“produce only the strict necessary”, such is the principle of certain mode brands. Born of the difficulties of young creators to finance their first collections, the formula meets the will of the French to consume less but better.
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A checkered chip. A suede jacket. A T-shirt. A big sweater of wool. Velvet trousers. In its Froissart Street Store, in Paris, Forlife presents five products. Five products only. Since its creation in 2018, the brand of men’s clothing turns on the concept of pre-order. Customers buy an article online that will be manufactured later. “They will only be delivered in three months”, says Séverin Bonnichon, who created this brand with his brother, Lucas.
This Parisian shop, unique physical point of sale of the young claw, allows to prepare its purchase, to try a prototype, to gauge of a mesh, a fabric or a cut and to choose a color . “It’s a kind of showroom,” says Bonnichon. With this concept “unique in Paris”, the pre-order now has rue pinion.
This mode of sale has become a “business model”, Judge Pierre-François Le Louët, president of the Cabinet of Trends Nellyrodi and the French Federation of the ready-to-wear. It is nevertheless born of a constraint, that of young fashion designers who struggled to finance their first collections. The use of the subscription allowed them to launch without having to constitute a working capital need to pay the suppliers and make the products manufactured before putting them on sale. “We are paid before paying them,” says Charlotte deux, founder of the trademark.
Fulgerant commercial success
Adrien Garcia, co-founder of reunited, with his companion, Alice Bailly, tells having launched their mark “without moving 1 euro or for matter or for production”. All for a big sweater sold pre-order in October 2019 and delivered in January 2020. The method minimizes financial risks. The brands make sure not to end up with “unsold stocks on his arms”, also observes the Louët. And they thus avoid “degrading their margins” by selling them at broken prices to elap collection, explains Julia Amsellem, associated with the consulting firm in Ey-Parthenon strategy, a fashion and luxury specialist.
On the paper, the pre-order would have all the economic virtues. Especially since commercial success can be dazzling. At its launch in 2016, Hopaal planned to sell 200 copies of a recycled cotton t-shirt. “We sold more than 700”, remembers Clement Maulavé, co-founder of this SME installed in Biarritz (Pyrénées-Atlantiques). The first edition of the reunited “big sweater” has elapsed at 750 copies, at the end of 2019. The brand then elapsed 1 100 shirts, 1,200 cardigans, 7,500 t-shirts, in 2020.
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