Notes for fashion houses
How-tos and thinking on the business side of running an atelier.
Word of Mouth Is Not a Growth Strategy. It Is What Happens When You Do Not Have One.
A client does not refer you because you posted well. They refer you because they wore what you made somewhere, and someone asked who made it.
You Trained Them for Three Months. They Left Without Notice. Here Is What That Actually Cost You.
The instinct is to make this about trust, about apprentices these days. That is not the real lesson here.
Getting Paid Without a Fight
A client agrees to a price. Somewhere between that conversation and the finished piece, the two of you remember it differently.
The Slow Season Does Not Kill a Fashion House. Being Unprepared for It Does.
Every fashion house has a season where the phone does not stop and a season where it barely rings. The mistake is being surprised by it every time.
You Are Not Charging Too Much. You Are Charging Too Little, and Calling It Competitive.
A client pushes back on your price. You drop it, just a little. You tell yourself you are staying competitive. You are not.
Respect Is Not Given for Good Work. It Is Earned by How You Run the Business.
A client can love what you made and still stop calling you. That sentence should bother you more than it probably does.
You Are Not a Tailor. You Run a Tailoring Business.
They sound close. They are not the same sentence, and they do not lead to the same decisions.
Two Tailors, Same Skill, Different Prices. Here Is Why.
Same training, same eye for a clean line, and one of them charges triple. Skill was never what separated them.
Down to the Last Naira
A client insists they paid. Your dashboard says otherwise. Here is what happens next on NOiiRR, and why it never has to become an argument.
Stop sending invoices manually
What a voice note and an account number screenshot cost a fashion house, and what changes when an invoice is a record instead of a message.
How to create and send an invoice
From a blank invoice to a client who has received it, in the actual product.