How to launch a lingerie brand on a shoe string budget
When I started my lingerie brand, I’d been living in Belfast for two years, a year before I’d had an attempt at launching but the factory I was using went bust, taking all my fabrics, patterns, samples etc with it so I had to begin again. Previously I had used £2000+ which I had saved but within the year it was gone!
I went on a business course, gained a grant and took out a business loan with Princes Trust. I also had the unwise idea of launching withe T-shirts, mens and womens and even made and sold Jewellery at one point.
Bra made with dead stock material
I needed to get savvy, to spend the money on what mattered and try and reduce my costs elsewhere.
How I shopped smarter
Dead-stock materials
Sustainability was important to me, a word that now-a-days is banded about, but back in 2005 it wasn’t as prevalent. I began to look into dead stock fabrics. I found that I could get fabrics I loved cheaper and not hit a minimum, which was what I needed in the early days, when you think that 1m of fabric makes approx 6 briefs or 10-12 bras. It also made me happy that I was using fabrics that was already knitted up.
Brand labels
My brand used quite kitsch, retro fabrics and I wanted the labels to echo that, and have that feel of your lingerie labelled up like you did as a kid, however when I looked into the price I was shocked at the price it would take to design and get it woven up onto cotton labels. I ended up going proper retro and using a label company that wove the actual kids name labels. I put my brand name (with co.uk so you could find my website) and a size on each label. Therefore, even though I bought more labels I didn’t have to buy size labels. I just sewed the one label in.
Swing Tickets
Again this came out quite high, I didn’t want just a normal punched shaped hole, but again once I looked into this, the prices were really high, so I designed my own and got them printed on business card size, portrait instead of landscape, then bought a hole puncher which took of the corner and stamped a star-shape hole in it. Yup my Saturday nights were wild!!
These were a few things I did to get want a wanted in the design aesthetic I wanted without compromising and spending money in an area I didn’t want to spent in.
If I could go back again, before I spent any money I would look at how much I thought it would cost me in each area, so I could know where to spend the money and where I could hold back. What it taught me was that there is often another option however it usually takes a bit of leg power to achieve it. Also, I think a good thing to remember is that you are just starting, how you start is not how you will always be.