Um, yes…

For what I have seen, the answer is a solid “yes”. Not only is it hard to get started, but to stay profitable and cultivate a loyal customer seems to be the challenge for a lot of the emerging sustainable fashion labels that contact me. As I have discussed in the past here and here, some of these brands don’t have a desirable product to begin with and have some serious marketing and branding issues, which doesn’t help the fact that the products are already sold at a premium.

This article in Ethical Fashion Forum touches this topic and the writer refers to what I’ve defined before as a “marketing failure” , as a problem with sustainable fashion’s image. I couldn’t agree more with her reasons why this adverse image has taken over. She attributes the problem to:

1.”Greenophobia” (something that I have been a victim of myself), which is defined as general apathy towards green lifestyle products ;

2. Skepticism about the truthfulness of companies’ “green” claims and,

3. Green fatigue, caused by the overload of eco biased marketing trends.

A 2013 report by Deloite pointed out some of the ways in which companies were marketing sustainable consumption and guess what, great design is not one of them:

The Deloitte fashion survey shows that the sustainable consumption strategies are relatively new for many fashion companies and for some they are still a nonexistent phenomenon. For those that work with sustainable consumption strategies most rely on the familiar levers within the fashion industry: Impacting consumer decisions using brand beliefs and emotions (40%), and impacting consumer decisions using social norms and networks (35%). (2013, p. 19)

But not all is lost, in the same report, they also mentioned that small companies are finding ways to use sustainability as an advantage:

Results from the qualitative study furthermore shows that smaller companies appear to be finding ways to turn sustainable consumption strategies into a competitive advantage: Smaller companies are working on lifecycle approaches, considering collaborative consumption models and developing business models based on co-creation and innovation with end consumers. They are focused on creating new strategies based on trust, co-creation and consumer engagement. (2013, p. 19)

Two years after this report was published, I believe this strategy is still in play for the new slow fashion labels trying to find their place in a market that wasn’t designed for them. In my mind this goes along with the idea of creating a genuine platform and leverage growth from the network effect. Such a platform doesn’t exist already, and whether it is financially viable or not remains to be seen.

I asked Shannon Whitehead , business consultant for sustainable apparel firms, what are the main mistakes she has seen in some of the companies in this category.

 YV: What are the main mistakes you see in young entrepreneurs wanting to enter the eco fashion business?

SW: 1. They focus on sustainability as a marketing tactic instead of making it an innate part of their business model. The product has to sell itself first. Sustainability and social impact will always come second (if not third — after price).

2. They want to immediately give away proceeds to charities and non-profit organizations. There should absolutely be a social impact component of your business, but when you’re first starting out, you need every penny you can get in order to grow. If sustainability and ethics are already embedded into your supply chain, then the best thing you can do is invest every cent back into your business so that it doesn’t fail.

I remember when TOM’s first started and everyone was going bonkers over the 1-to-1 model. Consumers and the media were heralding its social impact without considering where the shoes were actually being made. Meanwhile, the materials were so cheap that the shoes were falling apart after a few wears. What good does that do for anyone?

3. Cash flow. You have to have your financial ducks in a row in order to run a successful business that will continue to grow. My advice is to price your products as high as your target market will tolerate, so that your margin is high enough to cover expenses and more. Similar to your personal bank account, you never know when a crisis is going to come up. It’s smart to start building a buffer of cash as soon as possible.

4. Not listening to your customer. Your customer is more valuable than any other component of your business. If you ask and listen, they will tell you what you need to do to succeed. Don’t be so in love with your original idea that you’re blinded by ways to improve it, change it or sack it all together.

Excellent advice if you are looking to start your own sustainable fashion apparel label. Shannon’s company, Factory 45 is an accelerator program to help entrepreneurs launch a sustainable apparel business.

How can sustainable apparel startups sell their product?

In my experience evaluating ethical fashion companies and their business models, as a small label you have three major choices. For these examples, I am assuming you don’t have a physical store and that you want to conduct a global internet-based business:

1. Focus intensely on your direct to consumer business and operate a very efficient website, optimized to get enough traffic and create fresh content to keep the site relevant in search results, this is tough and requires a completely different set of skills than those needed to create a product. Among other things, you will have to:

– Select one of the eCommerce platforms in the market (or build your own, which is harder) choosing the one that best suits you as a user and gives you the type of features you are looking for your website (some examples are BigCommerce, SquareSpace, Volusion, Magento and Shopify).

– Work on your SEO (Search Engine Optimization): creating a website is just the start, making sure people actually find it is a different story and it is arguably the most important aspects of an online business. It takes a lot of time and hard work, some of the things to put on your to do list are: blogging, keyword research and link building. If you have no idea of what I’m talking about, please START GOOGLING NOW!

– Have a compelling brand story that resonates with your core consumer: when you are selling directly to the consumer, you are in charge of marketing, everything from your online presence, logos, fonts and photography have to be consistent with the concept you have developed for your brand and must send the right message to your potential customer. A great product is nothing without a great branding strategy.

– Social media is somewhat important, but I would not dedicate too much time to it, as social media has proven to be a very ineffective way to drive online traffic and conversions. Use Buffer or HootSuite to automate your social media management, you should be focusing mainly on SEO.

2. Target distributors and secure a good amount of buyers, even if the quantities are not very big, diversity will protect you from being at the mercy of only couple big buyers. Selling through another retailers, whether physical or online, takes away some of the pressure to drive traffic to your site, which can be quite time consuming. I recommend this alternative if you have a one person operation and can’t make the products and do all the press and marketing, but if at some point you have the resources to hire someone and start building your own web content and increase traffic, I would definitely try to decrease my dependency from distributors, as they usually require a large discount, cutting on your margin.

Some tips to find where to wholesale:

– Find out where your competitors are selling their products.

– Find brands and websites that target your core consumer, for example, if you are selling vegan shoes, look for “vegan handbags”, “vegan accessories” and “cruelty-free products” to find retailers that specialize in this category.

– In my experience, Google results for “how to find distributors for my product” are not very useful and are full of spammy sites. I have found Twitter a great way to know retailers of products in a specific niche. My “Sustainable fashion” Twitter list is a good place to start, it has some brands and retailers all in one list, so you do have to work your way to find the right kind of retailer for you.

3. Sell through an established marketplace, such as Etsy, eBay, Amazon, Wanelo and other big eCommerce retailers. Details to look for:

– What are their fees?

– Does your product fir the right price point for these websites?

– Should you look into Amazon FBA?

– Amazon is the biggest marketplace on earth and it’s worth looking into if you haven’t already. If you don’t want to deal with the technical aspects of this, yvanalytics.com can do it for you.

Conclusion

Each method offers pros and cons and the best answer for your business will depend on which skills you and your team are better at. I love to hear people’s stories and struggles when trying to build a brand, feel free to contact me and tell me your story, maybe I can help!

Some rational advice that shouldn’t fail: don’t spend too much money before knowing your product is wanted by enough consumers. There are cases in which you can make a small run of production and try to sell it online to see how well it’s received before jumping to produce more items than you will be able to sell. Focus on making prototypes you can work with and pitch to resellers before you start production. Get your customers first!

Some people start a business with a dream in mind before analyzing feasibility. No matter how great your product is, if there is not a real market for it, you won’t be able to have a profitable business.