EP.05/ Essential Steps To Build A Strong Sustainable Brand
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In this episode, you will learn key elements of how to build a sustainable fashion brand and create a roadmap that sets you up for success.
What We Cover In Today’s Episode - Transcript:
0:15
Welcome to Episode Five. Today, we are talking about essential steps to building a strong sustainable brand, I really want to make sure that you have a really great roadmap from when you're starting so that you can set yourself up for success.
There are many steps to building a strong, sustainable brand. So I've broken it down. And in this episode, we're going to be talking specifically about strategic business models and growth planning. We're also going to talk about ethical branding and brand protection - so how important it is to legally protect your brand.
There's also another section I wanted to talk about, which is production. For example, materials certification, packaging, logistics, how to measure your carbon footprint, and how can you minimize it, what type of materials you're using, what certifications you're looking for, what certifications you're aiming for. There's a lot on the production side that we won't be able to cover in today's episode. But please let me know if you're interested in hearing about this side. You can either send me an email or DM me on Instagram and I can make an episode specifically about those things. But for today's episode, I'm going to focus on a strategic business model and growth planning, ethical branding and brand protection since that's where I specialize.
2:11 - Brand Protection
So the first thing I want to talk about is brand protection. A lot of people feel that if you paid for your domain name, and you have domain protection, then you're good. Well, not necessarily your website is definitely your digital protection. But it doesn't completely save you from copyright or trademark. This is a very big one that I personally find super important for brands to think about is the initial investment that they want to protect their identity and their ideas.
2:50
The way that you should think about it is, let's say you have this great brand idea and your designs are just gorgeous. And you really want to put out an amazing product and your website is done and everything. And you figured out all the other steps from packaging to shipping logistics to production, and you're certified and you have everything going well and you start going to market and you're making a ton of sales and then all of a sudden, someone sees that your trademark isn't registered and takes it. Now you have to completely rebrand and change your entire business because someone took your trademark.
3:28
Now I feel like that is a large price to pay for such a minimal investment at the start to protect yourself. And that does happen to so many people and it's so tragic because if you have an idea or you have a brand or business or even if you are self-employed or an entrepreneur and you're just getting started, someone with more power can come about, take your ideas and use them for themselves. And if you are trademarked then you're protected from anyone taking your proprietary information.
4:02
So the great thing about trademarking your brand is that it's a first come first serve situation. There was a case with Kim Kardashian that was trying to start a new company called SKKNS (I think - something like that), and she wanted to get it trademarked but it was too similar to another company from a small business owner called SKYNS. And Kim Kardashian basically could not get the trademark because this person, even though she did not have the same influence, the same status, the same money, none of that, she got the trademark first. So her brand was protected. And on top of that, she got a little bit of media exposure there because a large influence wanted her trademark.
So that's a very big example of how important it is to register your trademark. And it doesn't necessarily have to be expensive, like, obviously it's expensive, but it doesn't have to completely break the bank.
5:16
So if that's something that you are interested in, definitely you can reach out to me directly, and we can talk about it. I can give you some resources for some trademarking companies and copyright companies that can help you get a trademark without completely breaking your bank or getting you into a ton of legal fees and government fee disasters.
I know that a lot of people don't get trademarks because they think this is going to be a $15,000 investment. No, not necessarily. I personally am in the middle of getting trademarked and I did not spend that much money. So it's definitely important, and definitely worth it.
So if you have any questions about that, or need some resources, or like a vendor list, just reach out to me, I'm happy to give that to you.
6:05 - Strategic Business Model & Growth Planning:
So the second part I want to talk about here is strategic business model and growth planning. So how will you maximize your business growth considering all the sustainable investments you need to make? How will you strategically act to make sure that you're ending the year on a positive note and making profits from your business?
6:24
Before everything, I would do this first, you need to have a strategic business model and growth plan and you need to review it constantly. Having a business plan and strategic business models in place will help you reduce your cost and increase efficiency in production, packaging, certification, materials, sourcing, and all of that. When you have a business model in place, and you have a plan for your growth, this helps you so much in all of it. Everything else just kind of flows into place.
7:03
Obviously, building a brand is difficult from either if you're a sustainable brand or not. Or if you're a fashion brand or tech company, it's hard. And it requires a lot of effort. But when you have that model in place that helps you get a good idea of what you need, and what your goals are, it can make the world of a difference.
When I started self-employment, it came very quickly. And I did not prepare for it at all. I had ideas and I had goals, and I knew what I wanted to do. But I did not have a strategic business plan in mind. So there are times where sometimes you just have to, you know, jump on an opportunity and make it work. But that's not to say that it shouldn't be the case for everyone. And, you know, I do recommend having that in place. And I myself, I'm currently building mine for 2022.
8:09
So that's another thing, it's very important to plan ahead and think about how you're going to make your business work in the next couple of years. And what are your goals? And how are you going to make it work? From a logistical standpoint, from a staffing sound point from how much you can personally take on like you can't do everything? And then also how are you going to keep your head above the water? How are you going to pay the bills, you know, like that's something that's super important to keep in mind? And also to analyze, because if you just go in knowing that all these things and all these certifications are going to cost so much and you do all this research, you might just get completely overwhelmed and just want to shut down and just be like this isn't gonna work for me. So you want to make sure that you do that plan in place first and come up with a strategy that gets you customers before you even go to market and etc.
8:56 - Ethical Branding:
This next and final section here is ethical branding. So brand image building, marketing, and how will your branding investment translate to actual sales and dollars brought into your business.
9:08 - Transparency & Authenticity
The most important part about building an ethical branding strategy is that you want to make sure that your brand is being authentic. That is the keyword here. You don't need to be perfect. You don't need to have every certification under the sun under your belt because we know that when you're starting out, no one can afford that. It's insane how much it costs to be completely 100% sustainable right now. There's a long way for the industry to go for us to reach a point where the price to be certified is competitive and easy to access for all of us. And unfortunately, that's just not the case at the moment and it is somewhat selective. So I do know that it isn't possible to have everything right from the very start. That's for one, but one thing that is possible is how you communicate with your consumers.
I've mentioned this before in my Greenwashing Signs To Avoid episode and Brand Impact episode, you have to be authentic with how you communicate. If you're not perfect, say that, if you're working on something really innovative, say that, if you have managed to reduce 20% of your carbon footprint in the first year of production, say that! And don't shy away from 1) talking about the good about your brand, but also 2) talking about your flaws.
10:27
There is something so valuable to consumers when you focus on the pros and the cons of running a business. People want to know the ins and outs of what it takes to be a sustainable brand. People want to know your struggles and your shortfalls, and what is making you be successful. So one big part of that is transparency and authenticity.
You really want to make sure that your whole communication plan is centred around those two principles; transparency, and authenticity.
11:00
And you also want to make sure that your brand image is reflecting of your own personal values as well as a company, you know. There's obviously the ethical parts, which is, you know, transparency, authenticity, you want to make sure that that's covered. But you also want to include your personality in your branding, you don't want to just seem like any random brand that just started and has a copy-paste template on their website.
There was a moment when I was doing some market research. And in that one sitting, I went through like 10 brands with the exact same Shopify template. And I was like, oh my god. So you definitely want to make sure that you are building your online presence to be authentic and unique to you.
You want it to reflect your personality, and you want to stand out from the rest. You need to really think about, what's your unique selling point here. What is what's going to captivate your audience, what's going to make people buy from you, instead of going online to People Tree (which is a very large sustainable company). What sets you apart?
You really want to think about that and hone into what you do that's different than anyone else, and focus on that and ride that out until the end, because that is your that's your moneymaker right there. And you'll want to make sure that you're really honing into what makes you you and I find that so many brands feel worried or scared, especially when they're in the beginning stage to really hone into their unique selling point because they're like, well, other people aren't doing that. I don't want to seem like I'm doing something stupid and blah, blah, blah. It's like no, that's the whole point: being unique to yourself and being authentic with yourself. So that's one, then you want to make sure that you have a branding and marketing strategy in place to help you reach your bottom line
12:58 - Marketing & Advertising
So how are you advertising your products? And how frequently Are you advertising? What's your advertising budget? Don't get me wrong, advertising is not the solution to everything. You need to have a budget for marketing and advertising. But you also need to have a content plan in place that can help you grow substantially or steadily as your advertising as well. If you advertise and that's all you do, then you won't be able to grow organically. So you don't want to be advertising dependent. You also want to be able to grow organically and establish your own relationships with yourself. So that's something to keep in mind as well.
Another thing you'll probably want to consider when you're building a strong sustainable brand is a pre-launch strategy. Have a strategy in place where you're launching before you're launching. Generate a lot of excitement and engagement with your future customers before you actually launch. That will 1) help you sell out faster. And 2) help you build a connection with your customers that will last a longer period of time instead of just like one sale from the very beginning that came out from an ad campaign or whatever.
14:12 - Ending Notes
So that's all that I have for you guys today. I really hope you enjoyed this episode and gained something useful. If you did, definitely share it with your network and save it in your Spotify account.
If you'd like to connect to talk about some pain points that you're having in your business and talk about how to implement strategic business models or how to protect your brand or how to make your branding more ethical, definitely reach out to me at cris@naturspired.com. I'd love to have a chat and learn a little bit more about what you're doing, and the ideas that are brewing.
As always, thank you guys for joining the Naturspired Podcast!
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