How We Created Our Own Space in the Fashion Industry
THE BRIEF
Back in 2017, our Founder Sunny Bird set us the challenge to launch a product from initial concept to market to demonstrate and educate the team on the process our clients go through.
As an agency with no experience in the fashion industry, we chose this as our product sector because as a predominantly female office it was an interest of ours and we wanted to set ourselves a challenge and gain knowledge in the world of fashion.
THE CHALLENGE
We had no previous experience in launching a fashion brand so had to learn everything from scratch from product design, production, branding, manufacturing, packaging, postal services to sales.
We knew we wanted to do something completed different to other fashion brands and create our own space in the fashion industry, which we knew was going to be a challenge. We decided that we needed something completely unique that helped solve a problem to consumers.
We wanted to build a brand that catered for women of all shapes and sizes, we soon found that finding professional agency models of all sizes was near impossible.
Another challenge we faced was launching a fashion brand on a budget.
THE SOLUTION
Whilst other fashion brands develop the product first and then engage with consumers, we took the unorthodox approach of first identifying a need within the fashion market and working with consumers from day one to help build and shape the brand.
Through an intensive research process, we organised focus groups, conducted surveys, and built a social media community, which in turn influenced the direction of the brand. We soon discovered women of all shapes, sizes and ages didn’t feel represented within the current fashion industry.
We decided to design the most flattering dresses ever, designed to slim and flatter all body shapes thanks to cleverly thought out designs and features, and we made sure our website and other marketing materials reflected this.
We were the first UK brand to allow customers to see models of all sizes wearing the same dress on a fashion website, a unique feature which allows you to choose your dress size and change the whole website so you only see models in that size. This shows women how the dress would truly fit a similar body shape to theirs.
We worked with influencers and sourced our own models to make sure every woman felt represented. It was important to us to meet the fashion needs of women, and one of those needs was to have a dress that fits even if you go up or down a size. For this reason, we created our own unique 4 way stretch material and adapted the size grading so our dresses would fit women if they went up or down a dress size. Thus, creating our own dual sizing model from size 6-8, 8-10 up to size 18-20, 20-22.
In order to overcome our budget challenges, we worked with suppliers and partnered with other businesses to offset costs and trade services. We used the business community platform BBX to exchange spare capacity for goods and services such as marketing and print materials, packaging, travel and accommodation for model competitions, beauty and hair appointments for models, and the launch party venue. We saved over £90,000 by doing this.
THE OUTCOME
Since we have launched, we have already featured in national press including the Mail Online, The Mirror, Grazia, and Draper’s for doing something completely unique and as a result of our excellent media relations as a PR agency. The Perfect Dress Company has been compared to brands such as ASOS for our innovative website feature – which allows you to see a dress modelled on a real woman of your size rather than using AR technology. In total, thanks to our expertise in the PR industry in just 3 months since launching we have achieved 29 pieces of coverage which has reached over 4 million people and has an advertising equivalent of over £112,000.
As an online fashion brand, we have had a low return rate so far of just 5%, which is very low compared to other online retailers which report return rates of between 30% and 50% with ‘poor fit’ cited as the number one reason. Our low return rate demonstrates our research of what women want is working and by using real models on our website, women have a better idea of how the dress will fit their body before it arrives.
We have lots of exciting PR campaigns planned and more styles and accessories to launch in 2020 too!
By launching the Perfect Dress Company as a team, we have gained valuable knowledge as to what our PR agency clients go through from initial concept through to product sale. We usually meet our clients once they have just launched, with no real insight into what they have gone through beforehand from research, product production, branding, manufacturing, packaging, and postal services. As part of our innovation hub, the whole team has been involved in launching a real brand to market, and we now have a more realistic idea of their journey and the experience and knowledge to help our clients further.
