintainable because businesses found the decline and the obsolescence and repeated the process. That isn’t feasible in today’s industry.

Today, we need to understand the consumer’s problem, solve the problem with both a strategic and business plan. To build a new business or even think of new ideas is about asking the right questions and gathering the right information, to connect to the right people and services. People don’t have to mean actual humans; it can be AI. It could be a part of our future we need to learn to adapt to.

We speak of technology that will help us to understand how to build new ideas to establish new businesses. You know, back in the day, we would say, I got a million-dollar idea or a billion-dollar idea, today, we have to say, I have a great idea and I’ve sourced it out, and I’ve done my homework. I know there is a consumer audience out there that this idea, this brand, this technology, this service, this product, whatever it might be, will work.

Many people spend vast amounts of their personal money and don’t realize how much they will need to pay because it’s tough to figure out when to step out of that process. While many businesses worldwide are started this way, there needs to be an understanding of how far you can go with that. It is also wise to line up another source of funding for your business, both for peace of mind and to allow your business and your personal life to have some separation.

Other people are much more savvy about finding funding very early through networking. So, find people, investors, and other founders willing to take on a young brand or project. Do thorough research. Network a lot. Figure out how that works, what the risks are, what the opportunities are, and then make sure that you understand how much of both your own money and external investors’ money you’re going to need to spend in order to get to the level of success that you aspire to.

That’s where having a business mind, a business mentor, and a business partner is critical from day one. Because you don’t want to be in a position where you’re either spending all of your savings to make your dream come true, or you hit success, and you don’t have the financial means to achieve it. In other words, that you can’t meet the demand. So it is highly critical that financing comes into the picture from the get-go and that you are able to scale your financing according to the brand’s success and goals.