8 Months Running an Apparel Company
Tonight marks the last day of our Kickstarter campaign. We’ve only got a few hours to go, so we thought we’d take the chance to reflect on the last 8 months since we launched. We’ve loved including you, our customers and supporters, in our design process. Your feedback directly influences the clothing we design and make. We really do think of you as being a part of our team. So, let’s take a moment to look back on what we (including you) have accomplished over the last 8 months.
September / October 2014
We prepped and promoted Brass for about 6 months prior to launch. We did a lot of Instagramming and a lot of blogging. We wrote a post on brand licensing in the apparel industry (bit.ly/mythofthemaxxinista) and it went viral. This post now has almost 1 million views and really helped us to grow our email list. When we launched on September 23, 2014 we had approximately 700 people on our email list and we sold 34 dresses in the first week. We were super excited by this, but you can also see how much time and effort went into our launch and what the return was. Take our word for it, ecommerce isn’t easy. But we know that we are up for the challenge. Here’s a photo from our first photo shoot in Boston with Irene Tuluca and Mary Doyle, photographed by the one and only Rachel King.
October / November 2014
When we first launched our site we were happy with it, but we knew we could do better. We knew our photos and layout could be better. After a lot of research and examining other brands we love, we launched a new site. We did a photoshoot with our friend and photographer, Joseph Wilk, and the beautiful Irene Tuluca at an awesome loft in Brooklyn. These photos took our site to the next level and gave customers a better sense of the quality of our dresses. We also had our first blogger partnerships with Laura Scott, Leslie Musser and Kayte Demont--thanks for believing in us from the start, ladies!
November / December 2014
We debated long and hard about doing a Cyber Monday sale. In ecommerce, this is the biggest sales day of the year. You probably even noticed that brands were doing week long Cyber sales. Brands are able to do crazy 50-70% off sales because their margins are so high. We have a real problem with this mentality and we like to think we provide high-quality at a great value all year round. Not just on Cyber Monday. In the end we decided to offer $20 off and it did bring in some new customers. We don’t intend to run sales, but weren’t not above giving our customers a little something extra once a year. Smita Jacob from Hogger and Co. came to take some gorgeous photos in our studio and made us feel like a real business.
December 2014 / January 2015
Retail sales (both online and offline) tend to drop drastically after the holidays. People have spent a lot of money on gifts and travel and go in hibernation mode. Sales slowed a bit, but it was a great time for us to think about our plan for 2015. It was during this time that we decided that we would pursue a Kickstarter to fund our next collection of dresses. It is incredibly time consuming and difficult to raise money from investors. We wanted to focus our energy on developing product that our customers would love. Over 350 of you answered our survey and we knew we wanted to keep you involved in the process. We decided that crowdfunding was the best way to do that.
January / February 2015
We launched our 6th dress, the Sweater Dress. You gals helped us pick the style and color of this beauty via Instagram and Facebook. When pre-orders launched the dresses flew off the shelves. We also wanted to show you what the dress looked like in a real life setting, on a real woman. So we featured Cambria Grace and we heard from many women that you loved this video. Word began to spread, sales continued to grow and we started seeing more and more repeat customers. We found that women were willing to take a chance on a new dress from a new brand at the $70 price point. We finally felt like we were figuring out the recipe for our Secret Sauce.
February / March 2015
We were working non-stop on developing the new line, promoting new product, and working with awesome bloggers like Grace Patton, Gretchen Jones, LaTonya Yvette, and Lee Vosburgh. We also launched our 7th dress, the Pencil Dress. We designed this dress as direct reflection of customer feedback. You were asking for longer length dresses. We wanted to make a dress that had more coverage, with a classic silhouette, but was also chic and little bit sexy. We used the same approach as the Sweater Dress and featured Elizabeth Corkery from Print Club Boston #inthewild in the Pencil Dress. We also rephotographed all the dresses using Bridget Hunt as our model. We could not have imagined the positive response from those photos. It’s clear that we are not the only ones who have a massive #girlcrush on her.
March / April 2015
The samples for the new collection came in and we were so pleased. Again, our factory did a great job with the fit and construction of our 5 new dresses. Minor alterations and adjustments were made and the factory began work on our final samples. We developed our plan for our @kickstarter campaign and spent many hours on our film script. It was so hard to tell our story, talk about the brand, and show the dresses in just 2 minutes. But we were lucky to have our friends Nathan Laver and Michelle Lewis helping. We flew them to Boston from LA and it was a bit of a whirlwind, but we shot it in 2 days and a week later we launched our project.
April / May 2015
On April 28th we launched our Kickstarter. Within 48 hours we were more than 50% funded. Seriously, you guys blew us away. We have been completely focused on the campaign this past month. You probably noticed. And we really just want to say thank you. Thank you for supporting us, for liking our photos, reading our blog posts, taking our surveys, giving us honest, helpful feedback, and most of all for believing in us and buying our dresses. Knowing that we are making clothes that you love to wear over and over again brings us so much joy. We hope that our dresses make you feel effortlessly beautiful and become your go-to pieces for many years. We are trying to build a company and a brand that understands and designs for strong, passionate, and brassy women. Day-by-day, month-by-month, we are getting there. And we cannot say thank you enough for being with us for the ride! (Please excuse the circles under our eyes. We’re a little tired.)
