The coronavirus pandemic definitely affected different sectors of the world, including the fashion industry. Due to the lockdown ordered by the government, many fashion entrepreneurs were not able to reach out to clients and prospective clients in hopes of selling products and services.
We acknowledge the fact that the lockdown may have brought a decline in your business, but it’s always best to use whatever situation you are in to your advantage. You have the ability to turn a bad situation into a good one if you set your mind to it.
“If you have a lemon, make a lemonade” – Dale Carnegie
That being said, the lockdown shouldn’t have been all gloomy and down for your business, as there are certain things you, as a fashion entrepreneur, should have checked off.
Top 5 Things You Should Have Checked Off During This Lockdown
1. Identifying Challenges In Your Brand: Every fashion brand faces challenges, but as the owner and creative director, it is best to have identified these challenges, in order to work towards correcting them. So, what challenges are you facing in managing your fashion brand? Does it have to do with your brand strategies and awareness? Or maybe your brand structure?
The lockdown period should have been a time to carefully identify and list out these challenges. After you must have identified your brand’s challenges, what next?
2. Mapping Out Suitable Solutions For The Challenges: The problems your brand faces today should only serve as guidelines to map out a solution. Were you losing customers before the lockdown? Maybe it’s time to revamp that brand strategy or increase your brand awareness. Whatever the problem may have been, with adequate research and brainstorming, a solution would surely have been found.
“Problems are not stop signs, they are guidelines” – Robert H. Schuller
3. Improving Social Media Presence: The importance of social media in this digital era cannot be overemphasized. As far as you want to promote your brand, and reach a wider audience, you need to improve the social media presence of your brand.
Whether by posting pictures of previous designs, or clients rocking your outfits, the lockdown should have been a period to put your brand out there more. In doing this, you just might have reached potential customers who would want to patronise your brand.
4. Professional Development: It is always advisable for creative people, especially fashion business owners, to take courses and workshops to broaden their knowledge concerning certain topics. The world is continually changing, and coming up with new trends and styles.
What are you, as a fashion business owner, doing to stay on top of these new trends and styles? Are you solely relying on knowledge gained from previous years to take your fashion brand to the next level? Or are you making moves to develop yourself professionally? Taking courses and workshops would definitely have helped to widen your horizon, and make you open to new ideas and inspiration.
5. Finding Ways To Adapt To The Current Situation: Now that the lockdown has been eased, everything will not return to normal for a while, so as a fashion entrepreneur, you should have come up with ways to adapt to the current situation.
Partnering with a delivery agency full time will help in getting your products to clients who are still wary of moving around. Other ideas should have come to mind, so that now that the lockdown has been lifted, your business can thrive full-time.
Doing all these during the lockdown would have really gone a long way in helping your brand, however, if you didn’t, the next best time to try them out is now!
