Tatiana Ashakova has been working in the fashion industry for over 15 years and is familiar with the intricacies of work in three countries – Russia, Great Britain and Germany. Moving from country to country, she was actively engaged in the development of her brand without any investment support.
So here Tatiana gives tips for beginning designers:
1. Find all the free branding services out there.
It could be the free Wix site I started with, the Canva app, or any other visual layout service. Promotion of designer brands via the Internet is becoming more and more relevant every year. Social networks play a very important role if a brand does not have Instagram and Facebook accounts, then in the modern world it can look suspicious for a potential buyer.
2. Promote your services or products on Pinterest.
This is one of the most visited and primarily free platforms where you can find inspiration for any format of visual content and show your own design. Tatiana will soon talk about how to properly configure this service and get the most out of it as part of her course on promoting design through Pinterest.
3. Interact with people from the creative environment.
If your fellow designers are going to an interesting event, ask them to wear your product. Promoting a new designer brand is not an easy task, and creative collaborations will come in handy. To get noticed, you need to present your product in the right context.
4. Try to get into the media and interact with stylists.
Seeing your products in editorial materials or as illustrations on a spread is an incomparable pleasure and great PR. If you like the work of this or that stylist and you see that he can present your product with high quality, write him a personal message or just send a lookbook with an offer of cooperation. This helps to remember you and to attract you to the project in the future – stylists of printed publications need to see where they can request a product corresponding to a specific topic. The collaboration with the stylist for the print edition is the one used for this blog post and eventually got published in L’Officiel. You need to constantly be on the lookout and keep track of who is published and where, to know exactly where you want to see your product. If your collection is in the style of publication, the likelihood that it will be taken for publication is quite high.
5. Work on barter terms where possible.
At the initial stage, this will give a good starting push. This principle will work if people grow together, and will help each of them to rise. Do not hesitate to offer your products in exchange for this or that service, but do not forget about a critical look on your creations – you must be sure that they are really worthy for the other person to invest their time and energy in this project. Nonprofit partnerships with celebrities are also possible and works well to popularize the brand at launch, demonstrating the brand's status.
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