entrepreneurship / Start-Ups

BoF’s Imran Amed talks with grime MC and rapper Skepta about the revival of his clothing brand Mains, the parallels between music and fashion, and how embracing failure has been key to his creative journey.

In the third and final part of this series, BoF Insights spoke with investors and brand leaders about how to secure future growth before pursuing costly expansion activities in today’s tough financing environment.

Today’s brands are constrained by crises across direct-to-consumer and wholesale distribution and limited external funding pools. But it is still possible to scale a small label, even in today’s tough environment. In part two of this series, BoF Insights spoke with investors and brand leaders about how to translate cultural heat into commercial success via diversification.

The recent closure of some of fashion’s buzziest brands laid bare the many hurdles facing even the most promising designers. But it is still possible to scale a small label, even in today’s tough environment. In part one of this series, BoF Insights spoke with brands and investors and drew upon its own advisory experience to outline how to translate cultural heat into commercial success.

Twojeys has driven multi-million-euro sales of its accessibly priced jewels to Spanish Gen-Z shoppers by pushing engaging, voyeuristic content to its online community. Now the brand aims to take its concept international with the opening of a London store.

The underwear start-up was once pegged as Gen-Z’s answer to Victoria’s Secret. But investors, executives and founder Cami Téllez couldn’t agree on whether to prioritise growth or profitability. They ended up with the worst of both worlds.

Timepiece start-ups like Baltic, which went from Kickstarter campaign to producing $50K collector grade watches, and Christopher Ward, who is on track to reach $40 million in sales this year, are leveraging collector communities and innovation to take on high luxury watchmaking.

The e-commerce boom may have cooled but online returns rates remain high, and the costs of processing them are more expensive than ever. BoF unpacks how retailers can reduce the costs of returns and protect profit margins, while improving customers’ shopping experience to generate higher sales.