Tips on Launching a Brand 3/2020

Launching Your Own Brand?

2020 is underway and maybe you’re thinking: I want to launch my own beauty brand or product. If creating a new brand is in your future, let's consider a few crucial points and take a look at the competition. With the world more or less on pause, now is the perfect time to plan, strategize, and make sure that your brand is set up for success.

Below is a quick snippet video from CEW's Product Demo. CEW stands for Cosmetic Executive Women. 

For those of you who don’t know, CEW’s Product Demo is a night where 1,000+ of the year’s most innovative beauty brands showcase their new products in the hope of winning a coveted CEW award within their category. Yes! 1,000+ products. The products are voted on by 3,000 CEW members.

The video above captures only a few aisles of competing entrants. 1,000+ is a lot of brands to compete against. What will make your brand different? If you want to launch a new brand in this competitive landscape, keep these tips in mind.

Three Tips To Launching A Brand

1.  Business Plan.
Start out with a business plan supported by a marketing plan. Your plan is adjustable and you can change it along the way. Consider it almost like a living document. The plan must include your mission statement, your goals, the financial commitment needed for your brand for development and sell-through, your target market, pricing strategy, and competitors. It doesn’t take a long time to create a plan, but you need to know where you’re going and how much it will cost. And consider the extra help or expertise that you may need to hire on, even if temporarily, to get your brand launched.

THE TAKEAWAY: Create a business plan, or else you’ll be on a long, expensive road with no map leading the way.

2. Marketing Plan.

Alongside your business plan should be a comprehensive marketing plan. Sometimes marketing plans are included at the end of the business plan as an addendum. However you treat it, it’s best to have a marketing plan in place. Once you’ve thought about your products and created your business plan, how are you going to sell the product through? What PR support or other media will you use to promote your collection? How will you plan new product launches or introductions? This, like the business plan, can have room for adjustments along the way.

THE TAKEAWAY: A business plan without a comprehensive marketing plan is like owning a luxury car that never leaves the driveway.

3. Start Small. 

There is no need to rush into launching a 10 to 20 sku collection. Start with just a few key pieces to give you the opportunity to introduce the products and its special features to your clients. Launching a small number of pieces allows room to spare for new product launches in the future. Starting small will also make it easier for you to learn and grow from mistakes in a less costly way.

THE TAKEAWAY: In the beginning stages, less is more.

Bonus point: Hire an expert to help you. If you want to launch your product in a timely, cost-effective fashion, don’t hesitate to bring on the extra help you’ll need to bring your vision to life. An expert can help you with creating a business plan, marketing, product development, a go to market strategy, new technologies, and advise as a second eye for design, copy, and creative options.

If launching your own brand is in your plans for 2020 or if you’d like to learn more, contact Cherie@beautyedgeinc.com.