After 20+ years in the fashion industry I felt it my duty (oh, how noble of me) to take my knowledge and experience and pass it on to the crowd of makers, crafters, designers, and all round creatives who themselves had a vision of creating.

All too often I have seen companies who do not appreciate the complexity of a development process, the concept of planning, the need to identify a market, and most importantly, the need to treat their suppliers with common curtesy (being polite, gets you places, being a bitch doesn’t): things I believe are essential to the longevity of a collection and of a brand.

So I’ve made it my mission to educate and preach these aspects to anyone who is interested in listening.  To pass on these nuggets that will fundamentally change your business and make a random selection of products into a cohesive line.

My goal is simple: I want people’s businesses to succeed. I want to enable a beautiful product to be made and appreciated. Whether it’s for a huge international brand, or a maker with a spare room and a vision. I want to be part of it.

So join me on the 12th and 13th May in person in San Francisco, or on the live stream at:

https://www.creativelive.com/courses/diversifying-your-product-line-susie-breuer

My consultancy is co-lab54.com

I’m based in San Francisco

Direct sales and mass customization are two channels that have been heavily utilized by fashion startups over the past few years with much success. Brands, with a traditional product, now have the point of difference they need to stand out and be noticed. It’s time to take these sales channels seriously.

Direct Sales

Remember Avon and Tupperware? Two household names, which made it into everyone’s homes through their direct sales method? After years of this model being relegated to pots, knives and lipstick, direct sales is once again credible selling channel for apparel and accessories.

By taking the product directly to the customer either as a group event or one on one, the customer has the undivided attention of the seller giving a more personal experience in their workplace or home.

Pros:

• Direct relationship with the customer so can get instant feedback on your product, positive and negative.
• Flexibility of hours and schedule, ideal if you have a family or are studying
• Sociable working environment.
• Works for any product, apparel, accessories and home.

Cons:

• Leads / appointment acquisition can be tough and the rejection rate can be high.
• When scaling the business, the cost and time involved in building up the selling kits and team can be high.
• Initial limitation on coverage for sales.
• Stock level management to ensure you have consistent product availability

Men’s shirting line Trumaker&Co and women’s jewelry labels, Chloe and Isabel and Stella & Dot are three brands who have made a success from this sales channel either through ‘outfitters’, ‘merchandisers’ or ‘stylists’. Product samples or sales cards are shown to the customer, orders are placed and the goods are shipped. With Trumaker&Co, the shirts are made to order through mass customization but with the jewelry, finished goods are made made and held in stock to be called off.

So as an emerging brand with a limited budget, you are able to utilize this method with relative ease. Providing you have product (materials or finished items) and leads (friend and family or referral), you can dictate when you sell, what you sell and how you ship. By start locally and keeping it small, use incentives of discounts or commission to friends to promote your brand.

Starting finances can be minimal providing you have your product in hand, but they can and will escalate when scaling your sales team. With stock in hand, there is no reason why it can’t be sold directly, wholesale as well as D2C. Maybe take a small part of your collection purely for direct sales and merchandise them as looks or as a theme. Customers who can touch and feel the product are more likely to buy it. See it as a complimentary sales channel albeit a more direct one.

Mass Customization

Mass customization has been around for a few years (more commonly used in software) and uses mass production processes with the flexibility of individual customization, which in terms of apparel, takes an established block and with the customer’s measurements, finds the nearest grade and adjusts to the accordingly. Its not pure bespoke, neither is it mass-produced. The product is then made individually and then sent to the customer.

You’ll have seen that NikeID have been offering a customizable shoe for several seasons and whilst the possibilities are open for the larger brands, it’s really the smaller more nimble brands that can accelerate it due to flexibility and customer expectation. For Nike it’s a great marketing tool but it’s lacks viability on a larger scale. For fashion Startups it’s their minimal viable product.

Pros:

• It’s is a great business model to test your product before you invest fully.
• It can be grown at your own pace and kept sustainable.
• Can be used for multi product groups: apparel, accessories and home wares
• Can be managed with ecommerce as well as direct sales.

Cons:

• Whilst it’s a great way to test your market scaling up can be hard and you may have to have multiple sources, which means duplicate able quality.
• You need a customer base that is prepared to wait for the product, with realistic expectations.
• Management of raw material inventory instead of finished goods.

The trick to making mass customization work for a new brand, is to keep it simple and gradually expand rather than over promise and under deliver. Be exact with your process timelines and supply chain, provide options that add value aesthetically to the product and don’t be scared to use it at as an additional channel next to your existing. Perhaps you have scarves, bags or shirts already in your line that you can add details to? Embroideries, monograms, appliques or contrast stitching; People will pay more if their product is unique to them.

Think laterally when making changes to your sales channels. Having a personal connection or being part of a brand community adds value to your brand whilst adding a unique element to a product or building to fit elevates your message higher than its neighbor. It’s time to make your brand multi faceted.

Here’s why:

I recently worked with an accessory company who had grown quickly and organically over the past 2 years to a stage where they successfully managed an online, and retail business. Their product was very strong, and they had a polished leathery future ahead of them, but as they’d grown they’d failed to document their timelines and processes resulting in a vulnerable position without an internally shared knowledge base and virtually no formal planning. The knowledge was in the heads of the management with no consistent planning tool in place for the team below them to follow and implement. What this meant was that the leadership team, instead of the team of assistants, were driving the day-to-day workings instead of being the face of the growing business and tending to the business development side. They were creating the bottleneck for their own company.

This is not a unique position. It happens a lot with companies as they grow from one person into a team, heck, I’ve done it myself, often finding it easier to manage the process myself instead of delegating it down to my team. But believe me, it is a false economy and it will come back to bite you. There are, of course, simple processes that you can implement which can alleviate this problem. I’m sharing some below:

Assumptions:

Make a list of assumptions for each departmental process which can be shared as the companies grows. These assumptions should include timelines for trim, fabric, washing, manufacture and shipping by location. It should also list the timelines relating to company process: proto reviews, concept building, range plan creation etc.  With this list anyone can make a simple plan to determine a time and action. Without it and no one know how long each process could or should take. These assumptions will be used in the next point:

Matrix/Linelist:

This matrix/linelist is a document that should contain all the styles you are developing, (by style name, fabric, colour, factory and by product group). At the beginning of each season, build the clear and simple document that lists the details of your whole collection and treat it as a one stop shop for all collection information. Add in the financials (cost price, retail price and margin), the delivery drops planned, and also the production planning with milestone dates for fabric and trim buying and you have a complete and very detailed document.

By adding in the product planning section and the delivery drops, and by using the assumption sheet in point 1, you can build out a data driven set of reminders and milestones to enable more strategic bulk raw material procurement and seamless manufacturing order placement (with buffer time included). The pain of spending 2 hours of data entry can save you days of confusion, late deliveries and cancelled orders. Yes, it is time-consuming to build this out half way through a season, but so is having to find a second source for trims or materials when you have missed a deadline to order and your production is jeopardized.

Shared ownership:

Ever heard of the phrase, “A problem shared is a problem halved”? Have at least 2 people in the company that can manage or at least articulate these processes so there is a sharable system. If you are a team of 3 people, at least 2 of you should know how long every process takes in the company. If 1 person is travelling, the other can manage the ordering. Keeping the information in your head and not shared will damage the growth of your business.

So, whether you are starting out, or at the next level growth stage, look at your development, procurement and production processes and ask yourself:

• Are your timelines documented?
• Is there a document in place that lists the collection details with milestone reminders to help you plan?
• Is it in a shared drive and available?

If it’s a no to all to 1 or more, you may be causing a bottleneck.

For more information of product development, planning and production, check out my book Blue is The New Black.
My consultancy Co-lab54 specialises in strategic product development for fashion companies.

This ‘blindness’ is not intentional, it’s a result of excitement and fearless ambition and can result in sometimes obvious oversights in your business plan or investor pitch.

So whether you are looking for investment, or just out on your own and looking to build a credible business, here are some nuggets of advise, from personal experience, that you should ask yourself.

Will you cause disruption in the market?

Is your idea already out there? Does your product already exist? If it does, is there enough of a point of difference in what you are offering? Do you have a unique twist on the product? Are you providing a service that doesn’t exist? Or of it does exist, will yours be better?

Is your idea scalable?

If you are manufacturing, are you limited on order size or can you scale up as the business grows? If you are selling, are you able to grow your sales team at a fast enough rate? Do you have the tools in place to manage this sudden growth if your idea becomes an instant hit on social media?

Who’s the competition?

Have you done your due diligence on the competition? Do you know your market? Do you know where you sit in price? Is there any competition? Be honest, there is nearly always someone else doing the same thing and this is a good thing. It means the market is already prepped for it. You don’t have to be the first, but you can be the best.

Are you superhero?

Do you have all the skills needed to bring this product to market? Are you a one man show? Are you the creative, the financial and the tech wizkid that will bring the world to it’s knees or are you just one cog in the machine? If you are the solo entrepreneur, do you have support in all the other areas to launch or do you need to hire? Be honest with capabilities. Know your strengths and do not be afraid to job-out a skill set, it could save your business.

Are you detail obsessed?

Have you looked at every aspect of your product, the manufacturing, the supply chain, the distribution, the sales, the marketing and the design? Have you thought about a realistic timescale for all this to fall into place? Do you know exactly how long each aspect takes and how much it will cost? Have you thought about how you will survive financially for the first year bearing in mind that most of your contractors and manufacturers will have payment terms which are more than 30days. These are hard questions but they are necessary.

So ask yourself these questions, line up the answers you have and find answers to those you don’t and you will have that air of confidence that will carry you through the launch of your product.

My book, Blue is the new Black is a how to guide for the fashion industry. My consultancy co-lab54, finds product development solutions for fashion companies large and small.

What is a concept?

A concept is the design direction for the colour, shape, mood and fabric for any fashion collection, and is created at the beginning of the season. It creates the mood of the collection and is always open to different interpretations. The initial idea first needs to be analysed carefully and translated into something that people can actually look at, and that can set out the direction of the collection.

Tips:

• Understanding how elements of a concept influence a range is very important for the developer. Watch how the designer works  and ask questions to get a clear understanding.
• Not every colour in the colourcard is used for a fabric, some are just used for trims, but they are still important to the range.
• Having a personal interest in fashion and trends will help you with design and style references, which will be used throughout the creative process.
• Don’t be afraid to offer up ideas for colour and fabric sourcing. Developing a range is a collaborative process.
• Try to keep a copy of the concept with you throughout the development process so that you have a constant reference point and reminder.

For more information of the concept or other aspects of building a fashion collection, check out Blue is The New Black

Susie / Co-lab54.com

Blue is the New Black: The 10 Step Guide to Developing and Producing a Fashion Collection

I think it’s fair to say that to be good at fashion development or production you need to be organized. Some people use paper, some use apps like Trello and Evernote but whatever the method, using some form of ‘list’ or organizational tool is essential practice with the number of aspects that need to be juggled within a project. But list making is not just about being organized; it’s also about helping to maintain a focused and motivated outlook in the task ahead so that you see progress as it happens.  For me, these points are key and these are what I’ll be giving you tips on in this post.

Now, I think it’s also fair to say that being organized doesn’t always come naturally to people and for me it was the same. It’s something that has taken me years to manage and I have learnt the hard way by forgetting things or by just feeling overwhelmed by workloads.

Here is how I learned to love a list:

Around 20 years ago, I went to a time management course paid for by my then employer. It was one of those two day set ups in a beige, characterless conference room of a London Hotel filled with eager folk, pens and papers to the ready, waiting to soak up those all essential words of wisdom by some guy called Frits. I remember his name, randomly enough because usually Fritz is with a ‘z’ but he announced himself as ‘Frits–with-an-s’. This course was 20 years ago, strange what you remember: ‘Frits-with-an-s’.

Without going into a minute by minute run down of the course, what he taught us was to break things down stage by stage into bite size pieces, a piece of advise which I give to teams even now. His route was starting with a monthly schedule and dividing it first weekly, then daily,then hourly. What this does is make tasks or events more manageable which is crucial when faced with something big like planning a wedding or a product launch.

For me, the first time that this method of planning really kicked in, I was working at a new brand, which was setting up from scratch in its development and production department. What this meant was that I needed to hire a team, build a sourcing strategy (find factories), create internal processes, and build the information flow documentation (decide who did what). Quite a complex set of tasks and not something I had actually done before. So how did I start? Being old school and preferring to use a pen and paper (don’t judge) I took each section and divided it so that it was broken down into the smallest of detail:

Sourcing Strategy:

Product groups / Countries of manufacture / buying office / agent / factories /Contact person / email address

Team:

Departments / Positions / / Salary / Job Specs / Recruitment agents / Adverts

Internal Process:

Key Documents / Format / Templates

Once I had listed all these in a ‘waterfall list’ (items trickling down in size) I found it easier and less daunting to  attack each point and I was able to cross things off the list giving me a sense of accomplishment and  progression. If my list had been simply: ’ Set up the whole development and production structure for a large  international fashion brand’ I would have probably quit after 3 hours and taken up basket weaving instead. As  it was, I worked through the detailed list striking things off it, reviewing and updating the list daily and weekly.  I’m not saying that this set up was easy or things went according to plan, but by having a detailed plan of  action and by reviewing and updating it on a regular basis, I was able to make progress and slowly build the  department.

This takes me to another point: Reviewing and updating your list on a regular basis is a good thing and is essential for progression.

While working through a project, large or small, work or personal, you will notice that tasks and deadlines will change on a regular basis. This is not because you are not managing the list efficiently, it’s the just the nature of the beast. You are working with external forces (in development: factories and fabric mills, for a wedding, cake makers and florists) that also have their own lists and priorities, which may not match yours. Because of this, be prepared to update and review your list on a regular basis, changing priorities and adding new tasks. This process is a positive thing as there is nothing more satisfying that starting a new list and seeing how much has been crossed off the old one, or at least I think so.

Overtime, maybe your list will get smaller as you strike things through, or maybe it will stay the same length but will have different tasks on it because of a different project. But what should stay consistent is the way you approach it.

Here are my key tips on learning to love a list.

–       Break the task down into bite size pieces, from large to small (don’t be afraid of adding detail to make it easier)

–       Literally strike things through when they are done so that you see the progress.

–       Accept that things will change and that you can’t control everything.

–       Review and update on a regular basis.

Susie Breuer runs the consultancy Co-Lab54.

For more Industry related tips check out the book Blue is The New Black.

The book, Blue is the New Black, is a fashion industry book which is a guide to developing and producing a fashion collection. As a product developer by trade, I found it increasingly frustrating to start in a job where my team below me, fresh from college with a degree and enthusiasm, didn’t actually know what they were doing, which considering they had just spent 3 years at college and racked up a huge student loan was a little frustrating to me and I have to say, a waste.

So I decided to put fingers to keyboard and break down the stages of development so that they could read, digest and understand the context of what they were doing and why.  There are chapters on concept, range planning, fabrics, information flow, factories, branding, launching and sales, sustainability, reviews and it all starts with a chapter on the workings of the industry.

It is, as I see it, a high level guide to the fashion industry warts and all.

In total the book took around 1 year to write and around 3 months to structure and 3 months for the cover, layout and design…..

It was a long process for me (a novice) and one which I’m in no real rush to repeat. Why? because deciding the structuring of the book, which was not my strongest area, was like sticking pins in my eyes. Every meeting on structure was so painful, I just wanted it to be done but at the same time I knew it had to be perfect. So I persevered, and my editors also persevered until we were unanimous in our belief that the structure was right.

Why so hard? Well, when developing a collection there are lots of repeat events, the samples are reviewed between 1 and 3 times, fabric sourcing is not just done once, flow of information is throughout the process and updated daily, so trying to make a clear time line of events is very hard and very confusing for new comers to the industry. In the end we settled on fixed chapters on each subject and within each chapter was a sequence of events. The structure of the book changed 3 times in 4 months. Frustratingly necessary.

I thought that writing a ‘how to’ guide would be easier than creating characters and sub plots, and it may well be, but trying to breakdown an explanation of a process that you do daily to make it clear to a non industry person is very, very hard. You, as an author, make so many assumptions on the subject matter that you don’t realize that an non industry bod has no idea what you are talking about.

My editor used a great description… she said that I should imagine explaining to a whale how to put a sock on…. think about its, that’s brilliant! Remember this when you are trying to explain something which to you

is so simple…. it will make you pause and re explain.

The learning curve of this project was immense, I cannot even begin to describe the pain and frustration of the process and the contracting sweetness of the completion of it. When the proofed manuscript was handed over for design, it was a lovely, lovely moment. I can only compare it to finishing exams.

Ahh, a weight was lifted. wonderful.

And the verdict? A beautiful book , rich in content, stunning in design, interesting yet informative which has since gained a seal of approval from fashion schools, graduates, small design companies, Sir Paul Smith and the CEO of Tommy Hilfiger.

Blue is the New Black is available internationally from Amazon and local stockists

Oh, I do love an org chart

“What I’ve learned about working with a big company like Jil Sander is how important the structure is. You can have ideas and you can have money, but if the structure isn’t right, if everybody at design and management and marketing and sales isn’t in the same key, it’s not going to work.”

Raf Simons speaking to Gert Jonkers, editor of Fantastic Man, for Issue No. 14, Autumn and Winter 2011 as seen in The Business of Fashion

It’s so great to hear a quote like this and especially from a designer. Not that all creatives around us are anti structure and pro random free-formness ( is that a word?), There are many who love a structure and can’t work without one, and what I like is that it brings home to important point that its about working together in a clear structure which makes or breaks a brand or company.