Why follow a trend when you can fill a need? CEO Steven Alan speaks on building a brand that’s unique and valuable—to your own team and to consumers.
As founding CEO of fashion and lifestyle brand Steven Alan, I’ve found success by creating a niche in the design industry. The company both encompasses my own collections and pioneers emerging designers through retail and wholesale distribution. Through trial and error, I’ve asked questions while building my business like: What is it that only I can do? What’s stopping someone else from duplicating this idea? While staying to true to my vision as a designer, have I also created enough barriers to entry?
I’ve learned to take chances and solicit input from people I trust. Here are three ways to help find your own niche and grow your business from there.
Notice Gaps and Fill Them
Soon after I started out as a multi-brand retailer, I noticed that the small designers we featured needed someone to help distribute their products and represent them. From that observation, and by venturing into designing my own line, I found that my niche was linking the design, retail and wholesale businesses. Before I knew it, I was running three distinctive businesses—design, retail and wholesale—and had to blend them cohesively and productively.
From a cash flow perspective, all three businesses have very different needs in terms of financing. It may have been easier to pursue just one, but this more holistic model keeps the Steven Alan brand unique and strengthens us. It also makes what I do really interesting, and one element supports the others.
Ask Tough Questions and Take Chances
Do you love what you’re doing enough to go after it again and again, or are you just following a trend? If you truly believe in what you’re doing, you’ll dig deeper and go further. After strategic brainstorming sessions with people you trust, test the validity of your ideas by throwing a bunch of stuff on the wall and seeing what sticks. Look for clues along the way that you’re going in the right direction.
Early on, we tried to bite off more categories than we could handle, like footwear and leather goods—things that required a larger production scale than we could manage at the time. Eventually, as we have after analyzing the market, you can return to categories you once had to give up and get them right if you have the bandwidth.
Create a Sounding Board
Cultivate a small group of people who will tell you the objective truth and challenge you. I have family members and long-time employees who can be frank with me to the point of argumentative. I value their opinions because I know their goal is to make the business better.
I also look to friends who work in the tech space for their ideas on innovation, and I consult with fashion industry veterans who have been through the ropes. But advising goes both ways: For the past four years, I’ve also benefited from mentoring up-and-coming designers for the CFDA [Council of Fashion Designers of America].
Author: Steven Alan
Founder and CEO, Steven Alan
(Article appeared first on American Express Open Forum Blog)
