Branding for Corsetmakers 1

Your brand is your mark, the certain something that makes your work recognisably yours. At its best, your work should subtly convey your mark with concision and clarity. It's like recognising a particular painter's brushstrokes. More figuratively, this mark can be distilled into logos, fonts, and visual codes, which we will come to in Part 2: Communicating Your Brand. But let's start with a wider view.

Branding, at its most basic, is:

The process involved in creating a unique name and image for a product in the consumers' mind, mainly through advertising campaigns with a consistent theme. Branding aims to establish a significant and differentiated presence in the market that attracts and retains loyal customers. (Business Dictionary)

I hope you haven't fallen asleep already with that little bit of business-speak! Quite simply, branding is the paraphernalia that surrounds and supports your product. It can be easy to forget, but it is important. Whether you rely on word-of-mouth or glossy magazine spreads for business, everything you do communicates your brand in some way.

Let me put it in over-exaggerated terms to illustrate... If your branding were clearly bad it would have a negative impact, yes? Of course! Imagine a webpage (below).

A photograph of a corset sits alongside a bit of generic text. The corset is shown against a messy background and the picture isn't clear (don't worry, I'm using one of my own horrible photographs to demonstrate!). The webpage background is a photograph of some fish, there's a pawprint in one corner, spelling mistakes, an unprofessional-looking email address, jarring colours and ugly fonts...

Wait, what?

Yep, that's right. None of it makes sense. It doesn't support the idea of my brand. Or anyone's brand, I imagine! Visual discord can be positive and engaging when presenting your brand (I almost quite like the fish, for example) and is a recognised visual merchandising technique, but generally it has to be a single bold statement, not a mass of clashing elements.

Now, although this page is over-the-top and unlikely, it is obvious that the poor branding will harm the product (however good it may be). But whilst many creatives' websites may not be this bad, they're still not very good. If you've selected your background, font or colour simply because you had to select something, then you probably aren't using the space available in the most positive way. It may not actively harm your product, but it may well do it no favours. It is a missed opportunity.

Of course, branding isn't just websites. Everything surrounding your work (the logo, colours, imagery, text) should be crafted to support the character of your work. And why not? You're a creative person running a creative business. Branding and visual merchandising are opportunities for you to explore your creativity even further, building an overall "brand experience" for your clients.

But with so many options, where do you start?! What is an appropriate background image? What colours are suitable?

The way I see it, branding is something that can have a dual nature. The angle you approach it from affects how easy or difficult you will find these decisions. Branding can be seen as...

Something imposed on a business from an external source (ie: visuals and text designed to elicit a specific reaction from a potential consumer, based more on the wider industry than on your product in particular)

or...

Something that emerges from the business as an internal ethos (ie: a natural and logical expression of your art.)

New corsetmakers often seem to think of branding as something added onto the product as a finishing touch, to make the product seem more like existing comparable products. But in this article I will be explaining why I feel a personal creative approach to branding, in which you actively try not to appear like the larger corset companies but more like what you are (an individual artist), is more appropriate for the solo corsetmaker.

"Brands are built from the inside out, through people, processes and product as well as communications and they are built by thousands of gestures." Marketing Week

The Thing about Small Businesses

Sole traders and small businesses often attempt to keep up with larger comparable companies (with pricing, branding, sales outlets, etc.), and this leads to confusion. When we research branding or PR we are bombarded with advice that is often better suited to the promotion and growth of those larger companies than it is to us.

In short, our small bespoke businesses are not like the companies that mass-produce corsetry. They're not even that closely related to brands that have a large team of seamstresses. Indeed, our corner of the industry could be compared more appropriately to specialist shoemakers, kiltmakers, bespoke saddlers, even some tailors... What we are trying to do is very special and we too often forget it. In writing on the philosophical aspect of bespoke tailoring (in Bespoke: Savile Row ripped and smoothed), Richard Anderson says:

"The good cutter must design a garment in which his customer will look his best while standing, sitting, striking a contraposto, running, eating, playing the trombone, even furthering his prospects for 'making love'. Impossible. And yet the good cutter must try. It is his trade, perfectionism is his duty. To remain sane he must ultimately acknowledge that there is no such thing as perfection, only gradations of imperfection – indeed that perfection is an abstraction; and yet he must pursue it nevertheless." p128

Of course, the challenges of fit are different for corsetry than tailoring, but the ethos is similar. We should value that ethos as highly as the tailors do, appreciating that it's remarkably different from most garment production. I would also add, however, that the "perfection" we are each pursuing is different for each of us and not really comparable on a hierarchical scale. Corsetmakers are free to approach their work as art. So long as you start from a functional basis (ie: the corset must "work" as intended) you can then place your personal exploration of design and technique above the need to appeal to the widest possible audience.

Therefore our work can be very closely related to fine art, bespoke jewellery, or luxury goods.

A Note on Opinions of Branding and Promotion

Now, I know that terms such as "brand philosophy" will be turning some of you off. It can seem so calculating and dull. Many creatives seem to find the idea of promotion unappealing, and sometimes thoroughly distasteful! There can be a feeling of "my work speaks for itself, anything else is pretence", which I have come across a surprising number of times. Well, I would say that your work is never received in isolation. It never truly speaks for itself since nothing exists in a vacuum. You may deliver a corset in person to the client at their own home, for example, and the way the corset is packaged and handed over, the look and feel of your business card (if you have one), whether you are friendly and personable, your own appearance... all of these things and more add up to create a "brand experience". You cannot get away from this fact, so you may as well use it to your advantage. Most likely, you already have been using it without even thinking that what you were doing was "branding".

Alison Campbell of CrikeyAphrodite! is a contemporary corsetmaker, FR reader, and friend, who also has 18 years experience working in advertising and marketing within a Scottish newspaper group. Here's what she had to say when we discussed the topic of business promotion:

"Promotion is necessary. Advertising is NOT evil! We're running businesses, not faffing about for pure fun. Working in an advertising department, I have seen many businesses cut back on advertising and promotion (usually to save money) with the result that most of them lose custom or shut down completely.

It doesn’t matter whether you promote through Twitter, Vogue, or word-of-mouth, the right people have to be aware of you for your business to work. This attitude that promotion is distasteful really gets my goat. Now that I’ve gone full-time with Crikey Aphrodite!, I'm gradually upping my promotion and I promise you… I'll be increasing it a lot more.

There is nothing wrong with publicity, it isn't a dirty word. We're running businesses! Advertising is necessary, it enables other things to exist. Condemning it is just naïve. By all means criticise the vast number of ads in the glossy mags, but without them there would be no magazine and certainly no fabulous glossy photoshoots and subsequently no fashion houses. Mr Pearl may thrive on an element of mystery and exclusivity, but he earns his reputation from haute couture collections which only exist because they flog the hell out of perfume and accessories. It doesn't matter how you get the publicity; it all adds up to the same.

The internet corset community has created a false idea that we're all doing the same thing. We are not. We're running different businesses, in different places, with different markets, interpreting our own ideas. Do what’s right for your own business, not what’s right for someone else’s."

Distinguishing Features of Art and Luxury

The main thing to note about art is that it is made by an artist. It comes from their hands to yours. It has a human connection that the endless cycle of retail marketing mostly lacks. Indeed, with many garments we prefer not to know about the hands that made them, for fear we'll discover our lifestyle is contributing to problems like child labour. For us, our hands are a gift. The artist should always be present in the work, and their human traits of passion, studiousness, skill, and imperfection should be apparent.

"Luxury is located beyond quality: it is, to borrow an expression from Remi Krug, 'that which distinguishes the very good from the emotionally moving'. It is not enough to ceaselessly pursue perfection [...]. It is in the details that we must find the germ of madness necessary to surpass [...] clinical perfection." pp 79-80, The Luxury Strategy.

Art and luxury goods stand alone. They are non-competitive precisely because they have artistic "creators" behind them. It makes no sense to compare the work of Van Gogh and Banksy, or the couture of Chanel and Gaultier, on any sort of BEST/WORST sliding scale... Likewise, it makes no sense to compare corsetmakers. Art is subjective and it is all about what moves you as an individual.

Art and luxury are about dreams. Fantasy. Aspiration. Your client wants to invest emotionally in the dream of your art/brand (imagery is your greatest asset here), participating in the creation of magic, whether that dream be one of sophisticated refinement, retrospective whimsy, or excessive glamour. On glamour (if this is the sort of feeling you are interested in exploring), it is worth noting that "glamour simply cannot exist without mass involvement" (p15, Glamour: a history, by Stephen Gundle). Likewise, in business, your potential clients need to be aware of you. You need their involvement. How you choose to build awareness will depend upon your interests, business aims, geographical location, financial situation, social standing, etc. etc. But however you do it, make the choices that are right for your business. To paraphrase a London art lecturer I saw on television once, you need to make yourself visible and take responsibility for your art.

Art and luxury are rare. Luxurious objects are enticingly out of reach, which makes the getting of them all the sweeter. The very fact that we are one-person enterprises is a wonderful thing and adds to this rarity, regardless of your price point (you can only make so many corsets per year), and this should be reflected in your branding. It should be clear to potential clients that you single-handedly produce the work and that custom fit is exceptionally unusual. Whether you sell your corsets for ten or ten thousand pounds, dollars or Euros, the nature of the thing is still incredibly special and you should be cognisant and proud of that fact.

The Source of Your Brand

Having considered the particular quirks of our small businesses, how can we each turn our work into a "brand"?

To illustrate this, I will put forward the processes and key points that I worked through when asking myself that very question.

I recently developed a list of factors that are core to my work, things that are central to my interests in general and at the heart of my work in particular. These are points that have developed naturally, but it was only by sitting down and actively reflecting upon them that I came to understand my brand a little better, and to realise that the work I do now extends much further back into my personal history than when I first cut a corset pattern. (This approach relied heavily on ideas from The Luxury Strategy so I cannot claim to be the brainiac behind it!)

As the inspiration text uses different terms and a lot of business-speak, I've distilled a couple of their ideas to give a framework within which you can identify and understand the heart of your brand.

You will want to analyse your:

ARTISTIC CHARACTER: how your working character influences the development of your work. Eg: perhaps you are a prolific sketcher, or perhaps you have been studying corsetry since you were 15 years old... how has this directed the style of your work? What gets you excited about your work?

CULTURAL GROUNDING: how you relate to the industry and history of your chosen profession. Eg: is your work uber-modern or a re-imagining of the past? Do you consider yourself a fashionista, hermit-like craftsperson, or somewhere in-between? Is your work connected to your locality or does it have a global relevance?

THEORETICAL GROUNDING: how you view the function of your work. Eg: does it build the wearer's confidence, challenge boundaries, aim at pure craft perfection? Is it informed by other types of art? Do you collaborate with other artists?

Note down everything that comes to mind and then go through your list cutting out anything that is occasional, changing, or not entirely correct. You will be left with the bare bones of your brand, and you may find them surprising or even contradictory. They are, after all, a reflection of a human being.

My core principles came out as follows:

Core Principles:

ARTIST CHARACTERISTICS: My approach to my work is corporeal, self-aware, blithe, fickle, intuitive and studious.
CULTURAL GROUNDING: I strive to learn about and build upon British traditions of craftsmanship, fit and whimsy.
THEORETICAL GROUNDING: I have an ongoing interest in the dialogue between sensuality and feminism.

These must then be transformed into external signifiers. Keep the categories the same, but consider how each element listed can be expressed outwardly.

Outward Projection of my Core Principles:

ART: Accompanying visual components (logo, main colour scheme, business cards, etc.) must be unfussy and refined to convey seriousness, but also personal and emotive to reveal the presence of the artist. Voice must communicate the artist's working character.
CULTURE: The work must constantly improve and aim for the higher level of skill, which must be reflected in the brand's voice. Style can be quirky and disparate.
THEORY: Imagery must be body-conscious, intricate, and awash with historical and artistic references. It must be intimate and discreet in nature (with a slightly unsettling voyeuristic streak), whilst accompanying text must have an intelligent and interested tone.

This process can teach us a lot. It teaches us that your outward branding choices are as much a part of you as the corsetry; that considering the core principles of your work gives you a consistent identity with which to make decisions on any number of business issues.

For example, would it be appropriate for Sparklewren imagery to mimic that of Tesco or Wal-Mart? No. Ellen von Unwerth is a more suitable reference point. By outlining these points I have a very clear sense of how not to brand my work, which leaves me with a smaller list of sensible and honest options. Whenever I feel overwhelmed or confused, I look back on my core principles as a way of simplifying the decision-making process. When considering a project/image/logo/etc. ask, "Is it right for my brand?" If it doesn't work in harmony with your core principles, then it probably isn't appropriate.

How Your Brand Relates to Your Designs

If you have followed my lead and outlined your core principles, you may be thinking, "But where is my main corsetry style? Isn't having a recognisable look key to good branding?" You may, for example, have expected my core principles to include something about fabrication choices or patterning.

Those design elements are the way in which you express your brand, rather than the brand itself. They can solidify into an iconic product (the "little black dress" of your business), but this comes with the development (conscious or otherwise) of a true and passionate ethos. Successful branding (for small luxurious businesses that rely on the idea of unique products for unique clients) isn't about shrewdly identifying a gap in the market and then claiming it. Our products are about want rather than need.

Within the history of corsetry, we do see incredible numbers of "innovations" and patented designs. As the corset was an essential garment, there was scope for profit by creating "the next big thing". But this approach relies on mass-production and hectic advertising, and produces products that will quickly date and be surpassed by a different "next big thing". It essentially means that your brand is only as good as your last triumphant product.

The "luxury brand has one or two iconic products that symbolize [...] its values", p132 The Luxury Strategy.

Your iconic product must be a true and passionate manifestation of your core principles. The character of this product is like handwriting... it is conveyed through the lines and proportions of your corsetry and it cannot be forced. Colours, textures, patterning, techniques, stitch quality, historical reference points... they are like words and letters. Continuously rearrange them in a multitude of ways that reflect your core principles. You have probably already been doing this unconsciously. You will find your favourite combinations and discover that certain elements are interpreted again and again through your work, but you will also have the freedom to be endlessly creative in a way that makes sense to your audience. By always exploring the elements of corsetry that you love in a genuine way, you will be able to have a great deal of creative freedom without alienating your client base.

For example, instead of being "the one who uses the blue exterior casings", it would be better to be "corsetmaker [insert specific name], who constantly surprises me" (that is a randomly created example, of course, carefully chosen because I don't know of a corsetmaker who specialises in blue casings!). In other words, your brand moves away from an unsteady reliance on the external elements of the product to a more solid reliance on the internal qualities of the maker's vision. It may well be that you use blue exterior casings endlessly, but you don't necessarily want that to be the first thing your clients think of when they recall your brand.

For example, is Coco Chanel "the one who makes those boxy little skirt suits" or "Chanel, the lady who freed women from their corsets!"? The distinction is important. A box jacket is a box jacket... but a Chanel box jacket is something else.

In other words, your core principles will allow both your product and branding to move away from a reputation based on an arbitrary design, to a reputation based on a wider brand philosophy. You will enjoy constant renewal of interest by your client base as they will recognise that there is a strong hidden heart to your work and want to support you on your journey.

Of course, some may turn away from your work or just not "get it" at all. If you find that you aren't everyone's "cup of tea" then so much the better... art objects and niche products are not meant for a wide audience, they're meant for a small collection of passionate enthusiasts.

For example, I recall watching a youtube video of a Mugler couture garment (apparently made in part by Mr Pearl). It was the most splendid thing I'd ever seen, even if only on a poor quality video clip. Sparkling white with clear crystals and a dramatically cinched waist, it was a simply incredible creation.

Unsurprisingly, there were a smattering of unkind comments below. That's fine. Those people who hated Mugler's couture at a distance online were in no way his intended clients. Indeed, the hostile reception of any art simply makes the art's ambassadors even more passionately attached to the work. So do whatever you want to do as an artist, and accept that some individuals will criticise you for it, saying they don't like the style or colour, maybe even launching personal attacks, speculating on you as a person, or taking swipes at the shape of your model's legs (I've had it happen!). Take this for what it is: evidence that your brand is as distinctive, personal and niche as it should be.

Defining a Client

This is a difficult part of the process for me, and one that I am truthfully still working on. For true marketing experts it's a question of analysing data, outlining "who shops where", who earns what, and collating all that information to provide a targeted selection of society that are appropriate potential clients for your work.

Getting hold of that information is excessively difficult and expensive, so for our purposes I'm going to outline a different technique that can be used when considering your client.

Create an "image" of your perfect client. You can even give her a name if you like.

Consider the characteristics your client may or may not have. Even by simply defining what they aren't will help you understand what they are. Start with something like figure 12. Brainstorm everything you can think of around some key categories (eg: gender, lifestyle, buying habits), focussing on outlining a range of options within those categories.

Once you have brainstormed a bunch of ideas, get rid of anything that doesn't sit well with your brand. Figures 12a, 12b and 12c give example sheets. If your ideal client fits the image shown in 12a (purchasing sensible Clarks shoes for under £100 and occasionally wearing corsets at trendy bars on the weekend) she probably isn't going to be the woman who drops £5000 on an elaborate corset with 12 fittings, Solstiss lace, swarovski crystals and £200/yd fabric. If, however, you add "bride" into the mix (12b), things may change. It should go without saying that those two clients will respond to different branding. Likewise, a wildly different client avatar in 12c (savvy readers can guess at which international burlesque superstars could be represented in 12c!) will require different branding.

Figure 12a: Our client here might be a young professional, working her way up the career ladder and buying at the high end of the highstreet. She may well buy corsetry, but will she buy your corsetry? Think about how her spending habits and tastes line up against your product.

Figure 12b: If we alter our client ever so slightly by deciding that she is getting married, then it is clear to see that her needs and your product may now overlap in a different way.

Figure 12c: You can see how these attributes may give a client type who may expect certain things of corsetry (eg: high price, interesting design, excellent fit etc.), with corsets being a part of her everyday life.

You then want to consider whether the client you have created will understand and want your product.

Take the time to imagine your product through her eyes, with her expectations. How does it perform? Does it make sense to her? Is it presented in an appealing way?

If there is a discord between client avatar and product, then it becomes clear that either the branding or product must shift (in order to appeal to the potential client), or the choice of potential client type must change.

The bottom line is that you want your client and your product to make sense together. There is nothing "wrong" with any particular segment of the market, just establish which little corner is appropriate to your work and focus on creating a dialogue with those people.

Conclusion

To summarise, my basic tips for beginning your branding are as follows:

Recognise that your very special product is more like art or specialist luxury than most clothing/craft products.
Establish your core principles through study and reflection, then remain true to them.
Be mindful of potential dissonance in your branding (ie: make sure your target client, branding choices, and product are in harmony, through reference to your core principles).
Make choices that reflect your own thoughts and aims. No-one can give you all the answers and what works for one business will not work for another. Research, read, study, dream, and then do what feels right for you.

I've put forward the idea that many of us present ourselves incorrectly as we lack conviction in the idea that we're artists or specialists. We forget that clients daydream about our products... we try to compete with larger companies by mimicking their promotion or branding choices... we devalue our work by presenting it poorly.

I know that we can make all these mistakes because it is something that I struggle with myself. My business is still young and developing, and so too often I find myself acting contrary to my core principles out of anxiety. Sometimes my confidence falters because an "expert" tells me I'm doing something wrong. But ignoring my core principles and/or ignoring my own instincts and research will ultimately injure my business.

We go through all this hair-pulling effort to continually improve our corsetmaking and get our businesses functional. Let's take the next step and treat the branding and presentation of our product with the same seriousness. It will be a slow process, but take solace in the fact that anything worth having is hard won. Remember why this is important to you and work at it!

Of course, none of this is much use if your brand is not visible to your target client. In Part 2, I will outline some of the key ways to begin building visibility.