If you have aspirations to embark on a journey as a fashion entrepreneur, you can expect the early days to be some of the hardest and most tiring. You’ll likely find yourself being spread across various roles within the business as you dream of one day having a huge team at your disposal.
Despite every brand owner dreaming of world domination, it’s not to say that there aren’t any advantages of being small. In 2024 especially, the agile nature of smaller brands carries many benefits. Here are four areas where smaller brands have the upper hand over global competitors.
Easier to Be Sustainable
Sustainability has become a huge issue recently, and brands have been put under enormous pressure to take more care of the planet by environmentally conscious consumers. Young people in particular are most likely to not do business with brands that continue to cause harm to the planet, something that has been evidenced by the declining performance of many fast fashion brands.
This shift is something that has become a challenge for big brands more so than small startups. In fact, it’s become an area where smaller businesses can gain the upper hand. Global organisations have complex supply chains making any effort to be sustainable more time-consuming. Any potential change is also costlier as more processes need to change.
On the other hand, startup brands can be more agile and implement sustainable practices without the need for approval from various stakeholders and without making too many changes to their existing operations. Remember, in some cases, small brands consist of only one employee.
Consider a fashion brand that wants to start making garments out of recycled materials. The process of sourcing a new supplier and communicating this change to consumers is far more challenging for a global business than it is to a small startup. Where a small brand may need to make a few phone calls, a global company would need to first run this change by directors and investors before carrying out a thorough shortlisting process for a new supplier before communicating this change down the many different levels of the organisation.
Individualism Is on Trend
In 2024, individualism is one of the most important things to young fashionistas. As a result, consumers are more likely to want to stand out, and that’s often something they don’t get from more well-known brands.
It goes without saying that the more well-known a brand is, the more people there are wearing their clothing, which ultimately means there’s less chance of you standing out. The next time you’re out, count how many pairs of Nike trainers you see or how many Adidas tracksuits you see. It will just go to show that while big brands offer style and quality, they are maybe not the best choice for individualism and uniqueness.
Instead, if you are in the market for a brand or item that you won’t see anywhere else, you’ll want to shop at small, lesser-known brands. Often, people like to consider it somewhat of a badge of honour if they are one of the first people to wear a brand that goes on to be popular.
It’s also worth considering that there’s not much larger brands can do about this. They may try to offer more lines of clothing or release limited edition items to make the products more scarce, but this doesn’t detract from how many people are wearing the brand. It’s also an issue that a small brand may face as time goes on. As a result, it’s crucial to take advantage of your early years.
Connection with Customers
A big advantage to small fashion startups over larger brands is the closer connections they can have with their customers. In a brand’s earliest days, they can manually manage each customer service issue. A process that usually becomes automated when a brand reaches a certain size.
While automating customer service issues is often necessary, it can cause brands to lose connection with their customers. On the other hand, dealing with a human can result in you feeling closer to the brand.
You’ll often see that smaller brands benefit from having a community-like following. Customers are more likely to broadcast their love for the brand as it is more unique. They’re also more likely to interact with other followers of the brand so pop-up events can be extremely well attended for early-stage brands.
It’s also easier for smaller brands to keep hold of a human touch in their messaging and communication. You’ll notice how large brands have their own personality which is often written up into brand guidelines for the team to follow. For smaller brands though, the founder is often seen as the brand, and often they are. For example, social media posts and emails may be sent from the founder which can again help to foster a closer relationship with customers.
Speed in Responding to Trends
As already touched upon, the bigger a brand, the longer it will take to implement and see changes. In fashion, this is crucial as styles and trends are constantly evolving. Bigger brands tend to plan in months and years rather than days meaning any trend that suddenly pops up can scupper pre-determined plans.
Alternatively, smaller brands work in days and weeks and don’t have the luxury of being able to accurately predict future forecasts. While this has its limitations, it also has its benefits when it comes to executing new trends.
For example, let’s take the trend of baggy menswear that we’ve seen recently. And let’s say a fashion brand wants to suddenly launch an oversized men’s full tracksuit range in line with the trend. This will have more consequences for a big brand that has already committed to plans around stock and clothing lines for the rest of the year. A smaller brand however can adapt more quickly with fewer negative implications.
You also need to consider that most startups are only operating on a direct-to-consumer business model. Any sudden change to a large brand’s product offering needs to be communicated with outlets or stockists who also sell their product to consumers.
Final Thoughts
It’s worth considering that while this article outlines ways in which small businesses can gain the upper hand when competing with bigger brands, no fashion brand wants to remain small forever. With that in mind, it’s also worth researching ways to take your small business to the next level.
Finally, this article touches on some trends that are current and important at the time of writing. It’s important to keep on top of what is important to your customers.
