Founder’s Stories #1 — Patricia Manella and Not Your Business
Patricia Manella is a professional fashion stylist and entrepreneur. Since she didn’t find a clothing brand that would satisfy her entirely, she decided to create her own. It is called Not Your Business and it stands for wearing what you feel like (because it’s surely nobody else’s business).
She is a solo-entrepreneur and she confesses that although sometimes it’s hard to carry everything on your own, she had such a clear idea of what she wanted to create that it was difficult to find a suitable co-founder.
We know that entrepreneurship is hard and we know that fashion business is even harder. That’s why Not Your Business tries to be a brand different than any other. Patricia uses brave colours such as pink and red (together and at once), develops original designs and paints the trousers by hand. On top of it come photo shootings directed by her particular artistic vision and her philosophy transmitted all over social media: do what you want to do, be who you want to be, wear clothes you want to wear.
Patricia didn’t have an easy start, she suffered a traffic accident right before her first collection was going to be launched. Due to the inevitable change of the timeline, she started with swimming suits in the middle of the summer, instead of launching a full summer collection in the early spring. Right now you can find swimsuits, jeans and T-shirt in the shop, and her first full collection is about to come out. Later than planned but still on time!
The most difficult question while entering the fashion market and targeting young audience is how do people hear about you? and later on how to make them pay for what you make? How do you get known in such a crowded landscape, next to Primark and H&M?
Well, what Patricia gave me as advice was this:
You need to be able to ask people for favours, as much as possible, never stop talking about your project, and somebody is finally going to help.
She took out on a journey of writing hundreds of Instagram influencers trying to persuade them to publish pictures with her clothes on. Out of 100 emails there were 8 responses. Out of 8 closed collaboration, 3 people received the clothing and never published anything. That’s hard, unfair and painful, and there is literally no way of punishing them.
Another advice she has for solo entrepreneurs is not a surprising one: invest as little as possible at the beginning. The Lean Startup principle learnt the hard way: starting from zero she decided to produce 7 different swimming suits models, 120 units each.
That makes 840 pieces of clothing in stock, without even one sale made up-front. An inversion of about 10K, without even one real client before ordering. The swimsuits started selling after that, but obviously a part of a stock stayed where it first arrived: in Patricia’s home.
But the lesson was learned and now she finds production factories that produce the quantity that she feels like ordering (because it is her business, indeed).
Anyhow, the most important thing she mentioned is that you must identify your target group correctly. First, you need to know who you are talking to. Before you start looking for influencers or marketing channels, you need to know exactly who are the people who would be your customers.
Right now Patricia only approaches influencers who has an audience that corresponds to her own. What she found out earlier on was that influencers with more than 100K followers were uploading her clothing and not even one item was sold as a result. That’s how she found out that it might be better to approach smaller influencers but to make sure that their audience is your audience. She also goes for quality followers on her own:
Less is always more.
Finally, the last important and universal message she shared is that you don’t design/create for your friends or family. Of course they are always the first people we ask for an opinion and follow all over the place asking never-ending questions but in the end, you need to know that your real target audience is somewhere out there, where you still need to go and look for them.
What you can learn from Not Your Business is that you can start out with some savings, lots of creativity, lots of motivation, a little bit of help from your friends and tons of faith in your brand. If you can learn the lessons of investing as little as possible and knowing exactly who your target audience is before you even start selling, better so.
As in every entrepreneurial journey, there are ups and downs but if you believe in yourself and in your product, you must go forward.
If you are curious about Patricia’s brand, here comes her website: https://nyb-clothing.co
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Akimad is a digital agency offering design and development services. We believe in realistic innovation. We like to help entrepreneurs not to fail, or at least to fail cheaper. We share our experience and support founders in creating an agile process of idea validation and product development. Say hello! www.akimad.com
Written by Daria Krauzo.
