Fashion Entrepreneurship & Luxury Brand Management

(UN)FOLD By: Mikaela Larsson Fashion Entrepreneurship & Luxury Brand Management tutor: Alison Lowe London College of Fashion 2016 word count: 3191

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Content  3. Excecutive Summary 4. Company Description 5-6. Market Analysis 7. Meet our customer - Pen portrait Chloe Archer
 8. Meet our customer - Pen portrait Amber Jones 9. Organizational & Management 10 - 12. Product line 13. Marketing and sales 14. Pricing 15. Economics 16. Appendix

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Executive Summary

Unfold is a London based brand that was established in september 2016 by Miccaela Larsson and Patrica Cah. Unfold provides shirt dresses in a unique design that can be transformed in several styles depending on occasion and desire. By tying folding and buttoning in different ways you can create the ultimate look suitable for you. This makes it a multi-functional garment that helps solve the problem for women who feel like they have nothing to wear and/or are living an active lifestyle with little or no time for changing outfit throughout the day. We are the first brand that offers this unique design which gives us an head start on getting the customers attention and introduce them to this typ of garment, this will help us gain customer loyalty and differentiate us from our competitors since we are the only alternative on the market.

Elevator pitch;

”Unfold provides you with high quality shirt dresses in a unique design that makes them the perfect garment that you can use from day to night and transform in many different ways by tying, folding and buttoning. Our design is created to make it easier for the woman with an active lifestyle in their day to day life.”

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Company As society changes in a fast pace our lives become more and more stressed, we have more things to do and time is now more valuable than ever. We want to create a solution that helps women save precious time by not having to chose clothes, change clothes and buy clothes more than necessary. Therefor Our garments are long lasting and made in high quality in a timeless style. The design makes it possible to fold it up and wear it as a regular shirt, unfold it to turn it into a dress, tie it to make it more edgy and turning around to make it more trendy.

We are here to target and help women in the ages of 25-55 get a easier living by not having to worry about clothing more than necessary. Since no other brand offers this specific design we will be the first to challenge this problem which gives us an advantage because we, unlike our competitors, offer a solution that turns one garment into several ones. This gives us a better place at the market and helps us stand out from the masses. To begin with our garments will be sold online and through occasional pop up stores. In the future we would like to have our own store as well as being available to buy through wholesale. We would also like to expand our collections with more designs and collaborate with artists for unique patterns and styles.

  (UN)FOLD - logo

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Market Analysis

 

We want to sell our products through our own web shop. The retail e-commerce industry is the fastest growing industry in Europe with an expectation to grow +16,7% in 2017* This numbers include a lot more than just clothing but since our primary customer is women in the age of 25-55 with an active lifestyle they will prefer to do their shopping from their home or on the go when they have the time to do it. By doing E-commerce we will also be able to reach customers who live outside of the city while saving money as it requires less outgoings then to sell through your own store.

Retail E-commerce sales growth expectations calculated in billion dollars.

We wanted to have our own store but it was expensive so instead we decided that we will have a pop up store when we drop a new collection. We will rent a venue for one month where we will host the event for fashion week and our loyalty members and sell the collection. After that we will focus on selling on e-commerce. In the future we would like to sell our products as wholesale and online. The stores we could see our products in are John Lewis, House of Fraser and Peter Jones. We would also like to broaden our range by making a long and one sleeve less shirt dress which will be sold exclusively on our website.

* according to http://www.retailresearch.org/onlineretailing.php

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Possible Competitors: WTR London - £ 400-600 SANKT - £ 250-350 Tomcsanyi - £100-200 Rumor London - £200-400

These are our possible competitors. They are all young designers that sell traditional shirt dresses in the price range from £100 £600.

What makes us a better alternative then our competitors that targets the same customers is the different variations you can create with our innovative garments in comparison to theirs. This makes our product more wearable and useful. Their strength on the other hand is that they are up and running companies that already has an established customer base. This can make it difficult for us when we first enter the market but since our shirt dress is unique and ”several outfits in one” we still have a opportunity to succeed by being the first brand that offers this design,

New innovative Design.

Alone on the market with the design.

High Quality.

E-commerce only.

Little fundings.

New brand - not as much experience as competitors.

Expand - stock and range.

Open stores.

Being able to sell whole sale.

People don’t understand the idea.

Not stand out enough among other start up brands and our competitors.

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Pen Portrait

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This is Chloe Archer, she’s a 35 year old Event planner who lives in Notting hill.

She’s originally from Paris but she moved to London to study Communication.

Chloe Enjoy working as an event planner and her goal is to start her own event planning company. Her job gives her 2900 pounds after taxes. She likes to spend her hard earned money on dinners, clothes, furniture and her appearance.

When she goes shopping she comes home with bags from Other Stories, Filippa K and Zara. Her style personality is a combination of classic and feminine pieces which she combines with new and exciting trends. She enjoys spending time by herself for herself and once a month she goes to a salon and treats herself with a facial and mani pedis.

A normal day in Chloe's life: She wakes up at 6.30 and goes for a walk with her French Bulldog, after that she has breakfast consisting of yoghurt with granola and then grabs a Starbucks latte on her way to work. Chloe do not like to wear too much make up so when she gets ready for work she just put on some mascara and a red lipstick. When she gets dress she wants to wear comfortable but stylish clothes. Her wardrobe contains clothes in black, white, beige and blue pieces. She prefers small, discrete and personal accessories. After putting on a pair of heels she takes the bus to work. When It’s time for lunch she eats a home-made salad with ingredients she bought at whole foods, it’s very important for her to eat healthy and organic food so she prefers to make her own lunch. When she eats she checks out her Instagram where she likes posts from her favorite model Chrissy Teigen, her favorite singer Sia and her style icon Amal Clooney. When the work day is over she meets up with her two best friends to do yoga or she might go running with her boyfriend, it’s very important for her to live an active and social life. When she gets home she likes to lay down in her designer couch with a glass of white wine or some dark chocolate and relax by reading one of her favorite magazine Harper’s Bazaar or Elle Interior which covers her two biggest interests. For dinner she orders take out from Mediterraneo since she loves the Mediterranean and her choice of vacation spot is always Italy. She ends her night watching old classic movies.

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Pen Portrait

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This is Amber Johnson, she’s a 25 year old woman who lives in Kensington and works as a marketing a sales associate.

Amber studied Marketing management and started working straight after graduation. Her Career goal is to have a good salary so she dosen’t have to worry about her economy. Her salary now is 2400 pounds after taxes. She spends it on fashion, food, traveling and beauty products. She likes to buy her clothes at H&M, Zara and Cos. She dresses feminine classic and elegant but she likes to mix it up with sporty and fun trends. She likes to travel and prefer tropical destinations in mexico and her favorite European city is Barcelona. She also likes to go to the hairdresser and try new beuty products.

A typical day in Ambers life: She’s very organized so she always picks out her clothes the night before. She likes to wear neutral and light colours. She eats oatmeal with milk and blue berries for breakfast and a cup of home brewed black coffee. She spends about 15 minutes to do her make-up and she likes to keep it classic and simple. She loves to wear gold accessories and she always wears her golden watch and earrings. When this is done she takes the tube to work. At lunch she always eats with her colleages, she mostly brings her own food but sometimes she goes out for lunch. When the work day is done she likes to play tennis and meet her family, she’s very close to her mother. When she doesn’t work out she likes to hang out with her friends, she’s very social and almost never alone. She is single but she wants to get married before she turns 30 and she wants to get kids.

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Organizational & Management (UN)FOLD is owned as a limited partnership between Miccaela Larsson (50%) and Patricia Cah (50%) They are both educated at London College of Fashion. The responsibilities will be divided equally between them two and all decisions will be mad together.

Patricia will be responsible for the economy as well as handling the sourcing, manufacturing and contact with the fabrics. Miccaela will take care of the PR, marketing, sales and handle the contact with potential buyers.

To see how the work will be spent during the year please see appendix.

 

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Product Line

We will manufacture 10 of each color for both our collections Since the Classic will be the same through time, that collection will be available for buying both short order and forward order. For the trend collection, we will only keep stock of the size range we are selling it in. Our scarves will be stocked in 6 of each color and length with a total of and these will also be able as short order.

The range plan includes our classic and trend collection. The classic collection will always be the same no matter season or trend and comes in white, black and blue. The trend collection for spring summer 18 in which we use the trending colors of the season as well as some patterns.

Both of the collections will be available in the sizes XS-L and will have our signature button with our logo on it. We also added two scarfs, one short and one long, to reach the customers who might not be able to afford our shirt dresses and we also feel like scarves would be a nice complement to the customers who buy the classic collection and wants to add a trendy accessory.

They will come in the same colors as the trend collection of the season

Since the Classic will be the same through time, that collection will be available for buying both short order and forward order. The trend collection except for the scarfs will be available for short order and the scarfs will be available as forward orders. We wish for our dress to become a mega trend. We will always offer a “Classics” collection which is the same no matter season or trends. Besides our classic collection we will also include a trend collection with the current trends that are suitable for our target customers where we will focus on materials, patterns, colors and details. Originally we wanted to make a sleeveless model as well as a long ”exclusive” model but this would have costed to much to produce so this instead became our future goals and we hope to be able to release them within the next four years depending on sale and income.

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The lifecycle for a product consist of 4 levels, Introduction is the stage when you launch the products after researching and developing it. The next level is growth and this is the point where the sales are increasing at the fastest rate. Maturity is when the growth rate starts to slow down but the selling are near the highest. The final step is decline or renewal it’s either when sales reach a lower level and begins to fall or when you renew the product to generate new sales. Since we will always renew our trend collection with prints and patterns we would wish to follow the renewal curve of the following diagram. Whilst the product renewal generate more sales on the new collection the old trend collection will reach the denial stage.

Since we always will sell the classic collection as a signature piece this lifecycle will hopefully look different where the aging of the product don't affect the sales since it will be considered a classic, therefore the following cure is our ideal precut lifecycle.

 

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Garment

Style no.

Description

Classic

UF-01-01

Classic shirt dress 100% cotton Black/White/Blue

Trend

UF-01-02

Trend shirt dress

100% cotton Pink / Pattern

Short Scarf UF-02-01

Short scarf

100% silk

Long scarf

Long scarf

100% silk

UF-02-02

Fabric

For material costs see appendix.

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Color ways

Pink / Pattern

Marketing & Sales We won’t do fashion week since it costs a lot of money and buyers don’t buy from new and unknown brands. We will instead rent a venue and host an event where we will invite buyers, press and potential customers to show our collection and put our names out there.

Our marketing strategy is based entirely on where we think we will reach or customers in the best way considering their age group focusing on social media. We will approach our customers on different platforms depending on age group and their choice of social media platform. We will use Instagram to communicate with our younger customers and Facebook for the older customers. We will also have a mailing list for our newsletter and a loyalty membership scheme.

We will make a look book with two different models in different age groups to show how our garments can be worn on different occasions. In the future we would like to collaborate with upcoming artists for unique patterns and design for our trend collection, we hope that this would create a hype around the products and to make people talk about us. Like the British emerging artist Lothar Götz for example.

Our loyalty membership will consist of three different levels: Bronze, Silver and Gold. The more you buy from our brand the higher loyalty level you reach. Our bronze customers will get our look book in the mail together with a 20% discount on the trend collection each season. Our silver and gold customers will get invited to a preview of the collection each season. In addition to that the gold customer will also be invited to two exclusive events, a special holiday event around Christmas where they will be treated with a Christmas gift and a summer party.

As previously mentioned we will focus on selling our garments through E-commerce and occasional pop up stores for our first year, later we wish to also sell our product as wholesale.

For the full schedule please see appendix.

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Pricing Our shirt dress will have a whole sale price of £227, for both the Classic and Trend mo del. The RRP for them is £615. The short scarf will have a wholesale price of £40 and an RRP of £108, The long scarves wholesale price is £66 which gives it a RRP of £177.

When it comes to production it’s not easy to find a manufacturer that produces small volumes, the price in our first collection is all sample prices since we don’t expect to sell that much the first year. This makes the garments more expensive then if we would buy many of them. When we are a bit more established on the market we will buy bigger volumes which will generate a lower manufacturing cost and RRP. We will order from different factories for the shirt dress ann the scarves. We will order 10 of each color for each style of the shirt dresses which gives us a total of 50 pieces and then we will order 6 of each scarves that adds up to a total of 12 scarves.

For specifics please see appendix.

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Economics (Funding Requests / Financial Projections) Our entire stock has a wholesale value of £12033 and the total RRP is £32 454 and since we will be selling online we could earn £32454 if we are lucky enough to sell our entire stock. We need to make at least £29030 to break even. Since it’s not very likely to sell your entire stock during the first year we would have to put in money our selves to cover the costings of manufacturing, materials etc. or we would have to borrow money from parents or try to get a bank loan, unfortunately no banks want to borrow money to a young designer because it’s a unsafe business and not many start up companies are able to reach break even. We want to be able to start up our business with our own fundings so we will have to work for a while and put this plans on hold until we saved at least £15000 pounds our selves. If we manage to do this we have enough money to cover the costings for the first year. Another alternative for us would be to work from home to save money on rent. too understand all costs please see appendix.

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Bibliography Posner, H. (2011) Marketing Fashion. London: Lauren King Shaw D. D. Koumbis (2015) Fashion buying, From trend forecasting to shop floor Meadows T. (2012) How to set up & run a fashion label Online: retailresearch.org/onlineretailing.php letsmakeithere.org honestby.com https://www.lesouk.co/material/100-1-cotton-oxford-30929 wowvenlabelsuk.com able-labels.co.uk eelabels.com buttoncovering.co.uk

Others: Notes from Classes

Pictures: 1. Alison Lowe 2. Pinterest 3. Alison Lowe 4. Pinterest

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Appendix 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Contract between owners Material + manufacturing sheet Critical Path Cash flow Manufacturing contact

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