Five Secrets To Scale Your Sustainable Fashion Brand To Multiple Six Figures
What if you could scale your sustainable fashion brand to multiple six figures without burning out or constant stress? Seems too good to be true? Well, it’s not and this post will share five tips on how you can run a profitable business without the stress and overwhelm.
Secret #1: Your Time is Valuable
The first mindset shift you need to have is to act like your time is valuable. When you first started your brand, you were likely a solopreneur who did everything yourself. You took on product design, met with manufacturers, ran the Instagram account, and answered emails — it was all on you to manage. Most businesses start that way and it's a good experience for the founder because as you grow and outsource the work to someone else, you know what methods work, what challenges they might come across, etc.
However, if everything needs to go through you and everything is managed by you, there will come a point when you’re spread so thin that you’ll start dropping the ball. There will be deadlines you’re frantically trying to manage, fires you’re putting out and an overall extremely stressful process. If you want to grow and scale your business to multiple six figures, you need to free up your time to do things that move the needle in your business and lead to record-breaking sales.
This shift of valuing your time and slowly outsourcing work won’t happen overnight but one thing you can start to think about is putting a dollar figure on your time. If your time is worth $100/hour, then is it in the business's best interest for you to spend 3 hours, equivalent to $300 packing and shipping orders when you could hire someone for $20/hour to do that? Isn’t that 3 hours of your time better spent thinking about your company’s sales strategy or developing a robust marketing plan?
ACTIONS:
Assign a dollar figure to your time. What’s your hourly rate?
Now that you have an hourly rate, what tasks seem “expensive” and not the best use of your time? Make a list of at least 5 items
Secret #2: Give Up Control
Now that you’ve made the commitment to value your time and gathered a list of 5+ items that don’t make sense for you to continue doing, you might be thinking “Okay Selina, I get that my time’s valuable so I’m going to step away from these tasks, but these items are still important and need to get done. What do I do?”
This is when you outsource! Now that you’ve determined these tasks don’t make sense for you to do, find someone else to complete them. If you’re low on budget, ask a loved one (family or friend) to help you in exchange for an IOU, complimentary product(s), etc. Alternatively, you can also hire a part-time intern or contractor to lend you a hand.
I know it can be daunting if you’ve never outsourced work before. I get that your brand is your baby and you might not trust anyone else to run your social media, talk to customers, or ship orders. However, if you want to grow and scale your brand, you need additional resources to help you achieve your goals. The key is to bring on interns/contractors/employees that you trust, you know will do a good job and spend the necessary time training them so they’re set up for success.
ACTIONS:
Who can help you with the tasks you previously identified?
Start developing a job posting if you need to recruit someone
Secret #3: Stop Discounting Products
You can achieve record-breaking sales without discounting your products or putting them on sale. I repeat: you do not have to rely on discount codes or flash sales to get more revenue. You should stay far, far away from that strategy because it’s a dangerous marketing strategy.
If you’re a slow fashion brand, you likely have high product development costs because your clothing and/or accessories are made out of high-quality, long-lasting materials and you pay your garment workers a living wage. All of that is amazing and you should feel proud! However, that likely means you have higher costs associated with your garments which in turn leads to selling your pieces at a higher price point to cover costs and make a profit. Due to the higher price points, you likely position your company as a premium brand.
If you’re running a premium fashion line, it’s very important to maintain brand equity (perceived value and worth of your brand). As your clothing is priced higher, it can be tempting to do a flash sale or have a 30% discount code to increase sales. And that’s okay once in a while if you need to move inventory or you’re struggling but you cannot discount products every month or every quarter. If you regularly discount products, your customer will get used to only buying on sale and will no longer purchase items at full price. I’m sure you can think of a few brands that always go on sale so you wait for discounts to purchase their products and avoid buying items at full price. The same concept applies here and you do not want that to be the case with your fashion label, especially if you’re positioning it as a premium brand.
ACTIONS:
Commit to stop discounting your products to achieve revenue targets. What you need to do instead is understand your sales levers (more on that next)
Map out the next year for your brand — when do you anticipate doing sales? I challenge you to strive for only 1-2 sales a year.
Secret #4: Understand Your Sales Levers
You need to understand your sales levers so you can reach multiple six figures in revenue. A sales lever is something you know is going to drive additional revenue into your business. Examples could include a certain marketing campaign, marketing advertising, etc. Notice that discounting or putting your products on sale is not a lever that I want you to use. Do not become reliant on making your products cheaper to meet your sales targets. Instead, explore alternative sales levers and methods.
ACTIONS:
Brainstorm what other sales levers you can utilize
Secret #5: Surround Yourself With the Right People
You might have heard that you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with and I wholeheartedly agree with that. If you’re surrounded by people working 9 - 5 jobs and you’re an entrepreneur, that experience is likely very lonely and isolating because the people around you won’t understand what you’re going through and can’t offer much advice. Similarly, if you’re surrounded by “starving artists” or entrepreneurs that haven’t hit six figures in their business, you likely won’t be extremely profitable or hit six figures either.
You need to have people in your life that have successfully scaled their businesses so that it shows you what’s possible, expand your viewpoints, and you can be inspired by them. It’s important to have friends/accountability buddies that know what your goals are and can push you in that direction. It’s also equally important to have mentors that can guide you, help prevent mistakes and escalate your growth.
ACTIONS:
See if there are any entrepreneur friends that you can reach out to and start a mastermind group
If you’re lacking some inspirational/aspiration content, check out our Recloseted Radio Podcast (available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play & Stitcher)
Do the research and see what courses or programs you want to join to get the right strategies, support and accountability. For example, we have the Launch Your Brand Program meant to launch sustainable fashion brands.
