Where and How To Sell: Wholesale, Agents & Online Marketplaces

This 50 minute Lesson is with expert is London Organic PR founder Saumen Kar, who has over 20 years experience in marketing and business consulting. Saumen realised that marketing, costing, and spreadsheets, aren’t every creative’s forte, so he launched his company to provide this help for brands. London Organic PR seeks to advise brands on areas from sourcing and manufacturing, to marketing, to sales. His biggest passion is “Made in the UK”.

In this Lesson, we demystify the wholesale process and how to maximise your sales with some fabulous tricks and advice, including his take on launching your own physical shop.

With a background in visual merchandising and having worked for one of Britain’s most famous multi-channel department stores, Jade Maria Burrowes is an expert on the fundamentals of visual merchandising. She also has first-hand experience of organising fashion shows - we couldn't be in better hands for this Masterclass in visual merchandising trade events and fashion shows.

In this Masterclass, we round up all of the information surrounding trade and fashion shows for sustainable designers.

Davina Ebikeme runs the London-based wholesale agency and brand consultancy July Rollings. She gives us an insight into what she does, the benefits of working with sales agents and the inner workings of holding a seasonal showroom.

With an impressive background as DKNY's wholesale sales executive and then managing the UK and international sales of renowned designer Hussein Chalayan, Davina is well placed to advise brands on the wholesale side of the fashion industry. She launched July Rollings with the mission to nurture and grow emerging and small brands, across ready to wear, footwear and accessories. July Rollings organises and manages seasonal sales campaigns for their clients, presents their collections to key retailers and consults on overall brand strategy from merchandising, pricing, development, production and sales.

Caroline Henne is Chief Marketing Officer Wolf & Badger. Her career started in large luxury brands and Google. She has incredible experience working with large luxury advertisers, including Rolex, and LVMH group to name a few. Her heart, however, was always in smaller, luxury brands; the story behind those companies and directly supporting those brands.

Wolf & Badger believes they sell the worlds best - unique, independent and ethical brands. Unique, independent and ethical is the absolute priority for them. They have two stores in London and one in New York with sales predominantly online.  They sell womenswear, menswear, childrenswear. They love to work with smaller brands as they embrace independent, ethical brands.

Buyers are powerful creatures - they could "make" your brand. Their opinions, experiences and advice is extremely important to the success of your business. We had the opportunity to pick the brains of three sustainable boutique owners, to get a behind-the-scenes look at how the buying cycle works, what to do to get in front of them and how they like to be approached.

Sheer Apparel is an online sustainable and ethical womenswear boutique founded by Paula Haunit; she knows the customer and she knows the modern lifestyle too. Consumers don’t often have the time to shop around and research, so she compiles the best ecofashion brands into a stunning online boutique that makes sustainable style easy. Paula also writes for the Huffington Post. The aim of the business is to “prove to you that beautiful, high-quality, conscious style is available at comparable prices to equivalent brands you’ve loved for years.” Well, I salute that! Some of the brands they stock include Armed Angels and Maska.

Alicia Taylor, Co-founder of Gather & See is very well equipped to understand the fashion market, consumer habits and the way that designers and labels work. She worked in PR, then at LVMH (Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy), and then moved on to Value Retail. Launched in 2014, Gather & See first started to sell products in their online boutique. They select like-minded, forward thinking designers that fit into at least three of Gather&See’s five founding philosophies: Fair Trade, Organic, Eco-Friendly, Small Scale Production and Heritage. Examples of the brands they stock include Conditions Apply and Kowtow.

An avid researcher of the most sumptuous and delicious of ethical brands, Kate Richards curates a shop that almost resembles a gallery with all of its fantastically crafted eco-luxe items. The task of filling a physical shop allows Kate to really showcase the textural, sensual qualities of the brands she represents. She stocks brands such as Desmond & Dempsey and Thought.

With a bricks and mortar, Kate offers the unique perspective of how consumers behave and respond to pieces in a physical setting; these are the moments when a passer-by can be distracted by the sheer beauty of a garment in a shop window, and a lifelong appreciation for that brand can blossom. But how does Kate know which brands will work? And how do you become one of those brands in the window... watch to learn!