I see it all too often. Brands spend thousands of dollars on their debut range and months on designing and manufacturing, and they get so excited about their big launch, but they do it all – without a launching strategy. Then when they launch, they launch to crickets, no one knows about them, and their first few orders are to family and friends.
But it’s not just a mistake I see new fashion brands or emerging brands make. I know plenty of established labels who launch a new range without a plan, and they struggle to sell it. Then, they think releasing another range will fix their financial problems, instead of using a strategy to sell the existing stock they have, and the cycle continues until they can't afford to continue and they close.
It doesn’t matter if you’re a new sustainable fashion brand or an established label releasing a new range, you can’t launch without a good pre-launch strategy. Well, you can, but the results probably won’t be great and you’ll end the season with a lot of stock sitting around waiting to be sold. That’s both unsustainable from an environmental perspective and unsustainable from a business perspective.
So how do you not launch to crickets? How do you launch your sustainable fashion label or your new collection and guarantee sales?
It’s simple. You have a pre-launch strategy in place - an engaging, exciting and inspiring pre-launch strategy that drives hype, drives interest and builds a community of ready-to-buy customers even before you have a product to sell them.
Building an audience of ready-to-buy customers when you don’t even have a product is the smartest thing you can do. It’ll save you launching to crickets, it'll guarantee sales, and it’ll drive loyalty and repeat customers in the long run.
But, before you even delve into creating a pre-launch plan, the most important thing to know is, you need a minimum of three months lead time to promote your upcoming launch. You need time to build your buying audience, and you need time to build hype. Three months might seem like a long time to promote a product you don’t even have available to sell yet, but it’s the runway you need to launch strong, and see lasting sales.
If you want to learn more about my eight step pre-launch plan that works for both new fashion brands and established fashion labels releasing new collections, you need my Pre-Launch Masterclass which I can walk you through here.
Claire x
