TRii
Design
Type of work: Personal entrepreneurship
Date: February 2016 - August 2018 (2 years)
Team: 3 // Camila Gutierrez, Camila Pretelt + me
My strengths: Business planning - Administrative tasks - Web design
TRii Design is a personal entrepreneurship project, a collaborative work between two designers and me, all with different profiles but common interest in printed textiles and fashion. We wanted to create an experience that inspires women to be unique and confident with colourful and playful designs. Having my business was something that interested me, and this was a great opportunity to enhance my knowledge in business creation and business plan generation.
TRii - First Collection 2018
The Design
TRii is a clothing brand for women. The concept consists in creating one or two styles of jumpsuits, pants, blouses and swimsuits; and doing each piece in various prints and colours.
Apart from the clothes, there is total brand experience to communicate the concept and make women feel connected and engage with it. TRii counts with a coherent visual identity that involves the patterns in the bags, tags, business cards and other pieces. The brand is flexible and varies with the season, with a fixed logo and able to adapt to the current collection’s colours and prints.
The experience is supported with the use of social media and e-commerce website to boost sales. For example, the expectation campaign consisted on posting pictures resembling the brand, talking about the patterns and shapes inspiring the collection, and slightly introduced the product and the brand with appealing photography.
Process
At the very start, we did a benchmark research on Colombian independent design industry to identify the opportunity in the market. Then we got into the creation phase, we used the Business Model Canvas to generate our action plan. Most important, we decided the name with brainstorming and online interviews to see people’s perception.
The primary activities that moved the business daily are trends research, prints and garments design, production, marketing, sales and business management. We carried out photoshoots in studio and outdoors, collaborating with the photographers and models. We also participated in two design fairs where emerging brands can sell their products. The planning and logistics for these events included stand design, production, publicity, sales and post-sales.
Lessons Learnt
Setting a business
The most important lesson was setting a business and learning all the technicalities in the practice. Things that I didn’t know before like the legal requirements to run the business in my country, accountability, strategic planning with financial and business growth projections and deciding in an uncertain but exciting environment.
Inventory management
I was mostly involved in production and inventory management. It takes a lot of organisation to deal with providers and human skills to negotiate and make fair deals. This put my strategic side to work by doing technical sheets, managing the production budget and size, finding the right materials and prototyping. Understanding the customers’ desire is a challenge, for that we started having limited stock and producing on request because it was hard to predict which garment and print combinations were going to be the most popular.
Getting things done
The process was thorough, and it pushed my abilities. It challenged me to put my design skills and knowledge into practice, always looking for the right tools and means to get things done, prototyping not only the physical product but campaigns, production methods and designs. When you have a business, you have to get things done as fast as possible and iterate a lot on the way. Planning is important because of time and budget, but trying things will make progress faster.