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28 June 2023
Are you ready to refresh your existing product portfolio or would like to expand your market reach and brand recognisability by launching new products? Perhaps you are just looking to diversify your marketing strategy?
The good news is that you landed in the perfect place to find out how to achieve it successfully and seamlessly.
Our product design, manufacturing, and marketing specialists are here to help you revolutionalise your brand and stand out from the crowd.
Let’s start with the positives. Diversifying your product offering keeps you on top of people’s minds. If done well, expanding your product range exposes you to a completely new pool of shoppers who might not have considered purchasing from you before. It also invites your current customers to repeatedly buy from a brand they know, love and trust.
Think big and long term. You may, for example, start as a lingerie brand, but there is nothing stopping you from adding loungewear, activewear, swimwear and even resort wear to your collection. You can also offer extended size ranges to ensure your product fits all types of customers.
Whatever you end up doing, we recommend surrounding yourself with a team specialising in each new product category. As bodywear specialists, we know all too well how important it is to get your product fit right and that the knowledge of contour and fabric expertise is paramount to your success. If you cannot afford to employ a team of in-house specialists, consider outsourcing your design, component sourcing and manufacturing to a specialist with a strong track record as well as industry and trend expertise.
Diversification is also essential to long-term visibility and helps you stand out from the sea of competitors. Bringing new products to market can help regulate cash flow throughout the year if your current collection is seasonal. For instance, most UK swimwear brands that haven’t become global brands yet focus their business efforts on generating their revenue during spring and summer whilst demand falls significantly during autumn and winter. To avoid a dip in revenue, you may consider adding transitional pieces to your collection. This not only gives you a chance for a more stable cash flow but also gives you more to talk about across your social media channels and blog.
Expanding on your product offering is a tried and trusted growth strategy that can help your brand expand into markets that would have otherwise been closed to you.
Whether you are thinking of adding new product categories or wish to expand your current collection by testing new colours or sizes, we always recommend starting small and producing more frequent, smaller runs to test the appetite of your existing and target customers.
By keeping your design and manufacturing locally, you will be able to innovate quickly, control the quality and be more agile to the ever-changing market needs
Chances are that you already know exactly what your next steps should be and have planned your new collection and product category range in your head. You might have even sketched it!
However, if you really want to put your best foot forward, we highly recommend starting with thorough market research before doing anything else. Over the years, our research team have been supporting the BWL designers with market data that focuses on consumer appetites, product, colour, shape and size trends and even analysing the leading retailers’ best sellers.
Our clients often come to us with a strong vision of what they want to achieve, and we believe it’s our responsibility to both our clients and the environment to create strong collections that consumers need and want. This ensures minimum waste and harm to the environment and a maximum return on investment to our clients.
Having worked with many successful brands and plentiful start-ups, we know all too well that there are two types of brands out there – those who have a strong community/customer base and sell through most of their products and those who decide to focus on ‘’perfecting’ their collections and often forget about developing a strong sales and marketing strategy.
Launching a new product line does not guarantee your success so don’t diversify for the sake of doing something new. Start with a strong vision and communication strategy and build your new product around it.
Launching a new product category is a great opportunity to refresh your brand story, and positioning and might even be a good time to refresh your branding. The way you communicate your new, expanded vision is paramount to your success and overall cash flow. Lead with a strong and cohesive strategy and innovate through the use of video, creative content, 3D assets and PR to make a maximum impact on your existing and potential customers.
Launching a new product line is a marathon, not a sprint. As with everything worth your money and effort, creating a new product portfolio takes time and requires a lot of research and expertise.
At BWL, we have developed a 12 to 18-month plan in our Visionary Design Menu that ensures your diversification process is carried out as effectively as possible. The Visionary Design programme includes a 12-month range plan for your present and/or future collections in our four steps:
The market deep dive helps validate your idea with our industry design experts. Here, a deeper understanding and research into the market you are opting for will give purpose to your collection. By exploring what has already been done, we will make you stand out from your competitors.
This will ensure that your brand remains unique with future collection ideas and launches by always staying ahead of the curve.
The range plan forms your initial ideas. Here, we will gather inspiration and work closely with you to develop collection capsules that can construct a path for you to envision the future of your brand and the directions that it should take based on our research.
During this stage, our design experts provide suggestions for collection expansions for your brand along with the direction it can take your brand in the future. This is all based on the previous market deep-dive research completed.
Finally, to understand how the brand would stagger the launches, including the launch as well as when the collection and expansions will emerge, our industry expert designers will create a launch timeline. This will visually present these dates to you in an 18-month plan.
Adding a new product line is never easy, but with strong design, manufacturing and marketing experts at hand, the process of launching a new offering can be more seamless and manageable.
Let us know if you are ready to revolutionise the bodywear industry, we are here to help!
Get in touch or check out our services!
Melbray House,
Melbray Mews,
158 Hurlingham Road,
Fulham,
London
SW6 3NS
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Brands of Tomorrow is a curated program, designed to support the growth of an exclusive group of creative entrepreneurs embarking on the journey to develop their businesses in the bodywear sector.
Interested? Find out more on our sister company,
London Contour Experts website.
Brands of Tomorrow is a curated program, designed to support the growth of an exclusive group of creative entrepreneurs embarking on the journey to develop their businesses in the bodywear sector.
Interested? Find out more on our sister company,
London Contour Experts website.