Ever heard of Gucci or Prada? You are reading a blog on a Fashion Designing college website, Of course, you have heard of it. There might be a certain set of people who even dream of establishing a brand of their own and making them as big as Gucci or Prada.
I am sure some of you would love to own clothes from Gucci or Prada? Forget Gucci or Prada, I am sure every one of us has a favorite brand from where we love to buy clothes from. Why is that? What is it that is so special about Prada or Gucci or any other brand? What is it that makes you seek these brands and buy their products?
Well, the answer is the Brand. This is the power of Brand, and that is what we will discuss in this blog post. Branding is not confined to any one industry or field. But, in this blog post, we will talk mostly about branding and the power of brands in the fashion industry.
Brand is one of those words that is often used liberally by everyone and each one of us has a different perception of what a brand is. Hence, before we delve into the power of brand in the Fashion Industry and why it is important, let us first understand what a brand is and what is its definition.
By the way, if you are interested in knowing how to build a fashion brand, check out this post on How To Start Your Own Fashion Brand – A Step By Step Guide to Launching A Fashion & Clothing Brand
Grab your Tea for we might jump into a rabbit hole of brands.
What is Branding?
Branding can be defined in an infinite number of ways, but in a nutshell, a brand is the image or perception of an individual, product, or company in the eyes of people. Branding is the way a company or an individual connects with its audience or consumers. I personally believe that branding is nothing more than building trust & a relationship with your customer base. If you do that successfully, there is nothing to stop you from growing except for your competitor who might have established a better brand than you.
Establishing a brand also means instilling trust in your customers about your products or services. If your customers do not trust you, they will not buy your products. Hence, I believe that Branding is also about building trust maintaining it.
Anything that involves connecting with a group of people does not happen in a day. You cannot trust or love the person you have just met. You need to spend time with a person, understand him or her and only then you can decide whether you can trust them. It is the same with the companies as well. It is not something that can be achieved in a day or two or even three. It is a long, daunting, and consistent process. If you rush into it, you might run the chance of ruining it. So, you need to be incredibly careful of the ways you are using to build your brand.
If you are to build a brand, you also need to understand your customer base, establishing relationships with them, and ultimately connecting with them. All of this is done using not one but several mediums. Through your designs, choice of colors, the posts you put out on Social Medias, the kind of service you provide, etc.
If you are interested in starting your own brand you can check out this post on how to become a successful fashion blogger which will help you in personal branding.
The power of Brand in the Fashion Industry:
Branding is at the core of every business. If you get this one thing right, everything else can be pretty much a cakewalk. People often seek out their favorite brands and do not hesitate to buy from them, no matter the quality or price. To put it in simple words, the power of a brand is such that, if done right, has the potential of boosting your business as nothing else can.
While you can study a lot from every big brand out there, it is the fashion and technology brands that fascinate me the most. Especially the luxury brands. Branding is also about understanding the human psyche and behavior so that the brands can manipulate them to their advantage. In fashion, you also need to understand the psychology of colors and clothing as well to entice & allure the customers.
The luxury brands, play on Human’s desire to own superior goods. I think that is the reason why the cost of luxury goods has risen almost 60% in the last 10 years.
To understand the power of a brand, let us look at some of the biggest brands and try to understand what it about these brands is that makes us tick.
Let us assume you are wandering around a street and see a lady wearing clothing that has a Gucci branding on it. First, all you had to look at was the logo of Gucci which is just a “G” and you instantly understood what brand it is. That is the visual connection that Gucci had managed to establish with their customers.
The next thing is as soon as you saw the lady with the Gucci dress, you assumed she is a rich lady. Most women might even aspire to be that lady. That is the kind of identity that Gucci has created and well, it must since it is a luxury clothing brand.
Gucci also does not have to force someone to buy their products. People seek them out and buy them. That is the power of the brand. Every brand in its way connects with people and evokes different emotions within them when they wear them.
You might also be interested in reading about What is Fashion Designing & How to become a successful Fashion Designer.
What can you conclude with this example?
The first thing I want to convey is that the example is true for most of the brands out there. Every high-end brand that you can think of has its products priced at the higher end of the spectrum. That is mainly because of the trust that the brand has instilled in the consumers. Also, our brain, for some reason, perceives that anything costly must be of higher quality.
At the core of it, it is all about evoking emotion when a person is wearing your brand. The emotion might be anything from confidence to a feeling of being superior to others. People love brands that can add value to life. As I mentioned earlier, once you have created a stronger brand, your products sell for themselves regardless of price.
As a conclusion to this post, let me give you an example of an Indian company that has such a great trust value that people would buy anything that the company produces. The name of the company is TATA. TATA is one of those few companies that has spread its wings in so many verticals, It has been successful in sneaking into every industry based on its brand value. We can study the success of TATA to understand how people interact with the brand.
Have you ever stopped to notice how many fields TATA has their products in? Most people buy these products because they assume, since it’s a TATA product, it must be good. Such is the power of brand and there are innumerable things you can learn from TATA implement them into your Branding strategies.
While authoring this article, I wanted to add a section about How can you build a brand and then realized that it can make the post longer. So, if you want a blog post on How to build a brand, write “Building Brand” in the comments and I will surely write on the topic. Also, do let me know what your favorite brands are and why you love them in the comments below.
If this post has you all excited about having your own fashion brand, here is how you can take the first step towards being a successful fashion designer and having your own fashion brand. You can get into one of the fashion designing courses at IIFT which is considered one of the best Fashion Designing colleges in Bangalore. You can check out more details about the courses we offer below.
Fashion Designing Courses offered by IIFT:
- Diploma in Fashion Design & Boutique Management
- Diploma in Fashion Communication & Journalism
- BSc in Fashion & Apparel Design
- Masters in Fashion Management
- Diploma in Fashion Designing (Weekend Program)
Or you can just click on that yellow Enquire Now button on the top right corner and fill up the form. We will help you out with the whole process.