Investing in a brand (particularly a physical products brand) is a little different than investing in a SaaS product. It’s not like with brands you can immediately apply the “pain point -> solution” framework, because in almost all these cases none of these new brands are solving a “pain point” in the traditional sense. For instance, in Chinatown, at New Loon Moon, 10 different brands of soy sauce have co-existed side by side for decades. Now let’s say that you take a time machine back to 1888 when “Lee Kum Kee” was just an idea on a sheet of napkin, and Lee Kum Sheung walked up to Marc Andressen Sr.Sr.Sr asking for a £500K term sheet to get the first initial bottles of soy sauce going. If Marc Andressen Sr.Sr.Sr asked “what kind of pain point is this soy sauce solving for,” Lee Kum Sheung wasn’t really going to have much of an answer for this. Because in actuality: is soy sauce really solving a problem? Either way, people will eat stuff, live and wake up the next day, with the usage of salt and pepper to make their food more tasty if that was what was important to them. And yet, the rest is history: Lee Kum Kee became one of the biggest sellers of Asian condiments in the world.
Instead, we’re tapping more into the “desirability” quotient, which says that with products that exist more as either relative status symbols or as a “want>need” (handbags, shoes, furniture, cookware, cars, food products.etc), the narrative built around brand and reputation matters more than anything else when it comes to achieving long term sustainable demand. For instance, I don’t need unique shoes, but I sure want them, and will be willing to shell out a decent amount of money for them too.
So brands achieve traction through the following elements:
Story
Recognizability
We just invested in Under Her Eyes, which is an environmentally-friendly fashion accessory brand designed for women who “don’t want to feel bad about looking good.” The brand is already revenue generating, without utilizing any paid marketing. It’s still early days, but the fact that they’ve already been able to achieve over 100 customers and 13K turnover off of mostly word of mouth is quite impressive. In addition, they’ve already been featured with these publications:
So let’s break down each traction element and how it applies to Under Her Eyes.
Story
The story that Under Her Eyes is building is one of sustainability, transparency, and individuality. This shows in the little and big details, which create overall brand aura. For instance, while most fashion accessory brands manufacture their materials from abroad in various cheap factories, Under Her Eyes utilises vegetable tanned leather and natural rubber, all with lesser greenhouse emissions in mind. In addition, there are vegan bags in the works, which will be cheaper than their current leather ones and should widen Under Her Eyes’ appeal.
It’s early days but their 3,200+ follower count on Instagram (organic) demonstrates that the target customers are connecting with the story.
Recognizability
There’s a few distinctive features on the bag that really make it stand out. For instance, you’ll notice the curves on the bottom of the handbag as well as the sides- these were specifically designed to complement the shape of a woman’s body. The big “e” logo in the middle goes with the overall curved theme really well, and creates a very modern aura. This unique design is what’s contributing to its popularity from a word of mouth standpoint- and in the fashion space, design is extremely important.
The “under the radar” nature of Under Her Eyes could allow them to keep an aura of specialness for a while. Generally speaking, through observation, shoppers are attracted to “having things not many people have” and in this case Under Her Eyes, combined with its unique design, could have a huge advantage when compared to the likes of Kate Spade, Prada, etc. Down the line, when the brand becomes more popular, this “under the radar” nature might become muted, but not for now.
In the Works:
Working in conjunction with Fashion Revolution and Common Objective to produce a plant-based leather like fabric made out of wine industry waste. This will be the material of choice for upcoming, more affordable vegan bags.
Jewelry and clothing all made out of recycled materials and yarns.
Either Wholesale or D2C for long term scalability
Potential Challenges in the Long Term:
It’ll be interesting to see how, long term, Under Her Eyes carves out a niche within the sustainable fashion accessory space. While they’ve gotten off to a good start, fashion accessories have always been a fairly crowded space, so their ability to sustain memorability within consumer messaging over a longer period of time should be interesting to watch. We’re confident they’ll be able to.
It’ll be interesting to see how their supply chain manages an increase in volume. These are all intricately made, premium bags, so they’ll have to take steps to ensure that an increase in volume does not lead to a drop in quality.
Competition
Competition from a consumer brands standpoint is always interesting because it’s not exactly about who has the “better design” or the “better bag”; it’s usually about who can connect with the consumer better and tell the better story. With this being said, in addition to the usual high street stalwarts, here are some other competitors (and their designs):
Been London
Bimba Y Lola
Staud
With a combination of a distinctive design and growing organic demand, we expect Under Her Eyes to be able to carve out a solid % of the market, even with many choices of bags for consumers.
Team
Right now, the team is Silva Hrabar Owens plus a few other interns in buying, marketing and merchandising. Prior to starting Under Her Eyes, she spent over 20 years doing fashion buying and merchandising for the likes of Topshop, Asos and Boden and lectures at the London College of Fashion on fashion buying and merchandising. This prior experience gave her the insight and drive to work on fashion that was better for consumers and the planet, and we feel that her prior knowledge in this space will enable her and her team to take Under Her Eyes to the next level.
The team will need to grow at some point but we will be able to help her with that when the timing is right.