Here is our PAQ-A-RAN zine issue one which is published on Issuu. After many days of collating images and designs, it all came together and the outcome of the zine is the standard we wanted to achieve. It starts with who we are and what PAQ-A-RAN is, initial research, moving onto designs and collections, then showing the eight ways to change your basic jumper. Finishing off the zine with our app and social media.
ENJOY!
http://issuu.com/paqaran/docs/paq-a-ran_zine_8cd9ec8ea44dee
Today at uni our lecture was all about the path the fashion industry takes, from concept to shop floor. As a 2nd year fashion student this information is highly beneficial as we now already understand how the path is formed. It starts with trend analysis, shopping the world and attending trade shows. Trend and concept books are then made up from this information. This is the first development of styles for selection and discussion by the design and buying team.
The next step is sampling, which includes fabric sourcing, colour lap dips and trim sourcing, this results in the 1st view collection. This is the selection of range, factory negotiations and booking of production.
The final step is production and sales, which includes QC checking, CMT and shipping, this results in being on the shop floor. This is followed by sale analysis, best and worst products and store demographics etc.
A very helpful lecture that I will definitely take on board when heading into the industry.
Another lecture we had today at University was about the business of fashion, and how to write our own business plan (scary stuff). A business plan is a document that convincingly demonstrates that your business can sell. It’s made up of five steps, only five I hear you say, but trust me, them five steps are the biggest steps in your life! They consist of a: mission statement, like a personal statement of your c.v just in more depth; overview of the industry, with direct competition; marketing and your business opportunity; operations, who does what and your funding requirements and financial projections, with your five year realistic plan and then a conclusion. Do them five steps and your business should be golden! That’s if you have a good idea in the first place! The image below helps me think about the business we are creating and focuses my mind, when writing our business plan I’ll have this in mind!
My university lecture today was all about money! The importance of it when setting up a business and the fact you can set a business up without it! My future goal is to set up my own business, and the fact you can do it without having money is incredible! The key factors to do this are:
– Work from home: use all the space you have and make great use out of it. Any spare space but in shelves or a desk or something that will help you
– Use skills you already have: if you’re a wiz at Photoshop use that to your full potential and create flyers and posters and promote your business!
– Use resources around you: if you have your own computer, make the most out of it, if you have your own sewing machine, make even more out of it
– Do all the work yourself and don’t pay yourself a salary: what money your business is earning should be paid back in to enlarge it, pay yourself a salary when your business is a multi-million pound one!
– Hold onto the day job: when setting up a business never give this up, all the money you get in can help the business, and this way you can still afford to live
– Source free equipment and ideas: instead of paying for Photoshop, get a free trial or source a program that is similar but free, there’s plenty out there!
– Learn new business skills for free: in internet is full of tutorials and different skills to learn, so use it to its full potential
Having this lecture really opened up my eyes and made me more focused to start my own business, without any money! Never would I have thought I would have been saying that! If you don’t want to start up your own business without any money (quite frankly the thought is scary) there are many other options you can use to get some money in your hands! They are:
– Banks and building societies
-Crowd funding, i.e kick-starter
– Crowd sourcing
– Bank of mum and dad, friends and family
– Angel investors
The thought of asking people for money is daunting but if you’re passionate about your business you’ll overcome this fear, and even better if you’re parents are wealthy, the easiest option!
After some group research into our idea and motives for our brand, we came across an interesting name idea, which is pakarin.
It comes from the Inca word Pakarin meaning ‘Tomorrow’. The Inca Empire was a vast and powerful empire that conquered a huge area of South America. They were forward thinking and empowering, but were invaded by the Spanish after many years of ruling. The empire quickly died out, a future that may not be dissimilar to ours if we don’t start to change the way we consume. The way you pronounce pakarin is paq-a-ran, which we found worked better written down than pakarin.
So welcome to PAQ-A-RAN!
As from my previous post I mentioned that we were planning an interview with the ethical company Komodo and after many hours or travelling to London we arrived at their studios with high expectations. Here is the interview we undertook:
Begin interrogation..
Q1. Does it become difficult to stick to your roots with the ever changing trends in the market?
Answer: By staying true to our roots we are talking about the fact that our core elements continue to follow through. We’ve had the same manufacturers since 1988 and stick to our brand ethos. Of course as trends change we will follow what is popular, but we have our own key elements throughout that don’t change.
Q2. We saw on your website that you started in 1988, during a time where sustainable and ethical fashion was a fairly new trend, and now that ethical fashion is becoming more of a popular high demand trend, is it more difficult to compete with the companies that have recently started?
Answer: When the brand started, the ethical side wasn’t the main point of our brand. Joe wanted to create clothing that was fashionable that just happened to be green and sustainable. But at this time, people didn’t seem to be aware of sustainability- it wasn’t really thought about during these times. Only Katherine Hammnet was thinking about these issues at the time. We believe that every manufacturer should have a minimal effect on the environment, so when ethical fashion became more popular, we could only be happy about all these new competitors. But yes, I suppose once it started becoming more of a trend, with all the new brands shouting out that they were green, we had to up our marketing so that people new we have always been green. But It isn’t an aggressive market, so it isn’t too competitive.
Q3. Who would you say was your biggest competitor?
Answer: Probably People Tree, but we still have a very good connection with them. Like we said, it isn’t an aggressive market to be in compared to the high end couture brands.
Q4. We also saw that you sell men’s and womenswear, but what age demographic is your target market?
Answer: We have quite a broad age demographic; we don’t want to single out any potential consumers. But probably around 25- 40.
Q5. Most of your fabric is sourced in Indonesia, and we understand that ethically sourced fabric ranges from a higher cost, does sourcing abroad help lower costs for a higher profit?
Answer: Well, as out factories and mills are all in Indonesia, we source our fabrics locally to where they are being manufactured. We want our carbon footprint to be as close to neutral as possible, and sourcing further away from our factories would not only bring up the costs but also affect our carbon footprint.
Q6. Have you looked into more locally sourced ethical fabric and is it at a higher cost?
Answer: Sourcing locally to the UK would be at a higher cost as more shipping would be necessary to get it to our factories.
Q7. Would you ever consider changing from being an independent store by going into larger department stores?
Answer: We sometimes do sell to a few department stores, but they tend to look for the bigger well-known brands and aren’t really interested in buying from a small independent company. Small independent stores are more interested in buying from small niche brands like ours.
Q8. Are there any future collaborations or exciting upcoming projects coming our way?
Answer: At the moment we don’t really have time, with being so busy with the Berlin Fashion week, and with us being such a small team we don’t really have the amount of staff needed for a big project or collaboration. We would like to one day, but we’d have to find the right celebrity to collaborate with. We never quite know how much influence the celebrities actually have within these collaborations!
Overall I felt the interview was very successful and has given us an insight of the ethical fashion industry and I believe that their ethos is very similar to our own brand ethos.
Thank you Komodo!
Interrogation complete.
After having so many ideas in our heads, from ethical fashion to recycling and creating website and apps but not a main focal one we all sat down together and discussed all our possibilities. We refined all our ideas and developed our strongest one. Our strongest idea contained the idea of having a ‘how to’ section on our website where we can teach our subscribers how to change their own items of clothing, buy modifying them or simply just wearing them differently, from example taking your arms out and tying them around your neck. Also the idea was to have an app and an interactive site where the customers could uploads pictures and posts of how they have done this.
We then decided we could have our blog on the website, where out subscribers can still access access these ‘how to’ tips and ideas, as well as still interacting with the brand by sending in emails of their own ideas. It will also help aid the social media community and allow our subscribers to stay updated and follow our brand as it develops. But this will reduce the complexity of our website and still have the consumers focus on our collections and products.
We also developed our recycling idea, as initially we wanted subscribers to be able to ‘swap’ and ‘update’ their own clothing when they are done using them. However this would involve huge amounts of shipping, cleaning and quality assurance in order to achieve this. Instead, we will use this system for our own products, specifically the attachments, but offer an alternative for the consumer to be able to recycle their clothes. By supporting and sponsoring a charity that recycles clothing and giving them a section on our website, we can send them the recycled clothing we receive and they can forward this on.
The charity will then be able to sort through the clothing and categorise where each item will go. Either recycled to make into new attachments for us, new garment, new fibres, or used for other purposes like insulation in buildings. Or clothes that are in good use can be sent to third world countries to be used and worn. This way we reduce the costs for us as well as sticking to our ‘no waste’ ethos.
What more can a business do?!
TEAM GLOBAL SOURCING! (name still unidentified)
Welcome back to my blog, the past few months have been busy and stressful but now approaching the new year a new project has begun. The title of this project is Global sourcing which is made up of several components including group research published on issuu in a zine formation, group business pitch with product prototypes, marketing solutions developed through presented portfolio pages, an individual 2000 word case study on an entry strategy for an existing niche brand into a new market, an individual blog documenting weekly on progress and an individual personal networks directory list.
The aim for this project is to build a start up business with branding and marketing strategies, along side designs for the project and website design. The main requirement is to work as a team with each team member being set a role and title.
The titles being: Design/product developer x2
Creative Direction
Brand Strategist
Marketing Director
The role I have chosen is Creative Direction which is photography, styling, web design, visuals, communication between product and marketing. Having always wanted to be a design developer, I am definitely stepping out of my comfort zone which this role, but I feel confident and ready for this project!
Let me introduce my team;
Millie Turner and Nicole Wellard
These girls are both the design/product developers, their job includes research, trends, working drawings and illustration/graphics and quality assurance.
Alice Pearson
Alice is the brand strategist, her job is brand concept development, performance and future objectives, develop graphics and on-line content
Emily Reid
Emily is the marketing director, and her job is to build media relations, business planning, revenue, reputation and brand.
Personally I feel we have the perfect team, each team member is confident at their job position and ready to start this project!
I will keep you updated with my progress!
misscatherinethompson 