#BoFEducation

[cherdocx]

The Potential Of Conversational Commerce | Emily Weiss with Alexandra Shulman | #BoFVOICES 2017

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Njfpm6_5fXQ&list=WL&index=3

Emily Weiss:

My background is in fashion, an early 20s measly fashion assistant at some of the best media companies in the world.

I had this incredible exposure to Karlie Kloss when she was 15 and I was tying her shoes, etc - surrounded by incredible women and the thing I always wanted to ask them was, “Who does your hair? What's that lipstick?” - what I didn’t realize is that even though those circumstances were incredibly unusual and unique, that sharing mentality is the most popular way to discover a new beauty product - so today 60% of women in the US say that the number 1 reason they’re convinced to buy a new beauty product that they haven’t tried before is through peer to peer recommendation (which is likely a social media person they’ve never met before but is someone they follow on Instagram or someone they read about on Into The Gloss).

While Into The Gloss pioneered the shift in beauty content from being brand/editor straight to consumer, it put a person in the middle (sharing their routine), which was incredibly unique for media at the time. Certainly YouTube did it first, and beauty is the second most popular category on YouTube right now. I still think what Into The Gloss did still resonates true to our company 7 years later, which is people - people are the unlock to shopping today, regardless of whatever you are considering to buy, you’ve probably read a review about it.

That shift in democracy and giving women voices to be their own expert, and share wherever they are on their beauty journey - is incredibly important to me.

I think in many ways, beauty once had a real stigma around it. Even today, there’s a sentiment often expressed that’s around beauty shaming. When asked about one’s beauty routine, one would say he/she is really low maintenance, when in fact they have an extensive routine/own many products. I think this stigma comes from perfectionism, completeness, and authoritarianism that used to drive beauty purchasing decisions through brands or editors pre-social media and pre-technology.

In this age of sharing, it has really destigmatized beauty, into something where women/men just want to help each other out, as well as saying, I’m proud of where I’m at, to be on a journey, where I have not reached a final destination - in fact, there is no final destination (airbrushed pictures put into media outlets by brands are not resonating, while a User Generated Content picture is resonating).

Even for fashion, we are in an era where information is prevalent, inspiration and fulfillment are all out there/online.

Into The Gloss audience’s household income is a little higher than the Glossier customer’s (because the profiles are of women who spend a lot on beauty). They all share a psychographic more than a demographic, i.e. that desire to share because its helping to share their better decisions.

Instagram followers - we call them customers who haven’t bought yet.

The beauty of today, whether wrt purchases/dating/news, you get to choose now, there’s this power of choice because of social media and technology. Whose story are you going to listen to? Which narrative do you want to believe? You probably aren’t going to listen to the first source of information you access (e.g. the salesperson at Sephora, you probably will look through the internet and find the information yourself instead). 

One of the key learnings from doing hundreds of interviews on Into The Gloss between 2010 and 2013 when we started to build Glossier: there was this incredible breadth of product, i.e. there’s no shortage of stuff but there’s a shortage of context and of integrity (in terms of product and quality, as well as the values that your company/brand stands for). While luxury is a loaded word today, one of the core tenets of luxury is quality (regardless of whether it is a luxury experience or a luxury product).

Original idea of Glossier: let’s create a beauty company whose sweatshirt you want to wear, in terms of the consumer being so aligned with the company/ company is relevant to consumer - so much more than just a product/stuff.

How do you build a beauty company of the future, one that evolves with their customer where the customer is a part of the company/everything you put out, because there has never been a time more than now where the customer is always right.

So the first 4 products for Glossier - the idea is to start with skincare, and then evolve/launching something new every 6-8 weeks, much like a magazine/content (Glossier is actually based on the word ‘dossier’) and to do that in conjunction with our community/build the first beauty lifestyle brand wherein you can be category-agnostic/only hero products/launch very few items (very counterintuitive to a lot of the beauty companies who launch 150 SKUs, make everything with one vendor, have things that are great and others that are not so great) - we wanted to offer this incredible new luxury experience and we were able to do that by going direct to consumer, and not be beholden to retail partners/wholesalers who are going to make your brand become something so that it fits on a certain gondola/aisle of a store. So everything that we’ve chosen to do has been because it’s better for her, and she said she wants incredibly high quality beauty products/ wants to combine 3 aspects to create the ultimate beauty product and those are sentiments that we listened to over years of building Into The Gloss.

How do you make your customer feel involved - simple, just involve him/her. You’ll find ways to actually ask for questions and then build that in to what you do.

Since the beginning, the mandate for Into The Gloss has always been to be inspired, period. Into The Gloss is a platform for talking about the best in beauty and for discovery, as well as to give us feedback, it’s our number one microphone if we want to tell customers/readers when and why we’re going international/why we’ve sold out of everything/ask them what they want in a candle scent - we can gather all that information and share all those stories on Into The Gloss; we actually stopped being a media business when we launched Glossier so we can focus on premium content, on telling women the best about beauty across the world/internet. We’re just going to keep being inspired and talking about things we like - we’re very proud of the products we make, we spend a lot of time working on them.

I believe my job is to be a conduit, my job has always been to listen and make people happy. I love women, people, and the power that people have already. I don’t like the word ‘empowered’ - people are just powerful, period. And we want to help them unlock/realize that power. So my voice is on an individual level, not nearly as important as that of our customers/readers, and that’s the biggest difference between these titans of the industry/pioneering women like Estee Lauder - there was no YouTube/social media then, so their customers had no platform, it was just them and they had an incredible amount of riding on what was their message of what these products would unlock for their followers. The stories and narratives that these women needed to craft and embody were ones that, at the moment worked really well (values/image/social status/aspiration of the time) but today, those values have changed, and our core value at Glossier is inclusivity. My voice is one of many, and even Glossier the company, our voice is one of many - we are not the rule makers, we are just providing product, platform and content so that it become tools for other women to write their stories.

[terresekopp]

3. How Do You Finance Your Fashion Business? | #BoFEducation

[alexminhtran4]

1. Do You Really Want to Start a Fashion Business? | #BoFEducation Imran Amed explains what budding fashi... #blogema #bofeducation #business #businessfashion #education #educationfashion #fashion #fashionbusiness #fashiondesigner #fashioneducation #fashionshow #fashiontv #imranamed #insider #learning #lessons #thờitrang #thờitrang2020 #thờitrangđibiển #thờitrangivy

[surnativa]

1. Do You Really Want to Start a Fashion Business? | #BoFEducation Imran Amed explains what budding fashi... #surnativa #bofeducation #business #businessfashion #education #educationfashion #fashion #fashionbusiness #fashiondesigner #fashioneducation #fashionshow #fashiontv #imranamed #insider #learning #lessons #thờitrang #thờitrang2020 #thờitrangđibiển #thờitrangivy Source: https://surnativa.com/1-do-you-really-want-to-start-a-fashion-business-bofeducation/?feed_id=20560&_unique_id=5f47437ae48a1

[radicalruby]

On #BoFLIVE today @drewpsie will be serving up a #BoFEducation masterclass. Register for free now: https://bit.ly/2WzkNiY pic.twitter.com/veu1mD8Q1K

On #BoFLIVE today @drewpsie will be serving up a #BoFEducation masterclass. Register for free now: https://bit.ly/2WzkNiY  pic.twitter.com/veu1mD8Q1K

from Twitter Search / BoF https://twitter.com/BoF/status/1242768445885878278

[expatsparis]

#Fashion History: an @BoF #Education Fashion Course #BoFEducation https://buff.ly/2A8AfVx http://ift.tt/2z9SIDl

[buzzcrowd]

What’s It Like To Work In Marketing & Communications? | #BoFEducation The Communications Store give an insight as to how role of fashion PR has grown in importance in the digital age, and how you can be a part of it. Read More: Subscribe Here: source

[choukilly-blog]

FYI... Have a look

[cherdocx]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3u-92jpuaQ&list=WL&index=50

How Do You Create Brand Awareness:

Three Elements:

1. Target Customer- the more you know about how your target customer lives her life, the more you can get a sense of how you might meet her (wardrobe) needs in her everyday life - her lifestyle, where she lives/work, what is important to her - helps you to engage  target customer to create awareness about your brand

2. Brand Story - resonate with consumer, the story that buyers/press/consumers will talk about when they think about your brand - who you are, what you are providing/doing, why its unique, why it matters

Competitive industry + Readily available talent = Well-designed + High Quality product is Price of Entry, i.e. Table Stakes

Example of strong brand story: Alexander Wang and the model off-duty aesthetic - instantly gets a sense of who AW is dressing and the aspirations of the woman he is dressing, summarized in a short sentence (people instantly understand what it is + phrase gets tossed around amongst buyers/press/consumers)

3. Marketing Mix - Alignment of 4Ps

Pricing: many young designers assume they need to operate at the luxury end of the market, but by pricing at a more accessible price point there's a bigger market opportunity (also allows consideration about materials you can use, places you can sell)

Pricing effectively positions you in the market and helps you understand who the adjacent brands are that you're competiting with)

Place:

Consider: Your product is available where your target customer naturally shops, place which is consistent with the positioning of your product from a price standpoint

Promotion: Type of magazines/boutiques that your target customer interacts with on social media

As the designer/creative designer, you're overseeing several elements of the marketing mix (i.e. developer/manufacturer is not the same person as the one who is doing the promoting/advertising while in a fashion brand, the person in charge often is the one person taking care of different aspects)

Advertising/PR: As a young brand you have a smaller budget but you can make powerful imagery (campaign/lookbook images - some magazines might give you some placement in the magazines for free if you have interesting, powerful images) that can be used online for new media marketing or social media marketing to build awareness about your brand

When someone hears about your brand, they're going to look you up on Google and if what comes back is not a clear representation of who you are as a brand, your promotion/communication about your brand is no longer controlled by you.

Important to have a website/social media platform that: shows who you are as a brand, showcases your products, makes it clear about what you're offering to the market, allows you to participate in the conversation about your brand, especially as fashion is a growing market online

Build relationships with the press, especially those who have a genuine interest in your product

Invest in platforms that you have enough resource and time to manage properly, because followers will expect regular delivery of communication and interaction with them

Create content that sparks an emotional reaction, which gets people to share

[terresekopp]

4. How Do You Create Brand Awareness? | #BoFEducation

[creditcardninja-blog]

www.pbhcanada.ca Do You Really Want to Start a Fashion Business? #BoFEducation via www.pbhcanada.ca

[radicalruby]

On #BoFLIVE tomorrow, Susanne Tide-Frater will give a masterclass on her #BoFEducation course, The Art and Science of Buying and Merchandising. Register for free for the digital event here: https://bit.ly/2WzkNiY pic.twitter.com/3VMsU2qpbS

On #BoFLIVE tomorrow, Susanne Tide-Frater will give a masterclass on her #BoFEducation course, The Art and Science of Buying and Merchandising. Register for free for the digital event here: https://bit.ly/2WzkNiY  pic.twitter.com/3VMsU2qpbS

from Twitter Search / BoF https://twitter.com/BoF/status/1247541877261266944

[terresekopp]

2. How Do You Write a Fashion Business Plan? | #BoFEducation