25th February 2018
Dear diary,
This week I am focusing on my research and gathering together competitors that I thought would be suitable for my brand, I chose Christian Louboutin (not for his price range but for the similarity n shoe soles), Marlow London (especially because she uses real leather skin however after the animal has died from natural causes, this gives me a good idea about how I will be producing my leather). After showing a lecturer my competitors, they liked the ideas however it could be developed with more of a variety of competitors. I noted down some more competitors that I thought would suit my age range as well as income capacity. Once I found the competitors, I went to their stores on Oxford Street to see how they presented their products/collections. I went to Russell & Bromley’s store and it appealed to me that they associated their bags and shoes together as collections and the same details. After attending the stores, it gave me a wider range of ideas about how my competitor looked. It also helped seeing the type of customers, who went into the stores, this helped me to decide my target customers, age, income, how they felt about fashion, do they work in fashion? I came to the decision of having a women brand because I thought having men and women would mean double the amount of work and I think I am already challenging myself enough as it is.
I tried to widen my age range so I would be able to have more of a variety of customers, I began with age 20-28 however after thinking about it more, I thought about moving the age range up to 38 for older women, this worked out best. To get a further insight into my customer and how they portrayed themselves, I created a mood board, including high-end designers, women around the age of 25 as well as their interests, for instance books they like to read and places they like to travel to.