A few little hurdles... - October Textiles

Obviously since I wrote that I’ve thought of two more reasons for failure…I know, this game’s tougher to take than a concrete love sausage, so let’s get some of the hard stuff out of the way.
Big question number one… before you pull on the crushed velvet purple beret, fire up Photoshop and start your label…why?

Because you love design? Because you can’t see anything nice in the shops? Do you find your job dull and boring? Do you have some spare loot you would rather spend creatively rather than on a bar stool in the Badger’s Balls? Do you know someone famous who has promised to give you an easy leg up? Do you hope that the doors of fashion will swing open, revealing a Narnia of excitement and red carpeted celebrity…will I be famous, original, and respected? These are all reasons, fair and fine, but are they enough?

We all love design in this caper, never happier than when we’re loafing in spandex; none of us can find what we want in the shops, think our boss is a total length and want to be creative…some of us even have a mate who once played a sheep dog’s diddler in Emmerdale….it ain’t enough.

A famous actor once said, it isn’t enough to ‘want’ to act, you will only succeed if you ‘have’ to act…true dat Richard Briers, and rest in peace. If the ‘having’ to start a label resonates with you, then proceed to issue number two — do you have something to say?

At the risk of sounding like an affected whoopsie, good graphic design is supposed to be ‘intellect made visible’ — is there something deep and twisted inside that you want to get out? Are you disturbed by the X Factored death of modern art, culture, expression and entertainment…do you have a political message, a social story, a passion to manufacture in England? What do you really give a proper monkey’s chuff about?

If there is something, can you condense it into maybe five criteria that all of the new collection of graphics will adhere to? Will each design have for example a sense of heritage, an emotional statement, a point of contradiction, a splash of humour, a desire to shock, a message from the streets and so on?

Get all that down, reach inside, pull your heart out and make it into an image, and we can add to that, with print techniques, garment and label selections that will ice the cake and hammer home the point…it will create all the back story we then need for marketing, web sites, and answering the uninventive journalist’s question, ‘What is the philosophy behind the brand’? You will have an identity that the customer can read and understand. Fail, and what have you got? A bunch of pictures…there are primary school walls that have that…although that could be an inspiration right there!

So you HAVE to do it, you have distilled your pictorial message into a pure alcohol of who you really are, now what?
Question three — who gives a shit?

A great message is nothing without an audience — you’ll be playing Hendrix note perfect in your back bedroom to a hamster. Who are they, where are they, and most importantly, can I afford to reach them? And don’t say 18-30 year old professionals with disposal dollar…that could mean a failed hairdresser in Rotherham….any more than mentioning your desire to reach Vogue readers, unless you’ve got a twenty grand a month advertising budget and a ski lodge in Aspen.

So who got the who, where, and affordable to reach trinity right? Let me give you a Fr’instance — One True Saxon. Essentially a lad brand, meaning heritage, Englishness, humour, a sense of northern place, and well engineered kit. This reflected in everything right down to the product names, the Rufford jumper, the Clifton underpants, all places local to Nottingham…so where might their customers be? Well we know there are 40,000 of them in that football stadium over there, and hello, that’s handy, it’s really cheap to advertise in football fanzines.
We know who we are, we know where they are, and we can afford to tell them…3-0, we win.
I said four things didn’t I, yes I think so, and four is a biggie:
Time.

Unless you’re prepared to see this through until you’ve got saggy bazookas or a wizened ball bag, don’t bother. Whatever budget you have will be better spent on that car you’ve always fancied or two weeks somewhere hot and spicy.

When we first started it went like this.

We lied profusely to get into a really stylish street wear trade show back in the day, called 40 degrees. It was impossible to get a pitch unless your name was Torquil, or you were cooler than a Penguin’s fridge.

We supplied visuals that were a total work of fiction, never returned their calls to make us look like we couldn’t care less, and when the organizers eventually came to see us, had a mate across the road ramming two pence pieces into a phone box to make our office look busy (yes, it was that long ago).

When we were accepted into the hallowed fold, we turned up, built a stand, and filled our pants that the show officials would see that we only had three T shirts and a bobble hat.
They didn’t, so you sit there, and wait for the retailers.

In the Spring, they will walk past, look down their nose and say ‘Another bloody T-shirt brand’
So you drive home in tears, smoke 200 Chesterfields and dust yourself down until the Autumn, when they’ll say ‘Those bell ends are still here.’
The following Spring they might say, ‘Fair play, they’re a persistent bunch of mugs’…and then the moment comes…Autumn, a few seasons in…John from that massive retailer who shall remain nameless is lost. It’s 3 o’clock, and he’s just been sniffing like an ant eater in the lavvy, trying to get straight for some nonsense after show party, and he falls onto your stand to start leafing through the rails. Richard from somewhere equally big stumbles by and thinks….’Mmmm, those T-shirt guys are still here, and John’s having a butchers…he knows what he’s on with, I’d better check them out.’

And so on, and then suddenly, whoosh, gold strike at Bear Creek, the word is out, and all the sheep are flocking in like there’s a wolf on the rampage — you’ve made it, they want you, they have to have you….but it takes a little time….