Less Volume, More Value
Steady growth strategies that don't cost the earth
What do you offer that isn’t just ‘More’?
It’s a well-known story at this point: overproducing fashion brands are driven by investors to operate on growth targets. Desperately seeking dividends, it comes as no surprise then, that the most common growth strategy has been volume-based with the speed set to Mach 3. In as little as two decades, we’ve scaled from the high street to fast fashion to ultra-fast fashion.
More. More. More.
More while the world is on fire. Don’t you think there’s enough ‘stuff’ already out there? I STILL think often about this on-point ad that the Vinted team together with Wolfstreet agency released this year. No, I’m not affiliated in any way, I just genuinely appreciate the existence of such an ad in our era of excess. At last, a positive, purposeful use of creativity in advertising. I think we’ve all had enough of more, haven’t you?
In [the] context of changing regulation and depletion of natural resources, it is fair to say volume sales become threatened and the social and environmental dimensions of sustainability increasingly converge with the economic one.
Collectively we are trapped in a system wherein the means of success in our lifetime results in long-term or inter-generational destruction. Fortunately, those with a longer-term horizon than Q4 ROI are introducing much-needed long overdue regulation.
After all, the simple inevitability of resource depletion directly challenges volume-based growth for the sake of growth.1 How will you outpace your competition then?
“Anyone who thinks you can have infinite growth in a finite environment is either a madman or an economist.”
— Sir David Attenborough
Economic Viability in a Sustainable World
In simple terms: Add VALUE, not volume.
Instead of offering additional items to a 60+ collection or ‘new’ colourways in a product line, or - god forbid - ‘exclusives’ that literally nobody cares about, offer a value-boosting service that can add real benefits to your customers’ experience.
Maybe that looks like a personal shopping service, handpicked curations or understanding deeply what your customer wants2 - whatever it is, (and this is the best part) will be unique to your customers due to the unique way in which your brand executes upon an idea.
Medium-Hot take: volume-based growth lacks imagination. I’m not saying it’s easy to execute, but it lacks imagination and creativity. Could this also be part of the innovation stagnation in fashion right now? Tim Blanks put it so beautifully in his closing BoF paragraph on PFW: ‘Now, fashion keeps itself safe in its notorious self-referential bubble, choked by corporate caution.’3
Value Added Examples
Before we dive into examples of value-added offerings, it’s important not to confuse adding Value as another volume-based offering. Focus on doing one thing really well, even if it can’t scale or be available to everyone immediately. Offering an exclusive service is fine. We need to stop trying to please everyone under the guise of inclusion when it’s just a money grab—after all, no one asked for another AI chatbot, yet here we are.
Value-boosting services are often dismissed with, “We can’t afford to do that in addition to everything else.” But what if cutting back to make it possible could be the best move? Let’s discuss why you can’t afford not to.
Care & Repair
Recently adding M&S to the roster of loved brands offering SOJO-as-a-Service. Care and repair is in my books, an essential integration for any brand with a legitimate interest in longevity.
Beyond it being a nice-to-have add-on, brands such as SOJO and The Seam have captured significant insights to support the brands they partner with as Henrietta Rix of vintage-inspired Rixo says: “Having the internal alteration and repairs service gives Rixo an accurate and first-hand insight on constructive customer feedback,” adding that “These insights contribute to reducing returns by addressing feedback and improving overall product quality of fit. We benefit from integrating our in-store learnings into future designs and production processes to enhance customer satisfaction and minimise returns.”4
There’s also an added benefit of deepening customer loyalty and trust, as ALIGNE’s Ginny Seymour notes: “most loyal customers used the service more than once…they are more likely to shop ALIGNE as they know they can achieve the perfect fit, so we have seen it correlate to engagement and frequency of purchase”.
Reduce (costly) returns, increase loyalty and improve future product fit and quality. Surely every brand is offering such a service, right?
Right?
Personal Shopping & Curation
When I was first starting in Fashion, I was a Personal Shopper at Topshop’s Flagship store on Oxford Circus. Equipped with our own private fitting rooms, check out till and (gasp) water bottle stocked mini fridge, we offered a free 2-hour, no strings attached service to anyone who’d booked ahead. Yes, I mean no expectation to buy anything ‘no strings attached’. This attracted such a varied clientele ranging from 12-year-old birthday girls to Beyoncé to new mums desperately trying to figure out how to dress a new body to Miley Cyrus to twenty-somethings seeking a fitting room respite from the chaos of Oxford Circus to critically ill kids with the Make a Wish Foundation team. If we had an appointment available, you could have it. For free.
Today, Topshop 214 might be no more (sob) but Threads, The Editorialist and personal curators such as Brendahashtag offer an editor’s eye for those who seek it. There’s a definitive uptick in the cases of editor-turned-personal-shoppers out there.
Shopping for other people is a really fun job (I kinda miss it) so I can understand why.
Whether it’s getting help to review and reimagine the items you already own, or (in the case of Brenda,) hunting for unique items on your behalf, the role of the Personal Shopper/Clothing Curator is imo way overlooked in the fashion industry. Destroyed by tech bro monthly subscription services and blandification for the masses or White Glove Services for the 1%, there’s a real miss in the marketplace for the everyday individual who straight up wants to have fun with fashion, aka play dressing up.
Education and Community
Bring people together.
What’s one thing we’ve all got in common? The everyday need to get dressed.
Instead of following the usual always-new, shopping-first, outfit-inspo agenda of social media content, Tibi’s Founder Amy Smilovic treads the alternative path with The Creative Pragmatist: a multi-channel dialogue between Amy herself and us, the fashion-loving, captive audience/aspirational consumer/lifelong fans.
Between the colour wheels, wrong shoe theory, 3 words and hand-drawn outfit illustrations, Amy Smilovic offers a direct line to her customer base (or aspirational in my case), often threading the narrative of “a great wardrobe takes time to build”. Which frankly, amidst the reams of more-for-the-sake-of-more fashion content out there, is nothing short of a breath of fresh air.
But beyond this open dialogue content strategy, what The Creative Pragmatist additionally creates is the facilitation of conversations on fashion between those who share the same objective of dressing themselves in a more effortlessly elevated way.
Or in simple terms: Fandom and community that leads to brand loyalty.
Whether online or offline, bringing fashion fans together in celebration of styling, craftsmanship and creativity should not be exclusive to global brands. It’s one of the joys of Substack, after all. But where too often, the conversation defaults to the instantly glossy, volume-based strategies aka ‘My [insert upcoming season/event] shopping list’ there are resourceful and hands-on, value-adding seekers a-plenty too.
Mathilde Baillet’s latest BTS piece is one such example, writing about the run-up to Objet’s first event - or La Première - and which highlights that instead of waiting for someone else to hand us what we want, it’s essential that we start creating the events we want to be part of. I write this, fully aware that I’m firmly in the former camp; writing not doing, and yet the more I read of others taking action and creating their own events, the more I want to join in.
I guess that’s the beauty of adding value; the more you create, the more others are inspired to create in return. The cycle repeats itself. Wouldn’t it be nice to live in a world of more value not more stuff?
At the end of the day, Value is not just another number on a line sheet.
Sometimes, the intangibles are the make-or-break elements. In our data-driven quest to quantify every return on every little investment, we stopped running the extra mile in simply…being human with one another, offering truly helpful benefits to each other. Not just offering ‘more’, or ‘more convenient’.
As the EEA states: “The challenge is to innovate lifestyles that consume less but are attractive to individuals without an environmental, spiritual or ideological interest.”5
So talk to your customers, get a sense of what they’re really after (pro tip: use the mom test to avoid ‘nice’ customer feedback) and start small.
Sure, it won’t be a simple 10X growth scale-up on the ole’ volume dial, but it might just be the creativity and connection we’re all starving for these days.
“How Fashion Players Can Add Value with Volume Sales Under Threat”, Euromonitor
“The Very Human Business of 3Sixteen” Alec Leach
“Relevance: It Begins With a Blessing and Ends With a Curse”, Tim Blanks, Business of Fashion
How In-House Repairs and Alterations Bring Brand Boosting Benefits”, Katie Ross, Industry.Fashion
Sustainability: What are the Alternatives to Economic Growth?, European Environment Agency
Could not agree more with the statement “volume-based growth lacks imagination” ! Appreciate your highlights of people / companies taking a more creative & human approach to fashion. Love the BTS post from Objet!
couldn't agree more -and thanks for the kind words. now, it makes me want to throw a party rather sooner than later in the UK -let's do one in London soon?