How many designs do I need to launch my lingerie brand?

A question I often get asked is ‘How many design do I need to launch my lingerie brand?’

When people come to me they often ask how many designs do they need to launch a brand, but before that let’s back track as before that question you need to ask ‘have I decided who my brand is for?’

Why is this important? Because without knowing who you are designing for, you will forever be in a circle of designing and designing, researching and researching, without getting any further. You can spend hours looking at lingerie or jotting down ideas, that when you try put them all together it’s one big mess and you think the answer is ‘I need to add more designs into my collection’.

Personally, when it come to lingerie design I love brights, I love neutrals with fluros, I love plains, I love Liberty prints, I love satins mixed with laces, I love natural cotton, I love simple designs, I love designs that have many straps. Just think if I tried to draw a collection from that! I would be adding more and more designs into my first collection, to include it all, thinking I had to try and make everyone my customer. When you try please everyone, you please no-one and you end up with a Vanilla brand, that looks good but doesn’t get people identifying with you, connecting with you wanting to support you and love what you produce.

My first part of my Lingeri-E-Course ‘How to design and refine your first lingerie collection - Ideas’ covers how to narrow down your ideas, how to pick FIVE words that define your brand and then how to take those five words and design the most epic collection.

So, back to the first question - ‘How many designs do I need to launch my lingerie brand?’ Remember this, for every style or piece you design you need to get it through production, a tech pack, a technical drawing, a spec sheet etc, even if you are planning to make everything yourself, you need to fit it all, get it graded, source the fabrics and labels for each. When I launched my brand I had one uw bra style, one soft bra style, and then use to mix up the bottoms, I ended up with one brief and one thong style that I would repeat. I had other briefs but the ones that didn’t sell well I never repeated.

With these four lingerie patterns/styles I launched a collection twice a year then would drop a small collection if I saw some amazing fabric (I handmade 97% of the lingerie I sold). Within each collection it consisted of three styles each linked together usually by colour. In the year that would be seven styles of bras, the same pattern used.

Why did I use only pattern, as well as what I’ve outlined above there was only me, I didn’t want to waste resources or time on developing new styles each season when I could be working on promoting my business. If I’d have picked another style bra I would have had to fit it, grade it and fit it again. Also my niche was small back, big boobs, an area where often fit is a token after thought. I wanted women to feel it was the best bra to offer support as well as fun. To buy a bra one season and they knew that the fit would be the same in the next season, which meant they could buy online with confidence.

Did my style of bra suit everyone?

No

Did I loose a customer by not having a choice of different uw style bras?

Maybe, however I was more intent on building a strong brand , knowing how that bra would fit, building a customer base. The easy part is the design, the hardest part is the grit it takes to keep going with the day-to-day running of the business. What you don’t want is all your cashflow stuck in boxes that you have to step over and can’t produce a second collection. Building slow and steady is far better and having money to market rather than lots of designs.

It all depends on what type of lingerie you are launching, if it’s something that is solving a problem you may only need to launch that one item. As a reminder Sara Blakey of ‘Spanx’ only launched with one SKU for many a year. If you are launching lingerie within a large target market then you will need more than one item so you can photograph them together to create a story. Don’t water down your designs by adding more. Be renowned for a specific area of lingerie design and build from there.

If you would like more help with your designs, please look at ‘How to design and refine your first lingerie collection’ or you can contact me directly. ( laurie@vanjonssondesign.com)

Let 2025 be the year you get started.