Six months from the start of lockdown, small UK design labels, independent brands and retailers have had to rethink their strategies and production processes and adapt to survive the coronavirus crisis. The virus’ global pandemic has put supply chains and business costs under huge pressure and early on in March and April almost brought high street shopping to a halt.
Business models have had to shift quickly to online sales and rely on social media marketing to reach their customers and build solid communities of loyal followers who align themselves with the brand’s ethos and social consciousness.
Lara Intimates is a sustainable UK women's underwear brand who’s female manufacturing team produce every product in-house in London. Using ‘deadstock’ and locally sourced materials to make all products, and offering one of the widest bra size ranges in the world, 26A-36GG.
Cindy Liberman, CEO: “This year with Covid has been quite a rollercoaster. Just before the pandemic, we switched our manufacturing from made to order to make to stock. Just as we started to make stock of our best sellers, we had to close our factory for a month! I feel a bit like I've been playing catch up all year trying to keep the right inventory levels for our customers.
The silver lining of the lockdown is that I've had an opportunity to slow down and connect with experts in fashion product, manufacturing and supply chain. (QHQ has been a huge help in this.) Now our team is working on plans to scale up our production with more skills training for sewing machinists, better quality and more sizes for customers and more environmentally friendly materials in our products.”
Shopping on the high street may have become more challenging but online sales and shopping events have been a life saver for some independent brands. Laura Ludlow, an online business consultant has developed a female membership community on instagram for female founders, ‘Discovher’ which has gone from strength to strength despite the difficulties of this year.
During lockdown, Laura set up a pop-up online shopping event ‘Discovhergoespop’ to try to help out her clients, many of whom were the founders of small independent fashion, home, beauty and accessories brands. Laura says: “I was taken aback by the success of the first endeavour, nearly 500 brands signed up with exclusive offers for shoppers and the two day event even gained coverage in OK Magazine.” The event has now been rebranded as The Wonderlist Directory, has 6850 instagram followers and is preparing a bigger and better November event, with future plans to run three times per year.
Coronavirus has certainly created real and significant issues and challenges for independent brands and retailers, but in true Darwinian style, those that survive will be the stronger for it and perhaps more suited to the demands of the new way of life that will adopted across the globe.
https://laraintimates.com/pages/sustainable-underwear