You Hong's Blog

#Bonus: Wait there's more?

Tips and tricks in pivoting within the Fashion Industry:

Design is key, you do NOT need to dress well to design well. Many times, when seeking out for opinions, different people are going to have a different view on fashion. How we approached this is to focus on the segment of people who we are targeting, and understand how they feel about your "drafted" design. One way to do this is to create a survey form and collect data on their behaviors and preferences. Thereafter, you have to make your own decision on which to follow and which to not follow.
Color Profile: Many of the suppliers, regardless of silkscreen, sublimation, or heat-press, they use CMYK profile instead of RGB. To further avoid color differentiation, use Pantone colors to design (google about this if you're clueless).
Sizing and Cutting: Seriously, if you have no experience in cutting and sizing of the products you're purchasing, just ask for a standard size chart. Don't try to tell the supplier to produce a "free size" because it's definitely going to turn out like sh*t. Probably why in places like Thailand and China, a lot of the apparels sold on the streets have really weird cutting because the buyer (the shop owners) requested for "free size" from their suppliers. Please, its not a cost-cutting strategy, because your customer would be less likely to purchase with a single size, as compared to S,M,L. S,M,L is not FML.
Discount Seasons: Yes there are discount seasons even for factories. September and March. Here you have it, no need to thank me, just purchase a shorts from us at peachy.sg
Difference in printing methods: Research is how you should approach this. Use some logical thinking to think about how the manufacturer is going to produce the design. Obviously print-on would be cheaper, sublimation would be the most expensive etc., but do take note of the pros and cons of each. Generally for shirts, go for silkscreen printing. It's not expensive, trendink is a prominent POD shirt supplier among NTU students.
Packaging: You may think a personal touch is important, but what's more important is your orders being fulfilled on time. Create a homogeneous customer experience instead of "customized" ones. It's not worth the effort, really. And please ask for a sample when you're printing collateral such as stickers or hang tags, we made the mistake of purchasing "art card" material which turns out to be sh*t. I sourced another supplier for my club in NTU, and got a way better quality than what we had in Peachy, sometimes its okay to pay a little more.

Need more tips? Just hit me up at 96442809! Peace out!

#17: The end is the beginning

05/09/19

Till date, we are only left with 6 orders undelivered, which was rather impressive, fulfilling so much orders while still having school.

Yesterday night we had our presentation, where we presented to Adrian and Lili. Overall, though there are parts of the presentation that may be considered "essential" to the group project, we missed them out on purpose as we wanted to create a Peachy presentation that was interactive, and has a structural flow between them. We presented on who we are, what we do, our timeline of events, marketing strategies, and financials. Overall, I feel that our presentation went pretty well, and after our presentation, we even made another 2 more sales face to face which does prove the interest level of our shorts.

Moving forward from here would be to really focus on improving our profit margins, be able to market to cold customers instead of customers, and set-up booths. Optimistically, if we are able to sell out the rest of our stocks, we are ready to pour in more cash to make a second batch order this month as this month is the discount period for China suppliers.

This journey has been great and can never happen without the help of my teammates and our professors who guided us through the journey.

Signing out, Peachy King

#16: PACKING

01/09/19

Our products arrived last Thursday, and yesterday the entire team except Elizabeth drove down the boxes of stocks into my hall, and we started packing our orders. In total, we packed approximately 80 boxes. Examining our efficiency in packing, we realized the writing of card took a hella time, which we are definitely NOT going to continue with such an effort in the future. After packing, we also split the deliveries accordingly, with me taking the main bulk of it as I will be delivering Elizabeth's and postage orders as well.

Moving forward from here, our marketing strategies to be deployed would be influencer marketing and Hall 4 bash. Sales strategy would be to set-up a booth, and we will also be opening up shopify payments at the end of next week after we end the promotion for Sports Camp. From there, we would expect a lot more orders from public instead of just friends.

-Peachy King

#15: Sports bash

23/08/19

Guess what, the shorts did not arrive in time. We just lost $100+ into sunk cost just like this. In the end, we picked up 2 pair of Cotton-on shorts to compensate for the difference, and costed us another $40. But we really had no choice, all we could blame is ourselves and our lack of ability in timeline management.

However, yesterday's sports bash was a blast; Sports Camp Song Bo, Song song song dao jurong! Jerald, Bryan and I went directly down to Get Juiced together right after our Banking and Finance Forum. One of the Sports Bash dance judges couldn't make it, hence the sudden change of events, where Jerald became one of the judges! Overall, we did get mentioned a few times during the event, and we hope that this reach would create more conversions for our shorts.

We have also planned to offer them the promo code "SC30OFF" to purchase our shorts at a 30% discount, cutting our margins really thin. However, this strategy was put in place as students from Sports Camp are generally sporty and are able to exert influence within the community.

Moving forward, we expect our delivery order to arrive next week, and we will start packing by then.

-Peachy King

#14: PANIC ATTACK

17/08/19

On 14 August, we realized we need to have the shorts by 22nd August for Sports Pageant. Though we mentioned that we can lend the sample shorts to them, we only just realized that ultimately they need a total of 5 pieces of shorts, but we only have 3 pieces of samples! PANIC ATTACK! After trying my way to hustle the supplier, there was no way she was able to deliver the shorts by 22 August.. Hence we have to find some other shorts somewhere else...

After a long afternoon at Queensway and discussion with the team, we instead purchased shorts from our competitor from U.S., as they mentioned that they are able to deliver by 3-5days express delivery, and also shows the Peachy vibes. And now we hope for the best. And btw, that costs us almost $100+ which we made the decision to maintain a good relationship with sports camp as they will be organizing splash and surf, a national event, and we hope to partner with them.

-Peachy King

#13: We sent in the final orders

11/08/19

Our pre-order closed on 3rd August with a total sale of 46 pieces. Even though we were aiming for 90 pieces to sell out immediately, I believe falling short of this target is reasonable. After evaluating the consultation with Roderick last week, we believe we have a great product that can move in the market. Moreover, after the meeting, Jerald and I went over to GBTB to do a short photoshoot and found the "reach" there was amazing, like there's a hella tourist that was looking at our shorts. We really feel that there was a way we could really boom in this field of tourists.

Upon sending in the orders, however, HOWEVER, we did run into an issue, the lead time was another 22-25 working days, which was rather harsh on us... We would miss Sports Camp Pageant shoot in the end, however to rectify this issue, we will be borrowing them the shorts to shoot with in the meantime, and give them the sponsored shorts when it arrives. This also means that our influencer marketing will be pushed backwards. Due to our production issue, we will inform our customers on instagram that We are sorry and that we will fulfill them asap. However, from the photoshoot we also noticed that the lining was really obvious with its big holes, therefore we also requested for our supplier to change the material of the lining and having substantially lesser texture.

We would also work on our media kit to start pitching to publication companies to feature us to give us higher coverage. We also found a big issue, our supertree designed is actually traced from another vector, therefore we will be purchasing that vector to prevent any form of lawsuit.

-Peachy King

#12: all samples arrived

03/08/19

Today our supertree sample have arrived. Today is also the last day of our pre-orders, and till date we only had 35 orders (still reasonably okay). However, after reviewing all our finances once again, we might have an issue with cashflow due to lack of revenue, and burning cash in marketing. My team had a consensus that we carry on with our operations for now, and if we aren't able to find a way to cut more cost (economies of scale) or increase our price and sales, we might have to pivot into a separate product. My opinion is to move into boxer briefs because the profit margin is so much higher, and there would be a higher volume as compared to our current product.

Though with this pessimism, one thing was apparent, our products do spark a huge interest, so much that even Mr. Roderick purchased one from us during our consultation. He was rather impressed that we were able to get our products in with such a low MOQ and cost. Thereafter, Jerald and I went to GBTB to take a quick photoshoot to show the customers the design of the supertree shorts after the consultation session with Mr. Roderick. During our photoshoot, we also noticed that the amount of tourist looking at the shorts I was wearing was INSANE. Like really really insanely high. Just simply taking an escalator up at MBS, we got at least 5 pairs of eyeballs staring straight at our direction. This could mean that we can potentially tap into the tourist market through booth rentals at GBTB. Really looking forward to future plans for booths.

-Peachy King

#11: Another issue on supplier side

27/07/19

Last Friday, we there was an issue with the sample AGAIN. This time round, they have printed the supertree prints too huge. That was an issue that we couldn't accept. After discussing with my team and the supplier, we decided to get them to deliver the Mahjong and Gem Biscuit shorts over first, which arrived 3 days ago. We have also posted a story where we balloted the names of people who participated for our giveaway.

We started our phototaking immediately at Kallang Wave Mall upon arrival of the pre-production samples. This time round, I borrowed my sister's DSLR camera and got Elizabeth and Jerald's Girlfriend to help us do the phototaking. During that time, we also drafted a storyboard for our promotional video called "god of gamblers". After reviewing the photos, the skill of the photographer was apparent, where my sister were able to take quality shots without much edits, while we need to do huge edits for many of the shots taken by Elizabeth and Jerald's Girlfriend, and many of the shots were unusable as well.

However, it all ended well, with our first "modeled" post posted today, garnering 59 likes, substantially higher than when we first started. Till date, we have about 12 orders. We expect the order volume to increase closer to the end of our pre-orders on 3 August.

-Peachy King

#10: Mid-way through pre-orders

18/07/19

Last Tuesday, we went out to film videos and take photos at the beach with the old sample just to create content. We reduced the cost by asking my sister to become our photographer. But of course, after the shoot Bryan and I "blanja-ed" her dinner.

After going through the product shoot, we posted 3 posts that emphasized on the quality of the shorts, such as its 100% peachskin polyester material, having a zipper, and a premium quality twine on last Wednesday. On 12 July, Bryan, Jerald and I went to Bryan's house to complete the touch up of the website and prepare all the materials needed for the launch. The entire process took approximately from evening till the next day 6am, where we officially launched our pre-orders at 9am.

Our pre-order launch I would say, is a great success on the marketing part. We have an astonishing 1953 profile visits in the last 7 days. We hit 145 Followers with an approximate 33% post engagement which was rather impressive. However, we only have 10 orders up till now. Most of the feedback was that it was too expensive to purchase at $36 each. However, we are holding back the fact that we have an impressive unboxing experience to flaunt. Our printing of the shorts fabric was ready as well, and will be produced and shipped in by the end of this week. However, we did have an issue with the gem biscuit as the supplier actually sent in the wrong design. However, this was shortly rectified after I pointed that out. As for the other 2 shorts, the color seems okay, and we will be planning for more photoshoots next week. We hope to grow to at least 200 followers by the end of the pre-order campaign.

-Peachy King

#9: TIGHT!

09/07/19

It was clear to us that our time is simply running out. At this point, I created a strict timeline to follow:

11/07 - 3 Instagram posts that emphasizes the quality of the shorts
12/07 - Post on instastory for Pre-order opening on 13/07
13/07 - Post 3 posts of each short on instagram posts to launch the preorder
17/07 - Receive Preproduction
18/07 - Post a promo video from the photoshoot done on 05/07
20/07(TBC) - Do photoshoot (with influencers?) with the preproduction
21/07 - Do a sunday family post with GBTB short shots
23/07(TBC) - Release winner's details in giveaway
27/07 - Close pre-order
31/07 - Planned receiving of productions

With this timeline, we should be able to ship all our preorders about the mid of August where school would have started and delivery to our NTU customers would be easy. I have made all the necessary changes, such as sizing, cutting, design work, and color correction with the supplier. Now our main priority is to establish as much reach as possible to gain traction in our sales. As mentioned in my previous blog, I have placed in the orders and paid for it, which we actually ran into negative cash position due to other expenses such as transaction fees etc., therefore I have personally injected another $200 into our balance as an interest-free loan.

Moving forward, we are exploring our options with various booths in Singapore such as the TGIF Bazaar, however we won't make much of a decision for now because we cannot confirm how many shorts are we left with after the preorders.

-Peachy King

#8: Negotiations with Supplier

03/07/19

Upon fixing the color correction issue, we have also sent the supplier the CMYK Pantone color codes. We made some changes with the final design that we are sending in for production as well, such as confirming the background color for each of the shorts. With these changes, we would expect the pre-production samples' colors to be at least 90% correct.

I have also negotiated to produce 3 pre-production samples (initially they only offered to make 2 due to its lack of cost efficiency), and MOQ same at 90pcs, with 3 size variation: S,M,L. Due to the crazy high cost of USD $200 for hangtags, we will not be making hangtags, but instead, will be proceeding with our very own tags to be sewn at the inside of the shorts as part of our brand identity. Upon placing this order, we're almost as good as out of cash. Given that we need an additional SGD$1000+ to complete the order, we are going to have to sell about 30 shorts during our preorder phase in order to cover that additional USD775 upon completion of production.

Moving forward, we will be going ahead with photoshoot with the current sample to create content for our social media pages. Btw, we are focusing mainly on Instagram for sales as Instagram is what most of us use these days.

-Peachy King

#7: Samples arrived

26/06/19

Our sample arrived, delivery was rather expensive due to express delivery. I must say the quality of the shorts was exceptional. HOWEVER! There's disappointment in terms of color, sizing, and cutting of the shorts. Here were the issues:

Color turned out lighter than expected, and shadow was really blurry
Size and Cutting was really huge and baggy

We had to find the problem to this issue, hence I went to discuss with the supplier on the phone. Turns out it was because of the color profile of the design, as I designed it in RGB instead of CMYK, where their sublimation printer printed on a CMYK profile. The supplier also suggested that we revise our design with Pantone colors, and send them the Pantone color codes to follow. I will further double confirm with my team members as... fun fact: I'm colorblind [Yes, colorblind but the designer, I make the impossible possible ;)]

Apart from that, the cutting became so baggy was because we requested 28-34 "free size" which obviously resulted in a huge size, and slightly bigger elasticity on the waist. I suspect the supplier just set the sizing to be larger, and increased the compression of the waist. Regarding this issue, I will be discussing with the supplier whether we are able to do S,M,L sizing with the same MOQ.

Moving forward, on our marketing, we have followed our pre-hype timeline and posted Gem Biscuit and Mahjong post on 22 and 27 June, with 34 and 55 likes respectively. We will be posting the Super Tree post tomorrow!

-Peachy King

#6: Pre-marketing

19/06/19

Our sampling timeline went into a huge issue! On the right you can see the supplier actually said the fabric had black ink, therefore will have to do a reprint, therefore will take a longer time.. With our sampling delayed, the only thing we can really work on is our online presence. Since we have already gotten our social media pages up and running, I have designed some materials (on the right) to create a pre-marketing hype. At the same time, we will take this chance to announce a giveaway of 3 shorts to 3 lucky winners that followed, liked, commented on why they want to win a pair of our shorts, and shared our posts that will end on 21 July. In the meantime, I have also instructed Elizabeth to help boost the presence of Peachy on Instagram through these strategies:

Posting first comment on each pictures with all relevant hashtags
Effective use of emojis and good copywriting for each caption
Going onto the explore page and spam likes (this creates reach, as the users whose pictures we liked, will have their attention on us for a short while)
Going onto each relevant hashtag and like most of them

We have scheduled these posts to be posted on 22 July, 27 July, and 30 July, where we expect to launch if our sample arrives to up to our standards.

-Peachy King

#5: The time to order is now!

12/06/19

After our marketing survey, we decided to go ahead with Gem Biscuits, Super Trees and Mahjong shorts. With these designs confirmed, I took over the supplier liaising from Bryan as he has heavy internship commitments. Upon negotiation, we were able to purchase the first sample for USD$50 excluding delivery, and pre-production samples at USD$20 upon putting in 50% deposit of the entire production order. She also gave us a reasonable MOQ of 90pcs, 3 designs for the actual production. As we do not want to risk putting in the entire production order yet, we will go ahead with the single sample price of USD$50. We have decided to go ahead with the Gem Biscuit design, and decided to try to produce a free-size sample, which I gave a huge range to the supplier of waist size 28-34. We'd expect no tags on the sample, there will be a lining in the shorts. Its lead time is about 2 weeks, hence for now, we will focus on the pre-marketing of our product, as well as setup of website.

Through liaising with the supplier, I also noticed that as the supplier isn't as proficient in English as us, its important to talk in their style of typing in order for them to understand the message I'm trying to convey. However overall, I feel that this supplier could be rather trustworthy! We will see.

P.S. I have also took up a Marketing and Operations Summer Analyst position at Protégé Ventures hence I might be a little bit busier! But no issues, as people don't call me "Mr. Make It Happen" for no reason ;)

-Peachy King

#4: Design week

27/05/19

After a week's vacation 2 weeks ago, I started designing our shorts. Due to my lack of experience in Adobe Illustrator, I got one of my friends to give me a refresher course on it. On the left are some design drawings that I came out with: Satay + Satay Sauce, Durian, Ang Ku Kueh, Gem Biscuits and Potong Ice-Cream. Yes, we have completely scrapped our previously presented design of Dim Sum and Ang Ku Kueh as we realized that they do not look as appealing to our potential customers. Through these drawings, we have also scrapped our own Ang Ku Kueh drawing, and Satay as they obvious do not gel as well to the "scattered" design concept.

On the right were the designs put into mock-ups, from top:

1. Gardens By The Bay Supertrees
2. MRT train tracks
3. 9-layer kueh
4. Potong Ice-Cream
5. Gem Biscuits
6. Durian
7. Mahjong

Note that we had a meeting yesterday, and Mahjong was the idea of the rest of the team members, where I immediately started drafting out this concept late last night into the mock-up. All these ideas were mainly contributed by my closer friends' suggestions as I felt that having outside view could help us avoid tackling the designs with a myopic view. Some of the ideas seemed satirical such as MRT stations, while others were cute such as the Durian one.

So one big question holds, which designs to launch? Initially we wanted to launch only 2 designs, however upon the past consultation, we will be going ahead with 3 designs. The rest of the team have setup the survey ready to send out to survey the appeal of all these designs. We believe that using such a method, we can not only create a small pre-hype, but also maximize our pre-orders sales, as people who has filled the survey, upon seeing their vote moving forward, would have a higher likelihood of purchase.

We aim to put our sampling to motion next week, hence will be injecting our own cash of $300 and create our e-commerce website. On the side note, we are looking into enhancing our product position through packaging, where we hope to have a cute, informative, and has a good copywriting on the packaging.

-Peachy King

#3: Exam week was hell

11/05/19

The past 2 weeks was our exam week, and all of us has been hustling and bustling our asses to prepare for our examinations. Thank god it's all over! Due to that, there hasn't been much progress on Peachy, but I've been browsing Pinterest regularly to "train" my eyes in design. On the right are some designs I find rather interesting! Many of the designs which I felt was rather appealing has this scattered look, where the designs are randomly scattered around, which will be design concept Peachy will head towards. I have just borrowed a Wacom drawing pad from a friend of mine, and will be designing ASAP.

We did discuss whether we wanted to hire designers from Fiverr, however after cost considerations, we decided we can do better than that, after all designing ourselves means we can control our design time as well as design concept.

Meanwhile, Bryan will be focusing on sourcing of supplier, and Jerald & Elizabeth will create our Social Media accounts. We will be putting our website plans on hold as it's going to cost us money to keep it running, even when we're not using.

Let's hope I don't come out with sh*tty designs in the coming weeks!

-Peachy King

Kayaks

Sushi Variety

Ice-cream variety

#2: Presentation was a win

27/04/19

Throughout the entire past 2 weeks, we have been busy mugging for our exams, hence we weren't able to carry out much of our operations. Just last Saturday, we had our project proposal presentation, where Mr. Roderick actually assisted us in various areas, such as angling the business, potential production issues, and potential expansion into retail through consignment, given that our product could have a huge popularity for tourists. Mr. Roderick also highlighted the importance in design coloring (if silkscreen printing, the supplier will print lighter colors first, then darker.), and placement of designs on the shorts such as either scattered, or solo design could look more appealing.

I will be leading the design in Peachy, hence from today onward, I will be reading a lot more in design and help "train" my eye for design through Pinterest, dribbble, and design synopsis. Apart from that, I will be following most of the local designers in Singapore to gain inspiration in designing our shorts.

-Peachy King

The Dream Team

#1: Group dynamics is key

15/04/19

Before yesterday (14 April), I was part of a larger group, however we had a separation due to differences that held the entire ideation process back, hence the progress as a whole. There were many ideas that were flunk across the entire team, yet none of us can get to a consensus on the direction we're heading towards, hence the split. After the split, the new team met up at crescent hall TV lounge, where we were able to clear the clouds in our heads, and agree on an idea and direction. This proves the viability and effectiveness of the current team dynamics, and I have confidence in towards the project's success. This separation taught me an important lesson; there's clear distinction between friendship and working together as sometimes we just can't have both (I have also experienced this first hand in the past where I was working together with my soulmate on a start-up: https://tinyurl.com/y289kfwf). Ultimately, in a start-up, we are in a business of making money, and sometimes 谈钱伤感情 (i.e. Never talk about money with your friend, it would hurt your friendship). With teammates of different background and experience in various fields, I hope to make this project a success through focusing on a clear direction and goal.

During brainstorming, we went from customized jewelry, to POD shirt, and ultimately settled down on beach shorts with a local twist, and we believe that it is a completely untapped market dominated by bigger players such as Billabong and Quiksilver. The reason? We wanted to be unique, and really take this opportunity to try something new. Surprising, within this 1 meeting, we even drafted out our entire timeline of events, marketing plans, operational plans, and other strategies. Our positions are split like this: me being CEO, Bryan being CTO, Jerald being CFO and Elizabeth being CMO. Though split as such, we believe that teamwork is key so the various "Chiefs" will lead us in their area of expertise, e.g. as CMO apart from doing the entire marketing by herself, we will support in terms of designing etc., as well.

And this is the day I became the Peachy King.

-Peachy King

Just me casually penning down our project breakdown teehee!

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