Nice to have you here again and reading my weekly blog! My name is Brechje and I am the founder of All-time Favourites. With my weekly blog I try to take you on this great adventure of building my own brand. More than 10 years ago I released the first large python tote bag. And look at what has come my way since then and what we have had to do to get where we are now. Building your own brand is truly an exciting process!
If you are going to set up your own brand, the first question you need to ask yourself is, "Who is my target group?" A nice way to find out is to organize qualitative market research. Already in 2016, I organized my first market research in a small restaurant in Amsterdam, which was led by my business coach Ole. Since then, we've repeated it every year, inviting ladies to our showroom in the Houthavens in Amsterdam. We do this to get a clear idea of who our target group is and what obstacles they have in their busy on-the-go lives.
As you may know, I moved to Barcelona in September 2019 to set up ATF España. We organized our first market research here in October 2019. Oh how nervous I was. I barely spoke a word of Spanish. Ole had flown in from the Netherlands and also led this research session. Fortunately Ole lived in Mexico for Unilever for years and speaks Spanish. That helped! The big takeaway from that research was that women in Spain did not see the relevance having a big bag at all! They said, "What should I do with such a large bag?"Exactly like in 2016 in the Netherlands.
We just did our second market survey in Spain this week. This time in Madrid. We invited 7 ladies to the beautiful Only You Hotel. My Spanish was a little better, but Ole was back to help. The result two years later? Larger bags have now become more common in Spain. Although ours are still really big in their eyes.
You see a lot of classic shoulder bags here, but not real tote bags like ours. But at least now they see the use of a big bag, so that's nice. The versatility and originality were also highly appreciated. But what I found really striking and what I will definitely do something with is this feedback: "Those prints are nice for summer, great for the beach and holidays, but for day-to-day life and for work, especially in the winter, we want black or dark blue bags. I really can't walk into the office wearing a leopard print!" Noted!
So I'm going to add some more classic or quieter bags to the collection for next winter, especially for Spain. In Spain they love dark blue and camel. So there's work to be done!
Next year we will also conduct these studies in our third market, Germany, where we have also been active since March 2021. I'm already curious what feedback we will receive from Germany! So you see: rolling out your brand internationally is not a matter of copy & paste. It requires local knowledge and contact with a local target group. It is so interesting to do business internationally! I'm really going having a blast!
Nice weekend,
Greetings Brechje
