The Market Environment Is Severe. Six Things Need To Be Known In Selling Fashion.

Earlier this year, entrepreneurs Alex Drexler and designer Somsack Sikhounmoung improved the Alex brand of men's shirt brand and brought it back to the market, changing its business to selling basic clothing for men and women. Recently, some interesting things happened in Soho Office of Alex Mill.

"We hear a knock on the door once a week, which comes from thinking that offices are random customers of shops," explains Sikhounmuong. Previously, Sikhounmuong worked for 16 years in the once hot and now troubled J.Crew group, and he served as the chief design officer of the group before leaving.

Although there are no products available for sale in the exhibition hall of Alex Mill, spontaneous visits give customers the opportunity to touch clothes, and sometimes they can talk with the founder of the brand one to one. Do you want to know what their leaving gifts are? It's a free handbag.

"This is a way to meet and listen to feedback," Sikhounmoung continued. "People want a Alex Mill retail store, which makes us feel very interesting."

So, four months after the online re launch of the brand, Drexler and Sikhounmoung decided to listen to customer feedback. With the support of investor Drexler Ventures (the founder of the fund is a retail giant, former J.Crew CEO Millard "Mickey" Drexler, is also the former owner of Sikhounmoung and the father of Alex), the Drexler and Sikhounmoung team will open a physical store on June 13th at Green Street 63, a few blocks away from its office.

When BoF first disclosed that the Alex Mill brand was restarted, its store program was far from certain. On the contrary, Drexler and Sikhounmuong focus on e-commerce and expand wholesale business, including cooperation with Nodes Tron (Nordstrom), Mr Porter and Barneys New York. Like more and more early start-up brands, although these channels are still critical to their growth, Alex Mill also Betts on providing customers with physical store experience.

When a short-term Soho leasing opportunity arises, they decide to take the risk and set up a physical store (which prevents them from signing a lease contract for a period of ten years). The store is scheduled to open in autumn. The company said that this helped sales exceed people's expectations, and men's and women's wear sales exceeded their targets every month.

Alex Drexler said: "we saw a good impetus for this business in the early days and a good opportunity to lease. This is very meaningful.

However, despite Mickey Drexler's financial support and advice, while Drexler and Sikhounmuong also have professional knowledge, the team soon found that startups lacking big company support had some degree of freedom, but there were still more restrictions.

The following are some of their current experiences:

There are still many things to do. So far, Mickey Drexler and Sikhounmuong are all working in enterprises, and lack of resources related to entrepreneurship is a major challenge they need to solve.

"I've always had a lot of people to do things. In start-up companies, we have to do things ourselves and do many things at the same time, "Mickey Drexler said. "No big bank pays for you. All the money you spend is your own. This is not the same as before. "

For Sikhounmong, a small team means that he needs to change the way he manages his time. He said, "if you want to do something, you have to do it by yourself. You have to take responsibility. "

You can execute faster. When Alex Mill announced a partnership with Broolyn's Front Street General store, it could release messages directly on Instagram and sell the final product (redesigned retro military uniform). Independent retailers can often do this, but for large companies, it is much more difficult to do so.

Sikhounmuong said: "the products launched at noon on Wednesday are sold out in a few hours, just like a new show, but this is achieved through Instagram. The scale of the things we are doing allows us to do something small and challenging, which is great for me.

The future business (mainly) is directly oriented to consumers. Although Alex Mill plans to maintain long-term cooperation with multi brand retailers, its focus is to promote direct sales to maintain a healthy profit margin. Although multi brand retailing is an effective marketing tool for smaller brands, it is not necessarily the most effective way to establish lasting relationships with customers. "Ultimately, what we do is to face up to the customers' business," Alex Drexler said.

Physical retail can be very powerful. Although data from e-commerce and retail partners contribute to the brand development, this is not enough. Drexler father and son and Sikhounmoung believe that the opening of a physical store, where customers can try on clothes, experience the design concept of brand representatives, will enable the team to gain more in-depth business insight.

Alex Drexler said, "it's too early. We don't have enough data for reference. We are still learning. " He and Sikhounmoung are longing for more people to try on their designs, and store them as an additional marketing tool to showcase the complete fashion line with Marais and Bata Heritage brands.

Mickey Drexler said: "the potential rewards are worth our risk. Whether it is effective or not, we are willing to solve the problem, so people will see that Alex Mill is a real enterprise. "

Algorithm can only let you go so far. Many newly established start-ups are convinced that data will improve everything, such as improving retail interest rates and forecasting consumer demand. But while AI and predictive analysis can bring advantages to businesses and designers, Alex Mill's team says they still rely on intuition to design popular products.

Alex Mill's flight suit is very practical in style, but compared with traditional style, it has made more customized design, and has achieved great success and sales far exceeded expectations. A few months ago, many publications published their presentations, including the US version of Harper's BAZAAR. When this flight suit was sold on physical stores and online stores, it sold out instantly and soon produced a list of alternate customers. Sikhounmuong has also designed a short flying suit suitable for summer wear. Meanwhile, Alex Mill has prepared a large number of autumn flying suits.

Mickey Drexler said, "no computer can tell you what kind of design is good style for future life. You are always guessing the sales volume of your products.

Almost all competitors of Alex Mill, including Madewell and Everlane, have the same flight suit. But the flying clothing of Alex Mill is very popular, which helps to prove the reason for the existence of the brand: providing the best style of common clothes. In addition to conjoined pants, Alex Mill's men's jackets and pleats are almost sold out in two weeks.

Alex Drexler said: "despite so many clothes, we still don't think we have the right clothes. The clothes and the price do not match, and the fabric and fit are not satisfactory."

Emotional design is still important. When Alex Mill changed from men's shirt brand to men's lifestyle clothing series, it did not actually provide any products available in the market. In recent years, the so-called "Instagram brand" has emerged, and these brands are committed to making use of fancy clothing to fill the market gap. Unlike them, Alex Mill takes the details and fitness as its core, focusing on the quality and uniqueness of clothing, which makes the brand distinctive. Even consumers who live in general are looking for something better.

Nowadays, with the prevalence of discount, the overflow of clothing products and the increasingly complicated clothing design, all these lead to the increasingly serious retail environment. In such an environment, it is too early to judge whether Alex Mill can succeed. But interestingly, emotional fashion design is still a highlight of attracting customers.

Sikhounmoung said, "products with emotional design always make me a consumer. The brand with feelings and positive feelings will stop me and buy products. "