When I talk about eliminating competition, I’m not on about taking them down, “pow pow”. This is more about celebrating your brand and making your brand stronger therefore what ever anyone else is doing is irrelevant.

When you first start out, you’ve seen other brands you like, and follow them for inspiration. You know which brands are similar to yours and know where to position yourself in the marketplace. You probably wish to emulate some of their success with your designs.

Their Success

When starting your own brand, it’s great to see how other brands have done it. You often hear of the brands that just invested £1000 took it from their living room and now turn over six figures. What you need to ask yourself is when they did this? I’ve seen lots of brands be successful by their marketing, using influencers on Instagram, at a time when Instagram wasn’t saturated with influencers and before a time when Instagram brought in the rule that you had to state whether it was an Ad - which does make all the difference. I’m not saying don’t go down this route, as there as still lots of benefits and money to made this way, but be aware that there are a lot of people/brands doing it this way so you may not have instant success. Ask yourself what can you do differently?

Always follow the money

What I mean by this is, always check your stats, what is selling the best? What size? Where are your customers coming from? And try repeat as much as that until it changes, then change your direction as well. Even if it’s different to what everyone else is doing. I had a 28FF soft bra, that countless people said that size wouldn’t sell. It went on to be in my top five sellers. Each season I would drop it into a different colour and paid attention, if plain or printed versions sold better, so knew exactly what was selling and made sure each season I either reproduced it or put it in a different colour.

Be consistent

It’s a boring tip, but so important, especially if you have your brand as a side gig. Start to commit to working on your brand, work out the style of your brand, and in social media start to tell your story with consistent images. Also make sure your styling reflects your brand image. You can tell if someone is all over the place with their images, that’s not to say you can’t mix it up or change it if it’s not working though. Work out what makes you different, what sets you apart? Show where your inspiration comes from.

Another thing I would work out is where do you want your brand to go? Do you want to be stocked with a certain stockist? In a certain country? Sell just online through social media? Once you’ve worked that out it won’t matter what your competitors are up to.

What to do next?