As you can imagine this is a bit of a milestone on my journey to becoming a household name, all round amazingly famous fashion brand and earning myself invites to the coolest party's. In fact when I first started my brand Asos was really where I wanted to be.
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| asos |
Unfortunately its not all good news and us bloggers do have a we bit of a habit of only telling our followers the good stuff, so I thought id write a bit about the lessons I've learned in the last few months.
You might already know that I am doing this for the first time, I've put everything I've got into this brand and I'm passionate about making it work, unfortunately passion doesn't always mean I know exactly what I'm doing. I have no team of designers and no room full of accountants, PR people and advisers, Up until now I have worked on my own from my studio down in South London. I design everything myself and handle all the manufacture too, every single thing the Rock Boutique does or gets involved in I have organised myself, so I'm not ashamed to hold my hands up and take the blame when I get it wrong. Well, I have to, there's no one else here.
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| Moi xx |
I am the first to admit I am a creative person. Alan Sugar, Richard Branson and Duncan Banatyne however are not, they are business minds. Which means they can spend all day making good decisions and delegating out the tasks they don't specialise in. That's the difference between me and them I guess. Although saying that my book keeping is...well...my little dog would do a better job if he could hold a pen.
Being creative is brilliant tho, I love it, I find inspiration in anything and everything. If only all I had to do was design I would be laughing. Focusing my design skills presents me with another issue as well tho, because my mind is constantly buzzing with millions of different design ideas. its hard to only produce the garments that will sell loads in the shops. This is what happened recently with our winter collection.
I got to the point where the Asos stuff was going ahead and I had to produce a collection for general sale, this would then be sold to all the other websites and shops in the UK. (hopefully) I understood that it had to be different to the Asos stuff because that was unique to them, that was the selling point. So off I went...
My collections will always be based around the things the brand will be famous for, tattoos, vintage style, pin ups etc but I needed to give them a new twist.
As it turns out I twisted a bit too much. I managed to get my brain full of Mathew Williamson style prints, swirling inks, water drops, humming birds and nature, all that sort of thing, and really lost focus on what The RB is about.
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| little bit crazy looking back |
When I had 20 pieces finished I thought they looked amazing, which they did to be fair, the problem was they didn't fit my brand or identify at all with what was launching on Asos.
Here's the lesson...As I said before I'm just a designer, I've learnt allot but obviously I only know what I've taught myself over the last 4 years. I had the samples made and placed them in the showroom ready to show the fashion buyers. I was honestly 100% sure a massive order was only weeks away and I would be in Ibiza spending my money later that year. That order didn't come, feedback was all a bit vague to be honest, I was told it was too different to the Asos collection and as I was fairly un-heard of shops wanted to see a similar style to what was on Asos.
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| swirls and inks |
Samples don't come cheap and take weeks to print so there was no going back to the drawing board. I now had a very big bill to pay for the samples and no order to cover it, not only that I thought I had burned our bridges with our stockists. Ill be totally honest with you, I had 28 quid in my bank the day I realised what had happened.
This was pretty much the worst id ever got it wrong.
In fashion you work at least 2 seasons ahead, no one tells you what will sell, you can do your best to trend forecast but at the end of the day its still a gamble. Bigger more established brands can get round this to an extent because they are famous, people know who they are and what they represent so there clothes will sell. They will have good seasons and not so good ones but they will sell.
Being an un heard of brand is allot more tricky. If you don't get the designs exactly right the shops that have bought them wont stock you the next season, then you’re out of the game before you’ve even started.
So here's me sat in my studio, with no money, no orders, no stockists and no flaming clue what I was going to do. This by the way was only a couple of weeks ago.
I have now most definitely learned that focus, delegating out what you do not specialise in and not taking your eye off the ball for a second are key in business, and I will not be forgetting those lessons.
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| Red Alert Showroom London |
un like the normal one most people live in by the way.
A couple of days pulling my hair out, a million black coffees and one very important crisis meeting with Sophie later I had a plan. Its a plan with no money behind it but its a plan.
I realise you don't want to read about the couple of weeks I then spent working as a builders labourer and a removal man in the day and printing t-shirts for stag do’s at night so I wont go into details, but I raised enough cash to keep me going during The Rock Boutique first major crisis.
I sat down with Red Alert who handle all the wholesale for me and we realised that we had 2 weeks to come up with a collection if there was any chance of selling for Spring Summer 12. Red Alert is a brilliant company, they know exactly what they are talking about and I will now be working a lot closer with Sophie (weather she likes it or not!ha!)
With my newly learned lesson in mind I came up with my new spring collection, I made sure it was well in my brands handwriting, was on trend and most importantly worked well as a range. I introduced some cute little summer dresses but kept most of the shapes similar to those on Asos. So it all ties in nicely.
Over the years I have built up a close relationship with my printers and manufacturers and they agreed to make my new set of samples, they had next to no time to produce them and its not an easy task. As you are reading this now they are working hard on the new stuff.
I still had the issue of being a new unknown brand so on Sophie's recommendation I employed Florescent PR, they agreed to work hard for me to get my designs worn by celebs and in magazines. Other than expenses they only get paid when a celebrity actually wears my stuff. which buys me some time. You should be seeing us in the press very soon.
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| Our new PR Company, exciting! |
To help them they need professionally modelled shots of the new collection. Luckily for me I know the beautiful Aimee Singer who had previously modelled for me in exchange for some portfolio shots. I put an advert out on facebook and a fan, Jasmine Dominique has kindly agreed to let us use her studio for the day. The shoot will take place on the 11th Nov and I am very very grateful to everyone that's helping out.
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| The stunning Aimee! |
The new revised collection will be shown to buyers in The Red Alert showroom on the 7th November. This is really the last chance for my little brand now so I hope it sells. I can actually say that I have put blood sweat and tears into this collection, all I can do now is cross my fingers.
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| the new collection |
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| the new collection |
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| coming to a shop near you (I hope) |
