Ever increasing population, ever increasing consumers also bring in more & more numbers of brands, products, options, comfort & competition. How to build a new brand is the most important question faced by brand managers, entrepreneurs, founders et al.
Getting a consumer for a new brand into retail is not easy when you are competing with established brands that want all the space. It is from here where the buck stops & creative thinking /strategy begins that allows you to boost your product, brand portfolio, acquire the shelf space , mind space & place your hand in your wallet for the share of your reserved dollars for the need, the want, the brand, the product, the comfort, the esteem, the benefit you perceive.
In order to get the consumers to experience the delight of your product, one has to build the environment of awareness & develop a message, a story that resonates with your customer & creates a vacuum of need & lifestyle to motivate the consumer to see, feel and relish the experience of owning / usage.
To put the product on visual radar for customer likes, the strategy needs to undergo seasonal trends, the target audience acceptance, the budget for the production facility, design concept, product concept, selling concept, marketing concept, social concept.
The creative team needs to tour the buying offices, wholesalers, retailers, fashion designers targeting different segments for age, style, cultures, and budgets & whether the product is for new, repeat customer or different geography, socio economic class- all this has to be determined to answer how to build a new business.
RMG (readymade garments) & TMG (tailor made garments ) are two sides of the same coin & have equal share of pie in ladies dresses, but now the RMG segment is over speeding & taking away the TMG at an aggressive pace.
Fashion industry in garments has a rainbow of colors, pattern, designs and styles, functionality, usage from head covering duppattas of various lengths, scarves in many shapes, face veils, blouses, sweaters, cardigans, t-shirts, frocks, tunics, shirts, trousers, skirts, saris, jeans, paddle pushers, cycling shorts etc, various categories encompassing from swimming costumes, office dresses, casual dresses, party dresses, sports dresses & the range goes on. Each item has got thousands of variants, shades, styles to ensemble, design & production for RMG or exclusively for TMG.
With mass market coming in big way & niche segment, the fashion industry is divided into various segments. The Haute couture- the urban rich class chooses high quality expensive fabric for fashion clothing & gets it designed & tailored on made to measure. Each garment is made for specific client & sewn with extreme care, details & finishes & time consuming, labor oriented hand executed techniques are fully used. The next popular segment is the ready to wear clothes which fall in between haute couture & mass market, though not for mass market but great care is undertaken in the choice of fabric, print, cut & stitching through machines. These clothes are not made in bulk, they are for stores private label & have higher segment of society as the clientele.
The most rewarding segment is the mass market, as this segment covers wide range of consumers. Though this has the designs of the well known designers, but the fabric used is mass produced & mass production makes it cheap & volume sales reward the manufacturer. This market segment is targeted when the designer’s high-end product gets appreciation in the market & me too followers demand the Xeroxes of the original designs or slight variations. Fashion is influenced by cultural, social, economical conditions & is catalyzed by design, aesthetics, shape, sizes, complexion of the wearer, functionality & climate /environment of wearing clothes & changing consumer tastes.