Welcome to Here’s To You, a contemporary fashion & art brand that creates made-by-hand ready to wear collections and accessories for today’s creatives.
There is so much to look back on from the brand’s August 7th launch. The inaugural sweater that was released for the brand launch sold out in just three hours. THREE HOURS. What?! That is so huge and mind blowing to me. This kind of early support is foundational to small businesses and I am the most grateful for all of it. So what made the sweater so special and why was it the perfect piece to launch with?
The easy comparison to mention is that by hand making every piece that was sold and posting on Instagram the intricate process of me cutting and assembling it in a little 9’ x 13’ Brooklyn studio, the brand had a much more impressionable… first impression, than if I was to announce the brand and sell a logo t-shirt that I outsourced screen printing for. Slow-fashion made-by-hand processes were able to be ingrained from the jump. A month or so after launch I was able to confirm another theory of mine, the myriad of colors on the front design made from a sustainable rayon/viscose felt are eye-catching. You stop or at least hesitate when the design comes across your social media feed or in-person as I experienced. One of the few times I have worn the sweater since launch was when I was on the L-Train from Brooklyn into Manhattan and I noticed a couple of small children's eyes glued to the color wheel-esque combination of color. The purest type of data, a child’s opinion and actions.
The content rollout was perhaps the most intentional of the whole launch and the main reason the launch was a financial loss but one-hundred percent worth it. The framework for content that I use is “jabbing the stake”. When planning a content rollout I ask myself, what are the ideas that I want to, metaphorically, jab a stake in the ground about to attract others who believe in those same ideas. Over time with consistent ideas (jabs) you create a community with clear values. You only get one brand launch and one first impression, so I wanted to make sure I communicated the brand’s top objective; be additive to creatives’ lives. To do this I had four of my Brooklyn/NYC friends who are artists in various crafts be the models with the intention of sharing about what they each do and to begin to align my clothing with the thought that it is clothing for creatives, or maybe for people to say “Here’s To You is the brand that artists wear”. As I write this blog, I am wondering if I did a good job “jabbing the stake”? Let me know your thoughts down below, replying to all comments through 11/15/2022.
The worst part of launching this sweater? I did not make enough. Stay tuned to Here’s To You social medias (@herestoyou_h2y) & website for its return.
