Fashion designing is a field for the creative ones. It becomes interesting when you mix the colors with different designs and accidentally make a new thing. But this industry is far too vast. It becomes difficult for the newbies to catch up with the fast growing world. Every day you wake up in the morning, you see a whole new world of fashion.
The content keeps updating at such an enormous high rate that selecting goods becomes difficult. To keep up with such a competition is really a very hard thing. But first, let’s discuss about the fundamental difference between the business of selling fashion and clothing.
Business of selling clothes runs on the equation of need or demand; demand for ‘nice’ & ‘affordable’ clothes which can be bought conveniently from the comfort of home using the internet. While, the business of fashion runs on the desire to be in mod. Both these businesses have different audiences and require different styles of marketing.
So let’s take a look at what it needs to be a good Fashion Designer. And what are the important factors they consider in knowing their customers and markets.
1. Perceived Value
The worth that a product or service has in the mind of the consumer is called Perceived Value. The consumer’s perceived value of a good or service affects the price that he or she is willing to pay for it. It is difficult to measure the perceived value, but it makes a great impression on the customer. The scale for the measure of perceived value is brand loyalty, awareness and the positive impact it has in the market. It is essential to think about what the user is going to type.
2. Customer Knowledge
Like ‘Ann Handley’ said that make the customer a hero of your story. Talking in a serious perspective for creating a lifetime customer, it is essential to know the customer closely. A new trend has undergone, Fashion designers are trying to collect more info about their customers to provide a personalized shopping experience. Connecting the contact info with the content info is also a very good practice.
- David Selinger, former head of Amazon.com’s personalization team and data mining revealed that when the company introduced personalized product recommendations, the site-wide profits boosted by 10-20 percent.
- Different sites like “Style for Hire” and “Bombfell” are a good practical illustration of personalized shopping experience.
3. Openness and Honesty
Living in the 21st century the brands have to be completely open and honest with their customers. It makes the customer feel secure. Because, an unhappy customer can cause a lot of damage to the company with the medium of social media. Product reviews can be important in this aspect. It is mandatory to be real with the reviews you put up on your website for your products. You should become constantly engaged with you customers, this can be done by giving them the facility of feedback. If you have screwed up something then it’s no use to hide it, just accept it. Providing the customer a friendly atmosphere is what it needs for an evergreen business.
4. Equipped with what is “IN”
Fashion Designers invest a lot to make their product look something bigger than it really is. With the emergence of E-Commerce it becomes easy. It only takes some cool snapshots of the product or any part of the product. It becomes more like making the customer see the product with your eyes. Packaging of the product is also an important thing. A nice packaging creates a great influence on the mind of the customer. And instead of selling the clothes, selling the look is more important. Just avoid selling non-exclusive products.
5. Passionate at what you do
One should be passionate about what he’s doing and should do it with heart. One should develop good aesthetics among the customer. Listening to the taste of customers and learning to develop that taste in the products is the real thing a Fashion Designer needs to do.
6. Observers- Market Analysis
It is important to keep up with the market. The competition is gigantic. Therefore, one should develop a competitive spirit. Latest trends keep on coming and you just have to adapt yourself with them. Innovation is one of the most important things. You should not copy others, instead make something new, no matter how silly it looks but it may be the foundation of the new trend which the world will follow.
Last but not least, make your business customer centric. Intense focus on the customers is the need of the time. Authenticity, honesty, and personal voice underlie much of what is successful on the internet. And, don’t just plan, implement it.
