Tonibonoj – from my mind to the Catwalk

Hello beautiful people!

It’s been a little while but I’m back!

So much has happened since my last post; finally got sample 1 of my collection completed! Huge Yeah!!!

It’s a dress – that’s all I’m saying at the moment :). I love it and I’ve had really good feedback from those who’ve seen it – so encouraging. Now we need to complete the collection and start some serious marketing and hopefully sales.

So you know this blog is about my journey from the idea to your wardrobe right? I’ll let you in on a couple of my learnings in the recent weeks.

Reality over dreams

Creating the sample creation can be quite a tedious process and that’s just sourcing the fabric and trimmings. I learnt the hard way with sample 1, found a fabric I loved for the design but then realised there wasnt enough of it for the sample; a blessing in disguise as the fabric couldn’t be sourced quickly enough for spontaneous orders. So whilst I’d oomed and arrhed at this particular fabric, there was no point going ahead with it knowing “Department Store S” on Bond street could require 100 pieces with a 6 week turn round and half of that time spent would be just waiting for fabric to arrive; that was a no-no! So it was off to source a similar fabric, asked for 300 mtrs within a week – if the fabric store is confident enough to get you that quantity, then you’re on the right path to finding a fabric you can be confident to use. And that my dear friends is what I did to find the fabric that made the cut for our sample 1. It is possible that I probably would have known this as part of a 3 year fashion design course but as we’re learning on the go, I take this as part of my lot :). Lesson learnt, so we move on!

Keep your Business Plan dynamic

In all my learnings whether in Marketing or as part of my degree, one thing I always heard was that the business plan is a moving document. I had not realised how true that statement was; I can definitely attest to it now.

I have a friend who’s launching her own business also and we serve as accountability partners to each other – the business we’re running now have developed compared to the ideas we started with. With more research comes more understanding of the product and the environment our businesses will operate in and it therefore makes absolute sense to be fluid enough to ensure that the business plan adjusts accordingly otherwise, our projects might never see the light of day or even last no longer than a season – no one wants that.

So any fashion entrepreneurs out there with similar experiences to mine or something I havent even mentioned that we could benefit from? Please share.

I’m off now and will come back before the end of the week with some fashion related (as opposed to business focused) post.

Be good and have a fruitful week ahead!

Much love

T