Interview with Colby Kane, Founder and CEO of Aviator, a travel lifestyle brand. The company’s tag line is “Style & Function for the Travel Lifestyle.”
Colby discussed how his company has weathered some turbulent times, such as the Great Recession of 2008/2009 and the Covid-19 Pandemic.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Too much inventory kills fashion brands
Kickstarter can be an effective marketing tool to validate and test product launches, but the goal should be to get those backers to your own store
Listen to your customers
Make good products and provide a great customer experience
Be flexible and resilient and pivot to get through challenging times.
The company started in 2005 with the goal of creating a lifestyle brand similar to Ralph Lauren. At the beginning, the company was only selling premium t-shirts and other American heritage inspired fashion items.
The company was essentially selling to wholesalers and was in retail boutiques. Colby recognized this as a dying business model and eventually pivoted to D2C. He also recognized the value in shifting from making fashion products to making functional products. There is inherent value in functional products because they don’t go out of fashion and therefore you are not left with a lot of worthless inventory. TOO MUCH INVENTORY KILLS FASHION BRANDS. The other advantage of functional apparel was that the company could charge full price for its products and there was no need to discount the product.
Changed focus from an American Heritage fashion brand to a travel lifestyle brand
After learning about Kickstarter, Colby decided to launch a single product, a hoodie, on Kickstarter. He had a goal of $20,000 but raised $130,000.00 in a month. He has since launched 8 or 9 products on Kickstarter and uses the platform to essentially curate and validate product ideas and once funded, transitions customers to the Shopify store.
He views Kickstarter as an extended arm of his Shopify store. It is a temporary platform and the goal is to get people over to your own website. Kickstarter is a marketing tool
How do you get recurring customers? Launch new products by doing small runs, offer new variations of existing products.
Pandemic – March 13th lockdown came. Sales plummeted – 80% drop in sales
Decided to again pivot to selling masks online – it was a product the company had previously considered. Decided to sell them on the website. Sent an email to the email list and sold out in 3 minutes. Masks are a short term solution to allow the company to be able to pay its staff and factories. Lots of fashion brands started selling masks in the early days of Covid.
Today, the company has shifted its marketing focus from “style & function for the travel lifestyle” to “style and function for today’s lifestyle” and the message is more about being comfortable, looking good and feeling good for what’s happening in the world today, such as Zoom calls
3 favorite apps – Klaviyo, Postcript for SMS and Growave.
Klaviyo for email marketing
Postcript for SMS. It’s ok to text message your customer, especially if you have something to offer.
Growave – loyalty program someone suggested on the Unofficial Shopify Facebook group
All three apps mentioned by Colby deal with communication. According to Colby, communicating with your customers is everything – you have to know their pains and their wins. You have to listen to your customer.
Best piece of business advice he has received – Inventory is a brand killer.
Business podcasts he listens to:
Social Media Marketing Podcast with Michael Selzner;
In Conversation with Shopify Plus;
Perpetual Traffic;
How I built This
Last words: Make great products and offer a great customer experience.
Unofficial Show Notes 