Keep and Share
Amy Twigger Holroyd was great. Sticking to her personal values she has successfully branded her rural Hertfordshire, knitwear company as an ethnically minded product based on building relationships between herself and her customer.
From research on her MA in European Fashion and Textile Design, on sustainable fashion, she based her ethos for her Knitwear Company. Amy feels that using recycled materials in the fashion world is really just scratching at the surface of the problem. If we keep the over massive consumption and recycle a bit on the side, it makes us feel good but doesn’t actually solve any problems. Amy took that provocative statement and investigated in what other approaches she could find to look at sustainable fashion, not just remodelling old clothes. The more definitive solution is to keep something; this became her mission, to create garments that people want to keep for a long time.
‘The more definitive solution is to keep’ View on Colour, 2002
She now designs not just the look but is conscious of how people will feel towards the garments. In a way designing their emotions. She found that people kept garments that had some emotional attachment or story behind it, like an interesting or memorable experience when they buy the garments and/or how they interact with her.
Amy describes herself as an individual designer and does not design by focus group. Although she has learnt what works in the way of which style and colour sells best, at the end of the day, if she likes a particular colour she will use it.
Amy sells to both retail and wholesale but concentrates mainly on the retail selling through her website www.keepandshare.co.uk. Not only is selling direct to the customer more financially rewarding, (selling at 2.5 times her retail price, as there is very little profit in the wholesale price), but it’s more personally rewarding as she builds up a relationship with her customers and gets feedback which informs her what works for future collections. Her market research is ongoing and contributes to her success.
A year into her business a London PR agent contacted her and for about 5 years she worked with them. The PR agent was extremely effective with articles in Vogue boosting her sells at home and aboard. However since the downturn, Amy now does that in house as it was not becoming cost effective. However PR is not a struggle in that the magazines know who she is because of the relationships she has cultivated.
Amy describes her approach to her business philosophy, by not even trying to compete with other designer knitwear, ‘don’t stand out of the crowd, stand in a completely different room’ which really sums up Amy. This is shown in that her personal dislike of celebrity culture, she would not dream of using the celebrities status to promote her knitwear.
I’ve never come across this, but you can borrow garments before buying to see how it fits in with your life. Amy informed us that giving the trust out has worked as most people buy the garment but if not they return it in perfect order. Remarkably she doesn’t take down any cards details but it’s a reflection of the type of person that buys from her.
Another amazing service that she provides is a washing and mending the garments, not something you get from many online and high street stores!
Since the downturn Amy has diversified in her approach to survive; she now barters for free pitches at festivals, in exchange, she teaches knitting on her stand. Amy now, runs knitting workshops so now you can knit your own cardigan and this embraces her central philosophy of creating memories around her garments. From left over yarn from previous collections, Amy now produces her very own yarn and finally, she provides a make-over service for your old T-shirt, a form of recycling and individualism which really describes Amy being a totally one-off original.
Enterprise | raijenkins | Friday, April 24, 2009
Great overview of Amy’s presentation Rai. Glad you felt inspired.
For me, the exciting thing about Amy’s approach to business is that she seems to embrace challenges as an opportunity to be innovative. She has strong personal values which are a driving force for her business and is not shy of experimenting both in terms of her products & service but also in her approach to marketing.
My first impression of Amy was” oh~ what a stylist she is!”
A lovely long dress with a sleeveless woolen waistcoat, highlighted by a silver brooch.
I thing it’s very cool if people who can put on his/ her own brand clothes, and Amy is the one.
And the coolest part is she use recycled materials to design clothes, but also fashionable.
Amy is not only a artist but also an entrepreneur, she got a lot of ideas and plans in many part of her business. For example, how to make a suitable prise to her target matket or how to make a good customer relationship management are all included in her brief speach.
Overall, most of people can only play a role good, artist or businessman, however Amy can play both good. It’s really worthy take Amy as a model we can follow with.
Great piece of writing Rai! Amy appeared to be highly inspirational for me and thanks to her application of courage and innovation in her business idea it became clear to me that in such hard times you can still succeed! Also, I really liked when she said: “Don’t stand out of the crowd, stand in a completely different room”. How this could translate is to be innovative and different than the others in the market which is the key a point. ‘Thinking outside the box’ would be another hint that I took out from her presentation. Still, I think that there could be some more marketing/pr done fo her in order to be widely heard by the world ‘out there’. Maybe think more international – European? I can bet that in Poland people would love her garments! Bring it on Amy!