Build It Series: Embracing Failure in Fashion with Beatrice Newman

What Failing in Fashion Looks Like:
We welcome back Beatrice Newman, Head of Education at Beyond Form, where we discuss what it means to fail in fashion, what failure looks like, lessons that can be learned, and why it's still a taboo subject. Beatrice shares her personal failures whilst building her brand, Korlekie, from mis-understanding the customer to financing a commercial collection.

Lessons Learned Whilst Failing:
From funding challenges to the art of effective go-to-market strategies, we dive into the realities, challenges, and fails that fashion startups often face. Reflecting on Beatrice's experience, we underscore the importance of learning from missteps to better define one's brand identity and carve a sustainable path forward. We redefine failure not as an end, but as a stepping stone to growth.

Connect with Beatrice: linkedin.com/in/korlekie
Find out more about Beyond Form Education: beyondform.io/education/overview

Chapters

• 0:00 Navigating Failure in Fashion Industry
• 10:35 Learning From Failure in Fashion
• 17:02 Fashion Industry Challenges and Opportunities
• 28:38 Strategies for Fashion Success

Transcript

Peter Jeun Ho Tsang: 0:00

Hello, I'm Peter Jeun Ho Tsang, founder and CEO of Beyond Form, and welcome to the special series Build It, where I speak to founders and their clients as to how they're building fashion technologies. This series gives you a glimpse into topics such as personal struggles, technical challenges, working in fashion and more. On today's episode, I'm back again with Beatrice Newman, our Head of Education at Beyond Form Education, and today's topic is about the idea of failing. Startups fail all the time, and that's no different within the fashion industry, but for some reason, it's very difficult for fashion to talk about failing Beatrice and I talk about why this is and how we can potentially overcome this within fashion.

Beatrice Newman: 0:46

Talking about failure is that we're not talking about it enough. And to be able to help educate and not just educate but support those who are starting another business and allowing them something to learn from that's tangible. There are many case studies in fashion, but I don't think any that really highlight well enough what the particular failure was

Peter Jeun Ho Tsang: 1:08

Let's get this conversation going with Beatrice on today's episode of Venturing into Fashion Tech.

Peter Jeun Ho Tsang: 1:17

How are you today, Beatrice?

Beatrice Newman: 1:19

I'm doing well, Peter. How are you?

Peter Jeun Ho Tsang: 1:22

I'm very good. Thank you, welcome back to the show again. Today we're talking about failing. Last week we talked about pivoting, now it's about outright failing. So let me set the scene for our listeners.

Peter Jeun Ho Tsang: 1:35

It's tough to talk about failing, especially on platforms like LinkedIn, where every other post seems to be like about a success of some sort, where every other post seems to be like about a success of some sort Someone tooting their own horn. However, in the startup world, failing is a natural part of the ecosystem. That's different for the fashion industry either. According to a startup study by Genome Project, up to 90% of startups fail, with 70% of failure within the first 20 months. However, entrepreneurs who embrace failure and learn from it are more likely to succeed in subsequent ventures, as they're learning from your failures in the past.

Peter Jeun Ho Tsang: 2:13

When it comes to fashion entrepreneurs and emerging businesses, we can also assume that same number applies. This year, for example, saw customer favourites like Mara Hoffman, lee, the Vampire's Wife or Ceasing Operations. Now these little mushroom emerging brands have just stopped all of a sudden, and it's not just about the new brands either, but also the existing ones as well. For example, the household names like Matches Fashion, which launched in 1987, also went under this summer, and this quarter is seeing many others struggling too, so let's talk about failing them. Beatrice, everything is about changing to go in the right direction, but sometimes that change doesn't work, actually. But what happens? And so what happens with failure? What does it mean to you, and how has life taught you how to fail?

Beatrice Newman: 3:17

so when I started my fashion business, koleki, just over 11 years ago now, I imagined as I think you said in previous episodes, peter you go to fashion design school and you expect to be the next thing you know after you graduate you're on a club or get set to run. That obviously just didn't happen. I think for me that's probably my first failure. But would we call that a failure from a business perspective? No, maybe not, because that was just, I think, more of a goal that required a lot more work. I think when we start to talk or think about it from a very design-centered perspective and by design I just mean, like fashion design graduates, who don't necessarily get to understand business reaching that sort of pinnacle of fame and and success without thinking about everything else that you need to be able to get and stay in it it's not really something on their mind and so it can have a sort of really warped understanding of what success and failure is, and that's an area of work that I like to consult and work on with startup brands. So I feel like for me, if I was thinking about my very design and perspective, I said in the business mind I failed a lot because I didn't have that recognition but in actual fact if I didn't pivot to business mind, we could see that actually I didn't fail as much as before I had done because in a way I was building. Maybe the failure started coming in about five or six years into the brand where I realized that a lot of the money that I was putting in business wise wasn't necessarily generating much capital or cash flow back for me and it was just a consistency of, you know, churning out collections and close actions, the collection and expecting something to happen, but without real, any real sort of data or metric point, any real understanding of business, one-on-one selling and how you make a dozen whole marketing thing. So I fell pretty flat on my face with that one because I just had no clue.

Beatrice Newman: 5:29

I think the second failure came in was not understanding who I was as a brand. I knew what I wanted to do, how that was being activated in the sort of social and wider marketing space wasn't really in, wasn't implemented successfully. So I was going off back off what stylists or how stylists would interpret my brand through stylist loans, magazine editorial spreads, covers, you name it putting that on sort of my website, on my social media and not realizing that this had a detrimental effect to audiences who would view my work and realize or understand was I a stylist? Was I a photographer? Was I just a creative? And none of them. Really. Coming back to the point of these are clothes that you can actually buy, because they didn't see me as a designer. So that was, I think, my second failure. I think understanding what then failure was, because I think failure to a lot of people for some reason, and then you can tell me, peter, like it feels so definitive, but it's never really the end, it's just a point that happened.

Peter Jeun Ho Tsang: 6:34

Then it's okay, get up, dust yourself off, learn from what didn't work, and then how do we make it work for you know next time around right the notion of failing is so personal to each individual and I think the word itself is very emotionally charged, and I think that's where a lot of people myself in critic struggle with the fact that, okay, does failing mean that I am a failure and therefore that's my identity as a failure? I don't know if you feel the same way.

Beatrice Newman: 7:08

I do feel the same way because it goes back to your sort of intro where you talk about seeing LinkedIn posts or any social media where you don't really get to experience failure, um, in its magnitude, or in a sort of shared community environment, because everyone wants to pick their best foot forward right, who wants to hear about failure? Especially when you're going for a job interview? Everyone wants to know that you, you've done really well, and so I feel like those feelings of failure and in the world in itself, are not misguided, because I think we, as a society, I don't think we celebrate failure and what it actually does mean for getting influencers to where they need to be, or for even individuals who are now big names in whatever industry you want to call it, and allow them to be very successful individuals.

Beatrice Newman: 7:55

I don't know about you, but when I was studying at a fashion school, I never had once a talk or a class about what failing means and how to handle that, especially in an industry like fashion where it is very high yeah, and I think this is maybe one of the subquams I have with creative education, because it's set up in a sort of metric form or setting that again doesn't pioneer or support failure, because you've got grades and majority of the time, even though I tell my students I think it's really important to fail fast, fail quick so that you can learn from it and redevelop and in that sense sometimes it can be rewarded because you're being the energy I give.

Beatrice Newman: 8:46

You know, when you go to a math exam, doing your GCFD or any test, and my students would be like even if you get the answer wrong, make sure you do your workings out in the margins and you'll be a mark for it. So I use that analogy for my students, but still in its entirety, or the sense when it comes to academia is that it doesn't really allow students to feel safe enough to fail. They always want to get it right and I think this is really bad for innovation as a whole if we think about how far we've come as a society when it comes to invention. Is innovation? A lot of these inventions that you're seeing today went through more than one iteration and they failed. But because this fake is the learned to create products that we now live by every single day.

Peter Jeun Ho Tsang: 9:28

I think that's so correct there that that conversation just isn't being heard. Going back to the subject of university, many of my university friends had the dream of making it in fashion, but unfortunately they didn't make it. Just because it is such a hard industry to keep going and even when you're in it, it does take a lot of energy to stay in the industry. Why don't you think we talk more about it in fashion then?

Beatrice Newman: 9:57

I think in some circles you'll be privileged enough for people to talk about it and particularly when we go back to last episode, when we were um quoting the BLF article about professionals, I think you've reached a certain level. You don't care about what people think anymore because you're already there so you can be like, oh, I failed and I did this. But I think when you're on the journey you're a lot more careful with how you are supporting yourself and the story, the story of stories you want people to know about yourself and the business and things that you do. So I wouldn't say it's not necessarily prevailing in this space. It depends on space. Or yeah, what space you, you, you are in where industry, maybe because you don't necessarily hear a lot about failure in in the fashion industry, or maybe you do when you talk about, you know, matches fashion and all of that.

Beatrice Newman: 10:46

But and it took time for uh, sort of big brands like matches fashion to get where it was now, so still in. In that case, it's all like smoke and mirrors, isn't it you? You look at brand online. You see it has so many different followers and they look like they're doing great. But really, when you dig a bit more deeper. Maybe cash flow or something else in the business is not going as well, and I think in general it's just a taboo, and I do think there are ways in which we can facilitate healthier conversations when it comes to talking about failure and when we ask ourselves what that looks like. Perhaps this is where education comes in, that can really support that facilitation, but you're still, I think again, it's maybe how you package it, so it's not failure towards in a negative light, but failure towards what you're then wanting to do positively to.

Peter Jeun Ho Tsang: 11:41

You know, make those changes and we talked, obviously that in the introduction about matches. Fashion, founded in 1987, is older than we are, beatrice, just FYI whoever's listening so it is an institution. And obviously this year we also heard Farfetch being rescued by Kupang in Korea, for example, this quarter, lvmh caring groups have recorded a dip in sales as well, and it's just seen as such a bad thing for the industry. But I also think that sometimes it is needed to reset some elements within the industry itself. I mentioned as well the emerging designers, like the vampire's wife, wife, for example, going under, which is such a cult hit when it comes to emerging brands. So why do you think a lot of emerging brands are failing? What are the common reasons for failure of a fashion startup specifically?

Beatrice Newman: 12:40

well, I think if we're really going to hit the nail on the head and it's, it's going back to the whole point of this conversation when we're talking about failure is that we're not talking about it enough and to be able to help educate and not just educate but support those who are starting up a business and allowing them something to learn from.

Beatrice Newman: 12:58

That's tangible, and there are many case studies in fashion, but I don't think any that really highlight well enough what the particular failure was, or I feel like it just kind of brushes the surface.

Beatrice Newman: 13:13

And so you, if you are developing a brand, if we're just being very specific, it can be a very long, hard road towards sort of making mini alias and being very conscious of the decisions that you're making. And this really goes back to the conversation we had earlier on when we were talking about pivoting right, because the whole point of pivoting is you're about to fail or you sense that what your path was is not maybe the right path anymore. So you're making this pivot space on the metrics to ensure that you are able to survive. But not a lot of designers are able to pivot because, again, as I mentioned in last episode, they're very stuck in their ways and how they expect things to go. And because you're designing clothes doesn't mean you don't change or you can't consider what is, let's say, in a zeitgeist, what people like, what they don't like and how that can really inform the direction of your business to ensure its longevity.

Peter Jeun Ho Tsang: 14:11

The thing is about, as well, finding a really good business partner. Most of the time, a lot of fixed startups fail because of funding, because of many reasons. As we all know, fashion is extremely expensive to get going when it comes to a fashion brand. For example, household names like Alexander McQueen, john Galliano went bankrupt at some point in their early careers as well, and they had to be rescued in Galeano's case, more than one. So it's not necessarily something new. I think it's maybe okay.

Peter Jeun Ho Tsang: 14:44

When you go to start your own fashion brand, aside from, of course, doing beautiful designs, making beautiful products, you need to think about who's going to be able to plug in those gaps within your business as well. Another element is that go-to-market strategy, and we've talked about this previously on the podcast show. If you have amazing, beautiful products but nobody knows how to purchase it or even sees you or getting eyeballs about what you're doing, of course you're not going to succeed as well. Eyeballs about what you're doing, of course you're not going to succeed as well. So those are some of the sorts of things that I always see when coming across fashion startups. You talked a little bit there about you. You know at the start your personal journey and specifically with your fashion brand Colicky. If you could go backwards and obviously you talked there what you classed as failures what would you have done differently to avoid what you deemed as failing?

Beatrice Newman: 15:48

when I had taken a backseat I think a hiatus of a year or two years and really began to understand the business of fashion, away from just creating, and I realized then I just wasn't telling the story or no one really understood what Colicky was all about. So if I was to go back, I think it would just be being unapologetically me, because a lot of what I'm doing now I feel like just maybe trying to be like everybody else, because I felt like being myself or offering what I could offer wasn't going to sell Really. The whole of the growth of Koleki potentially missed quite a lot of opportunities because the market's just come incredibly saturated since then. But in any case, things happen for the reason that they happen and quality is doing really well now from those learned experiences. But that would certainly be one of the ones that I would want to redo again if I had the opportunity, and it's really defining and understanding the narrative of my story and the product offering that I have to give to my customer.

Beatrice Newman: 17:02

We talk a lot about fashion design not necessarily having a lot of business acumen embedded into curriculum, although I do think that's changing now. I mean I've been in academia, particularly at the University of East London for just five years, and it is something that is changing, but still in our time, peter, you can remember, there was the business embedment apart from, I guess, costing out your garments, and that was that right. So I like, with bettering or more increased knowledge and what it means to run a successful business, would have been a lot more beneficial to me, rather than expecting it to be in self-jizz or higher and making big bucks because that's just not how it works anyway.

Peter Jeun Ho Tsang: 17:41

I had one module in business and I can remember this so vividly because I was so bad. It was a teen project and we had to come up with a business idea for the fashion industry. It was a module that brought together not just the design practice but also the management students as well. As you can imagine, the design students had zero clue of what was happening and I don't feel we were actually taught very much in that module like, yes, we can come up with an idea, but if we don't understand the principles of business, then idea is just going to be like a top line idea, I think, for creatives. I'm going back to colicky.

Peter Jeun Ho Tsang: 18:20

What I saw you and I've spoken about this previously and you mentioned that they're men of fame. Quite often we're taught as fledgling fashion designers and fashion brands is to go and get as much press as possible. Get your pieces on a celebrity, get your pieces in this magazine, but but, as you and I have found out, that isn't necessarily going to be a sure win for you. Your stuff has been featured on celebrities Paloma Faith, rita Ora, for example. When I was doing my fashion brand, I was featured on several athletes and on a couple of TV actors as well.

Peter Jeun Ho Tsang: 18:57

That doesn't mean anything, you know, let's face. It didn't mean. That doesn't didn't and it doesn't mean that our brands are rocketed into the stratosphere, and I think it's very important to understand what you learn in fashion school, or what the notion of doing a fashion brand is very different to what it is in reality, and what I've seen you do very well, successfully, is okay. Let's just change the approach, apply more of a tech or a more startup methodology to building the brand. For example, you've been continuously gaining customer feedback via social media favorite colors, favorite silhouettes and so forth which I think has worked for you tremendously. Can you tell us a bit about that? Learnings Actually, okay, switching the approach.

Beatrice Newman: 19:45

In design school you're taught to create X amount of flows for a collection, but in reality that's really just not sustainable, particularly if you don't have access to good startup funds and sort of money aside. You don't really have customers yet, really. I mean, you might have a few friends or family or someone somewhere said they were going to buy it, but that's just a couple of customers. You need more than that to stick your business throughout the year. So the approach I took was to sort of re sort of look at my catalog, of sort of design and sort of building up that archetype that would really express Kolecki and this identity, to focus on that one product, something that people could really get to and really be able to define the brand on, because that's also part of my storytelling, right. And then, instead of creating a collection for so many different things, I started to take into consideration and this is where we talk about the diamond and the fairy, right Well, what is the problem? So I started to look at what if a customer was going to buy my stuff, what would be some of the key problems that they might be facing, and what have I seen by competitors in the market that are not really being done well enough and customers complaining about not really being done well enough and customers complaining about, and a lot of that came down to sizing and structure, particularly when it comes to crocheting where which is part of what I do as a brand with strong thought that I do and that I have really started on and have sort of really professionalized my approach on.

Beatrice Newman: 21:14

So I decided to do three tops that I felt like would answer the need of very different body sizes. So you had the bustier, which would work really well for sort of larger clientele. Curvaceous had a tank top which worked for more athletic figures and for women who wanted more sort of strap support, but still something quite beautiful and covered. And then you had the bralette, which worked very well on more petite figures and, interestingly enough, it did more culturally with Asian customers, something to be looked into. That I found that really fascinating.

Beatrice Newman: 21:51

And then when I launched with those tops, you could immediately automatically see who my customer was because of the people that were ordering, the feedback that I was getting and what was becoming it would essentially become my hero product, such as the tank top, and then, as you mentioned, peter, you know, listening to this feedback, not really pivoting, um, until actually my customers would come back and say they would want a custom. So maybe the tank top turn it into a dress. What would that look like? Like made it put it out there in picture form. Someone else said they loved it and you start to offer it and then you might offer it in a different color way or something like that. So a lot of my pivoting has happened very, very fast. But I can be so sure of my pivots because I know my customer wants it and I know they want it because they've paid for it first before I've actually done this, as opposed to doing the service first and then waiting to see if people would buy into it.

Peter Jeun Ho Tsang: 22:47

So we've talked a lot about the individual and the individual emerging startup. So let's just zoom out a little bit what do you think the fashion industry is failing at and why? What I've alluded to is that it's just zoom out a little bit. What do you think the fashion industry is failing at and why what?

Beatrice Newman: 22:58

I've alluded to is that it's just very, very saturated right now. It's actually not about the collection anymore, it's about the customer, it's about what I'm offering, how I offer it. Like by the time they get to that place, money's already gone, they're already tired and it's been detrimental to the space or area that they've worked in. Because I think coming back from that and trying to survive that fall is a very difficult thing to do. I know because I took a two-year hiatus and was very lucky to be able to get back again. The tactic that I took and it's given me some time to build. But thank god, year on year it's now growing and but not everybody has that opportunity and chance and it should really be happening from the get-go and you talking about their coming back into the game.

Peter Jeun Ho Tsang: 23:44

I think part of feeling is also character building as well. It's about building that resilience, it's about tenacity and that ability to bounce back. Fashion requires that from you, especially when it's not going your way. Had John Galliano or McQueen given up when they went bankrupt, we wouldn't have these amazing design references now that are historically and culturally so important for us as an industry. What do you think about Shein's impending IPO then? Is that an industry win or an industry fail? Do you think about Shein's impending IPO then? Is that an industry win or an industry fail? Do you think?

Beatrice Newman: 24:21

I think, if you're asking me, as you are, I feel like it's an industry fail, because when you start to pick the ethics behind Shein, particularly on sustainability and what it means for the face of fashion moving forward, I just don't think it's setting a precedent for the industry. I mean, what do?

Peter Jeun Ho Tsang: 24:40

you think? What do I think? I think it's interesting to see how such a big company has been able to go this far, built on super cheap clothing to IPO stage. That's like not nothing and regardless if we think it's a win or a fail, the customer is buying right and I think we can't change the customer. So I think that's necessarily a fashion fail. I think it's potentially a humanity fail if we go even bigger my guess you're right, it is humanity.

Beatrice Newman: 25:14

Well, I would maybe argue that, whether we can't, we teach the customer because I think we can. If we think about how far fashion has come in industry and where we are at a stage that we are in, it's because fashion has really led the way, corporations have led the way in feeding that appetite for the customer. In order for that appetite to be quenched, or at least for allowing the customer to make more informed choices in what they buy, there's education. Everything that we talk about is education. The lack of understanding of failure is education.

Peter Jeun Ho Tsang: 25:51

So agree to disagree and the fact that it's quite difficult for a lot of people economically at the moment. So I think that's feeding into as well. So then thinking about okay, we've talked about failing and of course nobody wants to fail at any given moment in time, so let's talk about mitigating that risk and how can we potentially avoid failure within the industry. So how can established brands and retailers work with new emerging talent to help them along?

Beatrice Newman: 26:21

I think that's a tough question and it's one I've been asking myself in the next iteration of collecting as we try to scale and build. Because, if we're being brutally honest, I'm going to make all the structure at the moment for those of you who might not know or might not be aware, and whilst that's been really great, if the business is supposed to be wanting to grow exponentially into something a little bit more viable and sustainable, wholesale is king, right, a bigger chunk of money coming through, and if it's not wholesale, then collaborations. But you then have the sort of legal conversations as well. That could just be, I think, complicated and difficult to navigate.

Beatrice Newman: 27:04

And when I talk about legal, I'm talking about who runs the designs. Larger corporations are going to be open and honest about the fact, and when I talk about legal, I'm talking about who runs the designs, and larger corporations are going to be open and honest about the fact that your designs, a particular design or how do you say something that's inherent to you as a brand, that's going to be kept within collaboration or would that be taken out externally. So I think you've got those trouble areas to navigate, but aside from that, I would definitely say working or trying to build cross collaborations is definitely the way to go in building sustainability, particularly also in, I think, building um brand awareness, and we've got some really great collaborations that have come through there. I mentioned h&m and the larger brands um larger brand names which, when you talk about accessibility people, that's exactly what they do.

Peter Jeun Ho Tsang: 27:55

I think it's well about looking beyond those one-off initiatives or collaborations, but really think about how can we build into the industry longevity, whether that's my fashion council, larger fashion retailer, or even at the education system. You know we've talked about previously on the podcast show how we were able to get funding from our universities, for example, so that how can we go beyond those very one-off activities and going further. But on that point, let's finish off this episode with a quick fire round of questions. Bitch, where's the first answer that comes to your head? Are you ready?

Beatrice Newman: 28:31

Let's do it.

Peter Jeun Ho Tsang: 28:32

Fast fashion or slow fashion, which do you believe is more prone to failure?

Beatrice Newman: 28:38

Oh wow, I was about to. I thought you were going to tell me which one would I prefer? Prone to failure? That's a difficult question because I would hope fast fashion is, but we're being honest, I don't think it is. So I don't think I'm gonna answer that question.

Peter Jeun Ho Tsang: 28:53

I don't know creative freedom or commercial sensibility commercial sensibility risk-taking or caution. Which approach do you think is better for long-term success in fashion?

Beatrice Newman: 29:03

we caution but side of risk-taking.

Peter Jeun Ho Tsang: 29:07

It's not either or name a fashion brand that turned a failure into a success story I think you.

Beatrice Newman: 29:14

I'm just gonna go with the easy one that you mentioned alexander mcqueen number one mistake you see news done is making too often launch with a 10 piece collection yeah, I think we can't.

Peter Jeun Ho Tsang: 29:25

You know, hone in enough, don't go full-on shebang. You know 50 looks. I think the keyword we're looking for is hero product. So on that point, thank you so much for your time, beatrice.