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Just after the summer of 2021, British-Nigerian brand strategist and consultant Shopé Delano published a letter on Instagram calling for a new conversation around women in work — one that moved away from binaries such as #girlboss or she-E-O. The letter was seen, liked and shared over 100,000 times.
From there, Delano has built up a community of women she connected with through weekly newsletters, exploring subjects like work, ambition, creativity and identity while encouraging what she calls “a self-defined life”.
“Eventually, my training as a brand strategist kicked in,” says Delano, who at the time was working with start-ups and venture capital funds to help their businesses grow through brand and storytelling. “I realised not only was this really rich emotional territory (the idea that life is work), but also there was an opportunity to connect it to product through fashion.”
Eighteen months later, Delano met co-founder and creative direction consultant Natàlia Barros Vives, and together they launched Kind Regards, a versatile premium workwear brand designed for movement and comfort, in May 2022.
The first product was a modular jumpsuit, which can be worn as a set or split into separate trousers and jacket (it now comes in two silhouettes). In November this year, the brand branched into a new category with the release of its second product, the “fluid wool top”, made from fine wool jersey from Japan, which can be worn in several different ways, inspired by the West African art of wrapping loose fabrics to unearth multiple garments. Items are made from luxury deadstock sourced from factories in Italy and Japan. Prices range from £350 for the latest drop to £750 for the sold-out jumpsuit. The brand declined to share a breakdown but says annual sales are five figures.
While many premium and luxury labels shoot for Gen Z consumers, the Kind Regards customer is a 30-plus creative woman or dynamic professional, Delano says. “Maybe she works in creative and the arts. Maybe she has a four-day-week job in corporate and has a theatre newsletter on the side. It is someone who wants ease out of their wardrobe,” she says. Kind Regards is an “antidote to athleisure,” Delano says, as pieces are refined and sophisticated. “However, we don’t lean towards the narrow-cut suit or anything tight or restrictive. It’s for someone who wants comfort without sacrificing elegance.” Customers can choose different sizing for the top and bottom of the jumpsuit, for example, to better account for various body types and shapes.
For Barros Vives, it’s about designing with context and movement in mind. “Garments come to life through wear, so leaving this space for variation and versatility for play is really important. That’s where I think the interest comes in from our audience,” she says.
Newsletters over social: Building deep connection
The newsletter remains a key marketing channel for Kind Regards to win this audience. It has over a 60 per cent open rate, which is nearly triple the industry average, according to newsletter platform Mailchimp.
This is much more effective than the brand’s Instagram, where the brand has just 4,000 followers with reach and engagement consistently below 10 per cent, Delano says. “[Email] is a channel that allows us to explore narrative and storytelling a bit more. We saw that what we were doing was working well, and we were reaching our audience.” The newsletter still contains discussions of life and work, alongside Kind Regards products and imagery.
While the majority of fashion labels invest in short-form video or Instagram content to boost brand awareness, Kind Regards is connecting with a new type of consumer who is turning away from society’s increasingly fast-paced consumption habits and instead seeking slower and sustainable alternatives.
One of the hardest things as a fashion brand is to be discovered, and usually that involves paying people, including Instagram for ads and wholesalers for inventory, says Delano. “We felt like there’s power in defining a different path in luxury that involves building one-on-one connections with an owned audience and nurturing that built-in audience as a stream of our business that is as important as the product. We build and nurture our community, and then we design products for them.” The conversations Kind Regards has with customers also help the brand develop new products: the second version of the jumpsuit, for example, has a more fluid silhouette, an adjustable waist and lighter fabric, so it can function as a jumpsuit or a suit if detached, based on customer needs.
The first batch of the fluid wool top hasn’t yet sold out; Delano learnt that the brand needed to better market the product. “We realised that after releasing the product there was additional work to be done when it came to content and marketing, showing the garment in movement, in transformation,” she says.
Taking a different approach to production
With its contemporary luxury positioning, Kind Regards sits alongside brands such as Toteme and Studio Nicholson, the company says. The brand operates with pre-orders and works exclusively with deadstock fabrics. “We differ a little bit compared to other contemporary brands who will make a full collection,” says Delano. In order to build the brand and minimise cost, the duo take a strategic approach to new products by gauging demand through limited-edition drops.
The first Kind Regards product, the jumpsuit, was self-funded in a bid to validate the business model and the audience — it proved successful and sold out. The duo then decided to lean on their community to fundraise for the second, the fluid wool top. They found that the brand’s values were winning over customers keen to invest in more than just the clothes. The newsletter contained a call for subscribers to consider becoming small-ticket investors in the brand. Nearly a dozen customers and advisors invested in the business, as a result.
“We only did this after we had the revenue and we had proven the product,” Delano says. “It’s really about remembering the business that you’re building and starting with the fundamentals and principles first: do we have a great product? Do we have a beautiful brand? Are we carving out a differentiated space? If yes, raise funds to go faster rather than the other way around.”
Delano, who spent a number of years working with start-ups and venture capitalists in the tech space, says fashion brands should be cautious about funding. “You’ve seen a lot of fashion businesses taking on a lot of funding and having pressure to grow very quickly and then not being able to do so.” This is informing Kind Regards’s investment strategy instead of taking a slow approach to funding and fundraising. “We want to make sure we’re raising the right amount at the right time and building a business of value.”
Kind Regards works on a made-to-order basis to reduce waste and avoid cashflow issues. The brand commits to a minimum order of around 30 units with the factory in advance; presuming that it will add more SKUs, if need be. Upon dropping or restocking a product, they will open the waitlist for anywhere between one to three weeks, depending on their marketing activity and how high they think demand is. Once the waitlist is closed, those on the list can then order the item for a limited time. Once the order window is closed, Kind Regards then produces the final number of garments.
“Not only were we worried about fabric waste, but the financial implications of investing in 300 metres of fabric and producing 400 jackets to only sell 150 and then have all of your cash tied up, it’s financially wasteful as well,” Delano says. “The sheer cost of running a fashion business is absolutely magnificent. I come from the world of technology, right where you just need a computer, some engineers and a Google subscription, and you’re good to go. Fashion has really high costs of development, creative, fittings and sampling; we were just trying to see how we could lower our cost base.”
Advisor and former banker Francesca Costa is helping the Kind Regards team establish when and how to fundraise and what the ideal investor or partner looks like. Costa has previously held senior positions at global luxury brands and retailers, including Net-a-Porter, Charlotte Olympia, Nicholas Kirkwood and Jimmy Choo, where she was senior director of merchandising for shoes.
Would Delano consider crowdfunding again? “It’s hard to say,” she says. Turning to your loyal customer base for investment had a positive impact on the business and highlighted some of Kind Regards’s most enthusiastic consumers. It also allowed the brand to lean into its ethos of transparency, giving those investors the inside scoop on how they’re building the business and what the capital is going towards. “We could possibly do it in the future, but what I’m intentional about is delivering value before we go out and ask for more money. That’s the reason why we didn’t do a big crowdfund on the platform and publicise it.”
Kind Regards is rewriting the rules when it comes to communicating with consumers, says strategic advisor Rebecca Achieng Ajulu-Bushell, CEO of The 10,000 Interns Foundation and former British Championship swimmer. “The brand will grow with the community. I see this as a profitable business that can be a blueprint for a new way of engaging your customers in luxury fashion,” she argues. “It’s not necessarily about jumping on trends, but it’s more so about connecting with your audience and having them believe and buy into the products… which is what Kind Regards is doing so well.”
Looking ahead, Delano is keen to explore a physical space, to bring Kind Regards consumers together IRL. “We’re planning a pop-up and thinking about other ways to bring the community together,” she says. Meanwhile, she also plans to slowly introduce new product styles, assigning the jumpsuit as the hero base item and evolving it to think about making a jacket that becomes a waistcoat or switching the fabrication to create a cover-up. “Developing new fabrics is costly, so we’re going to stick with the jumpsuit as a base and build from there,” she says.
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