Richard Protheroe is a marketing executive for Veeqo, who provide inventory management software for online retailers.
Last week he visited Moda, the UK’s largest trade fashion exhibition with more than 1450 brands packed into Birmingham’s NEC.
The brands sell everything from womenswear, menswear, footwear to accessories, lingerie and swimwear.
He went along to see how these retailers are marketing, how they engage with their customers, what challenges they face and what marketplaces they are selling on.
Lacey’s London
“For marketing we find that bloggers are very influential. We’ll rank them by followers and size of reach and then offer them samples in exchange for a review.
As a company, we want to make more of an effort on social media but it can be time consuming. Whereas before it was tagged on to someone’s job, it’s now a job in itself.
We find that eBay is a great platform for our end of line stock, if we have any odd pairs etc. As well as Moda we also attend London Edge & Bridal Fashion Week”.
Colour & Sons
“As well as our own website we also sell on ASOS, Amazon and House of Fraser.
Recently, for marketing purposes, we hired a room in the Hilton hotel. We had a pop-up banner made and invited customers to our room to view our products and it worked well”.
Ravel Footwear
“We like to sell on as many retail sites as possible. The main ones that work best for us are Amazon, ASOS, Viva La Diva, Lipsy and House of Fraser.
The biggest challenge for a company our size is competing with bigger brand. Also, it’s difficult when there is no seasonality. Everyone is always promoting their ranges in advance, so there’s no real clarity for the consumer”.
El Naturalista
“We find it a waste of time to advertise in fashion magazines, so we figured where our potential customers would be.
Our typical customer would be in to exploration and adventure so we decided to advertise in publications like National Geographic, which worked out well for us.
We currently sell in online in over 73 countries and have a physical store in Paris. The best performing marketplaces for us are Amazon, Amazon UK & Germany, Zalando and Zappos”.
Blend
“We do a lot of posting on Instagram and there are two tools in particular that work well for us.
Firstly there’s Splice, which allows us to create short videos with music and effects very quickly. This is great when promoting what stand we’ll be on at trade shows.
Secondly we use Iconosquare to monitor our Instagram analytics. This could be to highlight our most engaged followers or to inform us the best time to post material”.
Johnstons of Elgin
“We sell both wholesale and retail, but keep the accounts separate as we don’t want to confuse anyone.
We outsource our marketing and PR and use a company called Task. They are a fashion specific company and have a great relationship with all nationals and big publications.
As well as Moda we also attend Scoop and Jacket Required to meet potential customers”.
Eden Park
“Social media can be quite consuming so we use Hootsuite to schedule all our output.
We also use The Blogger Program to connect with other bloggers as well as brands to collaborate on projects.
As well as our website, we also sell on eBay and Amazon”.
Dasmarca Hats
“We use WooCommerce to manage our website, which is very easy to use.
We’ve been going now for about 6 years and we mostly have increased our brand awareness by attending photoshoots.*
We want to have a very big footprint so we sell on a whole host of marketplaces such as Amazon, eBay, Classic Caps, Atom Retro, Surf Dome, Maze and Classic Caps”.
