When you get to transform a logo into hangtags, packaging, and that bag that everyone will carry their lunch in, that’s when it gets really fun—the storefront, how a store looks, and how your product is displayed on the shelf. In New York City, that’s going to make you famous.

It becomes very exciting because you get to take a really basic brand and figure out how to move it around and transform it into various spaces.

Because of e-commerce, one of the design trends we witnessed in the 2000s was logos becoming horizontal. For example, when we first started moving online, many fashion logos tended to be vertical, meaning they went up and down. So the most renowned design that comes to mind is the Yves Saint Laurent logo, which was created by hand and was very vertical. That is the worst type of logo to use on a website because it pushes the rest of the content down.

Another thing we saw, which makes me sad, is that many luxury brands are becoming blander, with many of their logos using the same typefaces.

There is a lot of discussion on social media about the differences between logos from the 1990s and today. They’re also mainly black and white. Again, this is due to e-commerce, as you must have things that do not compete with the product on your page when selling online. When you have many products, images, and editorials on a page, a black and white logo that is really straightforward and not too fussy is important.

Brand packaging for an ecommerce fashion business is very important.
It’s discouraging as a customer when you get something in a standard plastic shipping envelope and dig inside to find the product you ordered rumpled at the bottom in a plastic bag. You would be turned off if you went to a restaurant where you know the food is good, but it’s spilled all over the edges of the plate. The same is with your packaging. It’s all in the presentation.
Everything your customer touches and sees is your brand. Do not treat packaging, labelling, and branding as an afterthought. If you want someone to love your product, put some care and attention into your packaging. It’s synonymous with the quality of your product and the story of your brand.
Designing your own packaging is going to cost you a bit of money, but you don’t have to spend a ton. Even designing your own little envelope that your product is going to go inside of will show the customer you’ve put thought into your brand.
Spend some time thinking about what type of packaging you’re going to ship your product in and what it will look like when your customer receives it. It’s also the opportunity to show your personality. If you are humoristic and want to take that tongue in cheek approach, you can. If you want to be more serious, you can be that as well.
Shipping your product is an excellent opportunity to personally connect with your customer. Throwing in some extra freebies is a nice way to thank them for supporting your brand. Some examples would be a key ring, stickers, a trinket, a hand-written note, or giving a gift with purchase. These thank you gifts can really be anything and provide that personal touch.

Most brands do a monthly floor set, usually at the beginning of the month. If it’s a traditional store, the store is broken up into different areas. The beginning of a store is the most recent product, the middle of a store is product that’s been around for about a month, and the back of the store is usually product that’s on sale. It could also be more destination and you’re willing to go back there, but it’s usually the older product.

Visual merchandisers usually set their visual calendar 12 months in advance. Nothing in the fashion industry is an accident whatsoever. Everything is coordinated with the design team to get that original vision of what that product is. Then the visual team buys props for the floor set. For example, if it’s a summer delivery and the theme is Barcelona, the visual merchandisers would buy different props for the window and throughout the store to tell the story of the aesthetic and bring it to life.

This is the key driver to get a customer into the store. It’s also the key driver when shopping online. The new and exciting product is the first thing usually seen on the landing page. It always has a theme.

Classic stores, like Louis Vuitton, always have their great basics, but a couple times a year, they promote their hot, new items. Those are the items that visual merchandisers will always highlight in the windows and highlight throughout the store as must-have items.

The other thing with visual merchandising is that it’s very personal. Visual merchandisers need a sharp eye and to be able to pay attention to detail. It’s about bringing the brand promise to life. Whether it’s fixing a mannequin, how a mannequin’s arm is positioned, how a garment might be tucked in, or how a hand might be propped. They might be small details, but it’s really this keen eye of a visual merchandiser that brings everything to life.

It’s been studied that the customer walks from the right, counterclockwise around the store. It’s the goal of the visual merchandiser to bring a customer in and continue that story all the way around. The story needs to continue to be interesting as the customer makes their way around the store.

If you’re a classification business like a denim business, you may have one fit of jeans. However, you need to have that in different colors and washers and probably different fabric weights. That’s planning a range with the same items made with various components, different stretch levels, and for different end-users.
One may be white denim, another black denim. While you may have the same item or product, you’ve created it in different ways, ensuring that the client doesn’t pick between them. Essentially, a client might say, “Today, I want a pair of white jeans because it’s July and it’s summer, and that’s what I wanna wear.” They’ll buy the white jean, wear them, and probably say, “Wow, the fit is fantastic. I’ll go back, get the black jean, raw denim, and the stretch because I love them.” You’ve had successful range planning with this approach because you’ve enabled the consumer to get into your product. The client has also seen the opportunity to buy more of that product to complete their wardrobe.
We all have a pyramid in our closets. At the pyramid’s bottom, we have most of our basic stuff. T-shirts, jeans, or a ton of sneakers. Mostly, these are things that you use every day. The next layer has things that are a little nicer, preferably clothes for work. Or probably when you go on a date or dinner with your loved one. At the top of the line, you’ll probably have suits or tuxedos or high fashion items that you don’t wear often. In that sense, you should develop your line similarly.
What are the basic things you want to sell? Well, you want to sell a great tee. How many colors do you need? You probably need four or five colors in a great tee to have some assortment of it. Then, you probably need a polo rugby shirt with some embroidery on it. That’s a little bit of fashion, so you might need three different colors.
While building your product line, focus first on the price points. The more expensive things are, the less of it you should do. If you find a beautiful jacket that’ll cost a lot of money, you probably only need one of these. Because you won’t sell a lot of them. But in essence, you still need somewhat of a collection because no buyer will buy everything you do.

As a fashion company grows, they need to sell more than just one product. Typically, a fashion company starts with that one great idea – that perfect dress that’s perfectly on trend and everybody wants it. From there, you have to grow your business and think about how to scale. In fashion business, the typical way one does this is through building a range of products.

It might seem quite simple to think of just adding bags and shoes to our mix, but it really is much more than that. The most expensive part of any sort of business is creating new concepts. They take a lot of time and typically take several samples to get right. In other words, somebody has to make a full bag or dress before we know if it fits right and if it’s in line with our other products in terms of quality. This can take some time and it’s quite expensive.

You must be careful in terms of new products you’re going to include because of the added overhead. Another piece you have to consider is the expertise. If your expertise is in creating and designing ready-to-wear clothes, you probably didn’t have fashion education to learn how to make bags or shoes. Shoemaking is a very complex art form.

In terms of sourcing materials, you’re going to have to source from completely different places. For instance, you can’t just decide to make denim if you’ve been making pants, they’re very different. You have to have different machines in order make denim. You’re going to need the expertise of somebody who knows how to design it from a technical point of view as well as production that can scale and make enough to sell for it to be worthwhile.

Deciding whether to sell wholesale and/or direct to consumer is a common question in the fashion industry. Many factors come into play on making this decision, including the fashion brand’s business model, negotiation with buyers and manufacturers, and sales data.

If you’re a fashion company that sells to wholesalers and direct to consumers, you have to consider the buyers’ opinions. At market, when buyers give their feedback and write orders, you’ll often find you have to negotiate with them to take a chance on new styles that give a proper representation of the collection.

After orders are placed, you’ll then go to your manufacturer and present your orders for fulfillment. Some manufacturers will require a larger quantity of units. Drawing from your fashion education, you then have to analyze your collection and say, “Well, if I only have orders for 500, am I going to put in the other order for 500? Is it really that crucial to our assortment or our collection this season?”

Sometimes it’s worth placing the order. Other times it isn’t. If you have a wholesale and a direct to consumer (DTC) model, it’s a combination of opinions that determines what actually goes into the market, into stores or online for that season. If you’re a completely DTC company, you’re tapping into online fashion education, trend forecasting, and looking at sales data to see what performed well and what didn’t in past seasons.

On the flip side, you want to make sure you’re not over-saturating the market and there’s still demand to ensure you won’t have excess supply. It depends on the business model you’re in and the business model you would like to have. This will determine how you successfully plan for the assortment you’re going to release each season.

Popups are a spectacular avenue for brands to gain exposure through creative activations. For one, popups aren’t a long-term commitment; they allow brands to test the waters before opening up a brick and mortar or locking into a lease. Second, popup shops create a sense of excitement around the said brand, event, service, or product. The best aspect of popup shops, however, is their ability to drive conversations, giving brands and business owners an opportunity to directly communicate with people who are interested in what they have to offer or sell.

Gucci, North Face, and Lululemon are prime examples of high fashion business enterprises that have cultivated customer loyalty through their brand identity. At their storefronts you might see longer lines and customers getting excited about making a purchase. A positive experience and initial interaction with a brand can have a lasting impact on the customer. It can even convert them into lifetime customers.

Experiential Marketing Drives Traffic
As consumers, we like to experience the new, and relish the experience long after it has ended. That’s why during fashion weeks in places such as Paris or Milan, popups have been largely successful. When things are experiential and playful, customers tend to gravitate toward it. Miami Art Basel, LA and other larger cities or events that draw lots of foot traffic are prime destinations for popups in the realm of fashion.

Fashion popups are also a magnificent opportunity for brands to identify what locations will be best suited for their business if they were to open up a storefront. Digitally native brands can mine data from their online customer base and do a test run with a pop up to see how it will do in that particular environment. It is a cost-effective marketing strategy for direct to consumer brands who’ve hit the ceiling on their online traffic.

Online v.s. In Store Purchases

Anyone can make a purchase for a clothing item online with a few clicks of a button. but having a conversation really sells the consumer on who and what is going on and how they can connect with the brand. It makes the brand relatable and customers feel a stronger connection to the brands they are buying from. Online fashion education can only extend so far; that’s why it’s worth it to give potential customers the opportunity to touch, feel, and see fashion pieces up close and personal.

The start of the footwear production process comes after you either receive an order from your vendors, your retailers, or your customers. Once you receive an order or a projection, that’s when the production officially starts. Once you have the order in hand, you have the quantities or number of units you’re looking to go to production with and you can start to negotiate pricing.

When you have footwear pricing solidified with the factories and the customers, it then heads into the next stages of production confirmation. At that point in the footwear business, you have a sales sample you’ve been showing and selling to the customer. Next, you need to provide either a confirmation spec or a technical spec of exactly what will go forward to production.

This means, if anything changed from the sales sample, you would have to communicate that to the factory or the supplier prior to them starting production. If you need an outsole to be softer, if you need a lining to be a different color or a lacing to be a different quality, you would have to call that out. The confirmation sample should reflect every change that you have made along the way.

A call out is really something that either comes from the customer or comes from yourself as the designer, the sales team, or someone who has intimate knowledge of the product and footwear education. The call out is something about the sample that you’d like addressed and resolved before production begins. Whether that’s a color, simply a comment that the execution could be improved, if the outsole could be more flexible, or if the padding in the sock compresses too much. Anything that is called out to the factory or the supplier of the footwear should be discussed and confirmed prior to actual shoe production.

In the past, footwear production management meant hand-drawn shoe sketches sent back and forth to Asia. It was a time-consuming process requiring a 16 hour flight from New York to Hong Kong and then into Southern China. Luckily, the footwear business has been working behind the scenes, communication channels are easier, and footwear education has advanced greatly which means increased efficiency and sustainability.

Increased efficiency and innovation means 3D printing, digital design, and sample development often shortens production and lead times. You can now ship tech packs back and forth digitally from designer to developer in Asia to perfect your designs.

These footwear production advances over the last five years also means reduced costs on producing a ton of samples and then figuring out what samples people want to move forward with. From there, placing an order, getting that product in, and trying to ship it across the ocean are the next steps.

Finding distributors follows if you don’t own your own retail space or if you’re not doing direct consumer. Depending on the type of shoe, this could take a year to 18 months to complete all of these steps: your footwear idea to concept, design development, all the way to production, and finally to the retail outlets.

The process of taking a shoe from an idea to the retail floor is more efficient today, but still a relatively lengthy process. There will be constant developments happening and regular communication back and forth with your factory partners in a variety of different stages of the shoemaking process. It all depends on the type of shoes you want to design, the type of customer you want to sell to, and ultimately where in the world you can find availability and capacity on both materials and production.

The important segment when you’re managing production with your design team is the tech pack. In the footwear business, the tech packs are beautiful technical drawings. First started by hand and then finished in Adobe Illustrator, the tech pack is what builds your footwear collection. It’s how you break down your collection and all of the sizes you’ll be offering. In shoes, for example, it’s your mid-soles, outsoles, cushions, labels, and your aglets on the laces.

It’s all in the small details of producing your product, from what material you use for the linings to where your logo goes. Your tech packs, sometimes loosely referred to as spec sheets, is really an international language suited for the factory. The production people will refer to tech pack and are able to understand how the product needs to be made.

The tech packs specify how styles are made and what materials are used – they are like a contract with your factory. You are going to inform the factory of every single detail in that shoe, from material, to mid-sole, out-sole, sock lining, lining, type of stitch, type of thread, logo placement, straps, laces, and fabrication. Is it welded? Is it stitched? Is it molded? All of your footwear education information is in the tech pack and what you don’t put in there will not be added by the factory.

Any information you don’t put in your tech pack, somebody else is going to come up with what’s missing. In online footwear education, you’re taught to make sure that everything’s in there. If you don’t include the thread color, you will wind up with whatever thread color’s on the machine. So you do need to be very specific and thorough with your tech pack to ensure the best results.