You've been reading BonneGueule for some time, and by dint of seeing new small brands, a crazy idea is starting to emerge in your mind, fleetingly at first, then it gradually takes shape: what if it were up to you to create your own clothing brand?
Seeing others dressed in your clothes is one of your dreams, but you hesitate to take the plunge because the project seems so immense (and endless).
How do you actually create a clothing brand when you have no training in "fashion"?
Olivier was in your situation a few years ago. A long-time reader of BonneGueule, with a good job in London in consulting, he decided to jump in at the deep end and create his own brand of shirts from A to Z: Office Artist, which I was able to test some time ago .
So he's going to tell you how he went from reader to creator.
How to launch your own brand of shirts and accessories?
It's now been more than four years that I have had the opportunity to talk with Benoît and Geoffrey about fashion and the economic system that surrounds it.
I met these two adventurers well before the launch of my brand . Our meeting dates back to an evening when I approached Geoffrey in the premises of L'Exception to tell him about my entrepreneurial project.
From exchange to exchange, our relationship quickly became a beautiful friendship which gave rise to many good times.
The life of an entrepreneur is not a long, quiet river and being able to count on the support of people like Benoît and Geoffrey makes the moments of uncertainty much less painful and the successes even more fun to share.
Since our first meeting, I believe that what makes our relationship rich are the values we share: a simple vision of fashion and clothing (a discreet but not dull elegance), the importance of good value for money and a clear idea of what customer service should be.
When launching a brand, many things can change between the idea and the realization, but the values do not change.
I also believe that it is thanks to them that I have the opportunity to express myself today on BonneGueule and to reveal to you the behind the scenes of the launch of a brand.
From the origin of the project, to communication, including the physical store.
The project started with customer dissatisfaction
When I created Office Artist , I had been working for over two years in strategy consulting after a fairly traditional business school course.
My first two years of my career taught me a lot, however two things frustrated me in my daily life: not always seeing the impact of my work and not having enough autonomy in managing my projects.
My desire for freedom combined with the idea of building a project from A to Z quickly made entrepreneurship an obvious choice.
A big consumer of shirts during my years as a consultant in London, I took great advantage of the plethora of offers available across the Channel and I did not find the same choice, the same offer, the same quality-price ratio in France.
As is often the case when Benoît and Geoffrey propose a garment, I chose to create a shirt brand because I couldn't find exactly what I wanted on the market.
I was also disappointed with the customer experience offered by the big brands. To caricature, I saw myself spending a fortune on average shirts, sold by an unfriendly salesperson with limited product knowledge, who did not recognize me from one time to the next.
Hilditch & Key, one of the oldest houses on Jermyn Street.
It was decided: it was necessary to create a more modern brand , which deals directly with its customers and takes advantage of this short distribution circuit to offer better value for money than the competitors.
Launching your brand: where to start?
On paper, I was confident. The demand was there, the sector margins seemed correct (even significant for some brands ;)) and the fixed costs did not seem enormous.
The ready-to-wear sector is such that no information is available on the net, particularly due to fears of copying and counterfeiting. It is a sector where communication is essentially oral. If you want to discover the behind the scenes, everything happens through networks... or at trade shows!
To create a shirt from scratch, the Première Vision show is THE place to go.
Far from the flashy Pitti Uomo or Fashion Weeks, Première Vision presents in advance the raw materials that will be visible six months later during the fashion shows and trade fairs, then another six months later in your boutiques (so a year in advance, are you following?).
No street photographers, no wall to peacock on, Première Vision is the product and only the product (that didn't stop me from running into Nick Wooster there in February!).
Producing a beautiful garment: cut, material and style
Like any garment, a shirt is the sum of a cut, a material and a style . So I had to find these three major partners for a quality product.
It was at Première Vision that I met my first two allies: Davide, the Parisian representative of the Italian weaver Albini, and Patrizia, head of one of the best workshops specializing in shirts in Casablanca.
Every season, Davide is an essential partner for finding innovative fabrics while hunting for the best value for money .
For those who are late, we visited Albini with Luca in 2014: watch it again here .
For her part, Patrizia is the good fairy who organizes and supervises the assembly of each shirt.
To produce my first shirts, all I needed was the expertise to create the cut I dreamed of. I tried a formula that seemed effective and inexpensive: take a shirt I liked and modify it by a few centimeters.
This attempt turned out to be a waste of time: you can't improvise as a model maker and a shirt is not a Lego game where you can add and remove cubes without impacting the whole.
After much research, I finally met my third partner: Flora. An experienced modeler, it was with her that I was able to create my ideal cut from scratch.
This cut has been one of the origins of Office Artist's success since its launch: a slim cut with a high armhole that offers a truly fitted look while ensuring real everyday comfort.
A technical file cannot be invented and for a slim cut that remains versatile, the help of an experienced pattern maker is essential.
Tested by about thirty friends in an experiment close to crowdfunding, the first production allowed to gather feedback from involved and demanding customers. After a few modifications, the product was ready, allowing the launch of the first collection.
All that remained was to find the money to get started.
Financing the launch of a brand
As for funding, many battles were lost, but not the war.
Contrary to what one might believe, it was not the state burden that represented a challenge in the creation of my company but its search for financing.
Overall, the administrative formalities remain fairly light and allow you to stay focused on the important things rather than on paperwork. I think other entrepreneurs will tell you the same.
In my search for funding, the State proved to be a truly positive player through regional structures such as Paris Initiatives and Oseo. From the beginning, it offered me support and made a financial commitment:
- By standing surety for the bank loans that I had to find,
- By lending half of the amount financed by the banks.
From there, all that remained was to find a bank that would finance the creation of a ready-to-wear brand. Theoretically, nothing was impossible since the State was the guarantor, so the bank took no risk.
Unfortunately, bankers don't think like that.
Since the mid-1990s and a murky fraud case (nicknamed "the Sentier affair" or "Operation Planter les banques"), the ready-to-wear sector has been identified by banks as a risky sector and some banks even have specialized agencies.
Although you are rather well received by the advisors (apart from perhaps those in shirts, who are a little less receptive to the idea), it is difficult, on the other hand, to pass the test of the file evaluation committee.
After a month of research and more than twenty meetings (yes, I saw some banks three times!), the conclusion was clear: no bank loan, therefore no government loan.
If in The Truth If I Lie things end well, in reality more than 200 people were convicted after the Sentier scams, degrading for many years the relations between the companies in the sector and the banks.
When I was going to have to embark on my project with only my family and personal money, Marc was recommended to me at the last moment, a BNP banker who was more open (or resourceful) than average.
I owe him a big thank you, because in a few weeks we managed to get the file validated and give my young brand the financial support to get started.
Which distribution network to choose and for what margins?
Product, check. Finance, check. All that's left is to sell.
On paper there are many ways to sell clothes, but the three main ones are: own store, e-commerce, third-party distribution (via physical or online stores).
I don't know any young brand that doesn't dream of having its own store, but having a store necessarily means many fixed costs: rent, salesperson's salary, not to mention the stock to finance.
E-commerce has the advantage of lower fixed costs, but without offering guaranteed visibility.
Distribution to multi-brand resellers ensures notoriety and firm orders, but much lower margins.
The end consumer does not necessarily know it, but a retailer in the ready-to-wear sector applies a multiple to the wholesale price at which he pays for an item: this multiple is most often between 2.5 and 2.7 including VAT. .
This system rightly rewards the stock risk taken by the buyer and the effort required to sell. For a brand, it is the opportunity to be distributed more widely and therefore to produce in larger quantities.
Minimum quantities? A headache for a young brand
We haven't yet touched on the topic of quantity minimums and product development costs , yet it is key in the strategy of any young brand.
Each clothing workshop imposes minimum orders per model on its customers in order to make production costs profitable.
In the case of Office Artist, our workshop works with a minimum of 300 shirts per model. It is possible to have several fabrics per model, the cutting work remains unique since the fabrics are stacked in mattresses. Likewise, all assembly operations will be unique (same cut, same collar, same cuff, etc.).
In addition to the minimum quantity requirement, there is also the cost of developing each product (pattern costs, prototypes) which must be amortized over the entire production run.
A new product like the casual collection we have just launched is therefore a significant and carefully considered investment.
A look at a fabric mattress being cut with an electric saw.
It is quickly understood that these costs and minimum quantities have a significant impact on the strategy of a young brand.
A label offering an entire wardrobe will therefore have a lot of difficulty in meeting minimum orders if it only offers its clothes through its own distribution.
Its interest will rather be to be distributed as widely as possible, even if that means paying intermediaries and working at a pace that is out of sync with the end customers (to present the collections to stores six months before putting them on the shelves).
The physical store, an important decision
In the case of Office Artist, my idea was to offer a truly competitive price-quality ratio and a more personal customer service : this meant as few intermediaries as possible and direct customer contact.
I logically started with e-commerce , convinced that this channel could develop independently.
Although the first few months were very good, I quickly understood the limits of a model based solely on the web: a significant marketing budget was necessary to drive traffic to the website.
The alternative of a physical store therefore very quickly established itself as an essential choice.
Of course, the fixed costs represented a risk, but this risk was offset by the possibility of selling more and thus reaching the minimum quantities necessary for renewing the collection.
More importantly, from a customer perspective, the store offers the opportunity to touch the products and easily find your size.
Rent every month, open six days a week and large stock to finance, the store is a real gamble, but also a great opportunity in terms of customer relations and visibility.
A few days before the opening of my first boutique, Régis Pennel, the well-known founder of L'Exception, declared in the press: "The store is the best investment a young designer can make."
Now, with a year of hindsight, I can only agree with him: a store is a fantastic tool for communication, notoriety and proximity.
Is communication simple for a young brand?
For a young brand, communication is an important subject: there is everything to do and the main challenge is to gain notoriety.
On this subject, my deep conviction is that nothing beats good word of mouth and time . However, this word of mouth must be provoked by seeking out opinion relays that will make the "early adopters" want to try the new thing.
Dressing TV presenters is perhaps a more effective form of communication for the designer's ego than for brand awareness.
At Office Artist, we have focused on two main channels: specialist blogs and the press (general and fashion).
Communicating with bloggers
The relationship is above all human. Bloggers are curious and delighted to discover new brands. They are also sensitive to the fact that we understand that they do this activity above all out of passion (and often without paying themselves).
From the first weeks, we had interesting tests, productive exchanges and many online visits and customers thanks to this channel.
Today , specialized blogs remain for us an important vector of communication but also an excellent test at each stage. For any new product, we work hoping to remain one of the favorite brands of these enthusiasts who follow fashion with a careful eye.
Communicating with the traditional press
We opted for a relatively similar approach, but with a more structured and less personal approach : press release and press kit, HD photos, etc.
We have contacted many journalists with varying degrees of success.
Although we have had a few TV appearances (France 2, BFM) and a few quality publications (La Tribune, Madame Figaro, Marianne), it remains difficult to interest journalists with "only" a well-made product at an attractive price.
"The young customer concerned about the quality of his shirts will go to Office Artist", published in Marianne in January 2016.
To convince the traditional press, there are two main solutions: originality (making Made in France or sweatshirts with messages on a fluorescent background) or becoming an advertiser, i.e. paying for advertising in the medium.
While some editorial offices maintain true independence, many remain constrained by an increasingly irrelevant economic system where we write mainly about the people who pay us.
The principle is not new, but the appearance of blogs is probably proof that readers are not fooled.
Today, for young brands with limited budgets, blogs are THE first communication relay. They spot trends before others and really help new products to get off the ground.
Assessment and outlook
In two years of existence, I believe that Office Artist has managed to convince a young and demanding clientele and to establish itself as a brand that makes beautiful products. It has found a target and a precise positioning and looks to the future with confidence and enthusiasm.
The first two years were not a walk in the park. At first, we created our offer in abstracto and learned from the first sales and customer feedback to adapt our cut and our collection.
Positioning and communication have also been refined over time. For example, after a few attempts with professional photographers, we completely internalized the photography work to be able to offer more content and more advice without blowing the marketing budget.
Photos of looks, a marketing expense that is certainly more effective in the long term than advertising.
In a second phase, we adjusted the distribution strategy by focusing on the complementarity of the store and the website, which of course required significant investments.
From then on, cash flow management became essential: the initial investment having been spent, the room for maneuver was reduced and the brand had to self-finance from season to season.
Inventory management has thus become a priority: each season we have made it a point of honour to offer new things, without taking undue risks.
In these circumstances, it was the second season in the physical store that proved to be the most difficult. The store generates costs and requires a large stock .
Fortunately, this challenge was overcome thanks to good word of mouth from customers and blogs, and the brand was able to recreate a virtuous circle to offer a much more complete Fall-Winter collection. Since then, the collection has been enriched and expanded with each season.
We currently offer an extensive range of formal shirts, beautiful accessories and have just launched a casual line for the weekend.
What plans does Office Artist have for the near future?
No more casual shirts, no more collars, a straight cut, but no black shirt yet!
In terms of distribution, multiplying the points of sale could be tempting, but I am not sure of the sustainability of this model in the long term.
With customers becoming more and more informed thanks to the internet, the quality-price ratio seems to me to be the priority and I believe that it will remain better by focusing on the destination store/website pair rather than on numerous well-placed and expensive addresses.
We will see what the future holds, but it seems to me that in the years to come it will no longer be enough to put a product on a hanger in a store or three photos of the folded product online to sell. In the coming months, our priority will therefore be to develop the educational part of the site rather than opening stores.
The Office Artist story is just beginning, but I was delighted to be able to share with you this milestone and a quick overview of the options and challenges faced by a young designer in his early years.
This vision is of course not exhaustive, but I hope that it gives an idea of the choices and questions that arise for those who are launching themselves into the attractive and complex ready-to-wear market.
If you would like to explore this discovery further, please feel free to comment below this article or visit the store. I am always happy to discuss this fascinating subject.
The store is located at 3 rue Coëtlogon, 75006 Paris.
