How to Launch a Fashion Collection: Advice from Sarah Shaw

Meet Sarah Shaw, a force of knowledge and experience in the fashion industry. As a seasoned fashion entrepreneur, product designer, business coach, and CEO of Sarah Shaw Consulting, she has launched and scaled her own brands, and now she dedicates her expertise to guiding others.

In this interview, Sarah shares the inspiration behind her consulting business, discusses the common hurdles faced by new fashion entrepreneurs, and offers actionable insights on building and sustaining a successful brand in a competitive market.

Inspiration Behind Sarah Shaw Consulting

SBS – What inspired you to start a fashion consulting business? 

Sarah – The inspiration came from the experience of having my own brands for 14 years. I made so many mistakes and didn’t know who to ask for help, and I didn’t necessarily know what each job entailed. It was really hard to learn it all by myself. Once I got that down and understood how you sell and market your brand and how important PR and getting your products to celebrities can be, people started asking me, “How did you do that?”

I did some random consulting here and there with companies that would contact me. I liked it, but I didn’t think of it as a job but a placeholder until I figured out what to do with my next incarnation.

Then, my friends pointed out that life coaching was becoming big. It was around 2008. They said, “These people are all helping people figure out what they want to do with their life, and all the people coming to you already know what they want to do.” True, my clients already had products and wanted me to give them all the steps necessary to build a successful brand. 

I considered my friends’ suggestions. It was funny because my father was a psychiatrist, and he used to say to me, “If you don’t want to be in fashion anymore, you should be a therapist because you’re so good at it.” I used to answer, “Dad, I have no interest in hearing people’s problems.” But we could never get to the point of what he meant — that I help people. I deal with a different set of problems. He passed away in March 2009, and in September 2009, I realized that this was my calling. I always thank my father for urging me. I hired someone to teach me how to be a coach because I didn’t know how to get what was in my head out to people — like the concept of teaching and how to organize it all. That was helpful, and I’ve been doing it for 15 years.

Overcoming Obstacles

SBS – What challenges did you face when you started? 

Sarah – I felt confident that people wanted to learn what I could teach them and that I could share my knowledge so that they could understand and use it. It took me a few years to hone in on what was important to people to learn.

When you start a business, I feel like there’s always the fear of whether you’ll find your people and how they will know where you are. Facebook had just come on the market in 2009. It was one of those new platforms I thought I had to be on to find my tribe and for people to find me. It wasn’t, but I kept figuring out how to present myself to people so they trusted me and felt like they could learn from me.

Common Pitfalls

SBS – What are some common mistakes new fashion entrepreneurs make when launching a product? 

Sarah – I think that some people these days feel like if they build a website, they’ll just get sales. I don’t think they understand that those platforms you’re on (like Shopify or Etsy) will not send people to you. Those aren’t sales platforms, and you won’t boom overnight just because you’re on them. That’s the biggest mistake.

People also don’t realize how hard direct-to-consumer sales work. There are only four ways to drive traffic to your website: online sales, wholesale, media, and celebrities. Friends and family are a huge push, but it dies off quickly. Then there are paid ads, which is a very expensive way to drive traffic. If you don’t have publicity and credibility with media or celebrities, selling on your site is hard, even if you’re doing paid ads. Many people I know have turned their ads off because they realize they don’t have the credibility to deliver proof of concept.

The second mistake is that sometimes people don’t have the margins to reach out to do wholesale. If you’re a graphic designer, you can do a print-on-demand store and sell T-shirts, leggings, and other things, and it’s easy to put up a business practically overnight. You don’t have to hold inventory or invest too much upfront. I know a lot of people who do that. On the other hand, people who create their own brands have to spend money on inventory and building stock to sell and ship.

Going into wholesale is a much more predictable way of selling. If you get, let’s say, into ten stores, you can pretty much calculate what that revenue is going to be, unline with online sales, where that’s pretty next to impossible to calculate. It could be $10,000 one month and $10,000 the next and then $2,000 and then $3,000. You can’t with certainty say what your online sales will be unless your ads are running well, and you can see you spend $1,000 on ads and make $5,000 in sales, for example.

Standing Out in Fashion

SBS – How do you think a small fashion brand needs to differentiate itself in a saturated market?

Sarah – Getting into the media sets you apart because it gives you that stamp of approval or third-party credibility. These days, I feel like it’s even more important to have media exposure. If it’s a product you can get to celebrities, then great. Celebrities can bring in tons of money if you know how to market it. You won’t make much from the celebrity just posting on their Instagram, even if they tag you. It’s about what you do with that photo, how you get it out, and who you reach out to.

The Power of Storytelling

SBS – Do you think storytelling still plays a big role in the fashion industry?

Sarah – I do, yeah, big time. There have been many articles recently about how the direct-to-consumer model just doesn’t work as a sole method of selling your products. During COVID, 80,000 more people have set up fashion sites, and many of those were print-on-demand.

Effective Email Marketing

SBS – What strategies are efficient for email marketing for new fashion brands? 

Sarah – In fashion, you’re not putting up new products every day or week (you release collections), so your site becomes stagnant in the Google world of SEO — and SEO is a really long game. What I did in the beginning, because there was no one teaching SEO when I started in 2009, was blogging. That’s a great way to keep your brand ahead of everything for free. Blogging as a fashion brand, I had different things to talk about, like how to grow your brand.

If I were a fashion brand making clothes today, I would talk about jewelry, bags, belts, overcoats, umbrellas, fun things to do, and places to go (like museum expositions on fashion). Talking about things complementary to what you create makes you more of a lifestyle brand, and you get people interested in reading your blogs and coming back. Every time you post a blog, Google re-indexes your site automatically. You don’t have to do anything or submit anything.

You can also repost people’s articles, like about the ten best shoes of the season. Talk about why you like it, why you wear those clothes or shoes, or why you’re going to buy them, and tag the post’s author and let them know you gave them a backlink. There are ways to start building the community for free. It also helps with your SEO and gives you a reason to email your people something other than a sales pitch. You can say you wrote a new blog post, give a little teaser, and make them go to your site to read the rest. It takes a while to build trust organically, and that’s why getting into the press or celebrities can help.

Building Retail Relationships

SBS – What is the key to building good relationships with retailers? 

Sarah – You just need to be conscientious of how you reach out to them, be persistent, and show them things that will be relevant for their customer. If it’s a men’s store, don’t send them emails about women’s clothes. 

Introduce new products to people. Everybody wants to have the next bread slicer, right? Everybody’s always on the lookout for the next best thing — the next best pair of jeans or a dress that does something special to your body. Everybody wants to carry that. So, it’s about giving people things they’re looking for and hitting the right stores.

Media Outreach on a Budget

SBS – What is the best way to approach media outlets on a small budget?

Sarah – If you don’t have a big budget, think of applying for free editorials. Don’t ever pay to be in a magazine. You’ll get nothing from that, no matter how awesome it sounds. As the brands get bigger and more popular, they start getting invitations from Vogue England, the UK, Thailand, or other countries, maybe offering a lower price than they usually charge. Say no unless you’re willing to pay and want it just for the photo. It’s definitely not going to bring any sales.

Finding editors’ email addresses and reaching out is the best way to go. However, those may be harder to find. These days, we use a paid service to get their emails. It’s pretty expensive, but if you have a paid LinkedIn account, you might be able to find them there. You can also try calling the magazine. Sometimes, editors even put their emails on their Instagram profiles.

Scaling with Integrity

SBS – What’s your advice on scaling a fashion business without losing brand identity? 

Sarah – Well, I don’t think you’d have to lose your brand identity to do anything I mentioned. You have to hold your brand identity, stick with your guns, and don’t do what others tell you to do.

When I had my handbag line, my sales reps would say I had to make a particular bag or I wouldn’t be hip that season. I’d say my people didn’t want that bag. But I was young and influenceable, and I thought they knew more than me, so I better do what they said. Then, it would be a total disaster, and nobody would buy it.

Sustaining Momentum

SBS – How can a fashion brand maintain momentum after a successful launch? 

Sarah – Keep things going. If your launch was successful online, look at what made it successful and try to repeat that or advance on that concept. Take it to the next level of reaching out to the media, stores, and celebrities. Think of your business as a four-piece pie — online sales, wholesale, media, celebrities. You want to keep the wheel turning. If you get into a store, appear in a magazine or a TV show, or collaborate with a celebrity, make sure your people know about it, too. You don’t have to outdo yourself every month; you just have to keep that momentum.

Advice for Aspiring Designers

SBS – What advice would you give someone who wants to start a fashion brand?

Sarah – Start slow and steady. Make sure you have a good, well-merchandised collection, whether it’s jewelry, handbags, clothing, shoes, or something else. Don’t just show a random thing here or there. Buyers like to see a collection, and the media likes to look at it. People might want to see the pants and the top that go together, and stores definitely want to buy in groups. It’s pretty rare that the store will just buy one thing from someone. 

Also, make sure that your price points are good, that you have your margins set correctly from cost to wholesale to retail, and that you start reaching out to stores as soon as possible so that you’re not just praying that you’re going to succeed.