From clothing designer to clothing business coach
After graduating as a fashion designer, I was drawn into the world of sales and have since gained over 20 years of experience in fashion sales across retail, wholesale, e-commerce, and various combinations of these.
I have had the opportunity to serve large department store and supermarket chains, multi-brand and mono-brand customers, micro-businesses, and of course consumer face-to-face and online.
I have represented one of the world's largest clothing brands, a one-person company born sustainable, a domestic department store chain, and an SME that manufactures clothing.
Entrepreneurship and concept development
Upcycler Helsinki, which I founded in 2020, was Finland's first multi-brand online store for circular fashion and thus a pioneer in introducing the circular economy. Perhaps the most significant lesson in starting a company and creating a new concept has been the importance of your own differentiator. Your own idea and operating concept must be so sharp and clear that it crosses the news threshold and arouses the interest of the public.
Tasks as a sole entrepereneur: developing a circular economy concept, building a website, merchandising, online store operations, retail, dropshipping, marketing, responsibility communication for small businesses, sustainability training
Wholesale and merchandising
Over 10 years of wholesaling for one of the world's largest clothing companies was a deep-dive in the clothing business in a big and fast-paced world. It was valuable to learn how to serve a variety of customer groups, from independent brick-and-mortar stores to large department store chains.
Building a range for different types of customers always requires application and scaling the range to the right proportions. What works in a brick-and-mortar boutique may not work at all in an online store, and what works in multi-brand stores may not best serve a store focused on just one brand.
Creating a product that sells is a matter of experience, often partly intuition, but above all calculation and analysis. That's why my heart as a clothing designer loves assortment planning and assortment development!
Tasks in wholesale: sales, sales management, assortment planning and purchase budgeting for various retail customer relationships
Chain management and management by numbers
Managing a franchise chain of an international listed company has provided a model and experience in managing by numbers. Numbers are always about meeting customer needs, and successful service moves the indicators in the desired direction. It is endlessly fascinating to consider what practical measures can be used to serve customers in an appropriate and effective way. The planning and implementation of training and coaching programs for stores has provided rewarding moments.
In chain operations, the cost structure of retail, with its challenges, has also become familiar.
Duties as chain manager: responsibility for 22 franchise stores in Finland and the Baltics, implementation of brand strategy, sales promotion, store-specific cost structure, product range management and store-specific optimization, location analytics, omnichannel functions, development of educational programs
Retail and online stores
I consider experience in serving consumers to be an important foundation of work experience. The prerequisite for success is the ability to understand and anticipate customers' reactions, expectations, and the basis for purchasing decisions. The English saying "Retail is detail" gets to the heart of the matter.
A brick-and-mortar store and an online store are completely different service environments, where the customer experience is created from completely different elements. Although the principles of sales remain the same, each channel requires its own strategy and different measures to implement them.
Duties in brick-and-mortar stores: sales and sales team supervisor duties, sales training
Tasks in the online store: Shopify and Woocommerce online store operation, dropshipping Zalando and Faire, assortment design, marketing
Sustainability communication
Communicating sustainability first started from the needs of my own company and also expanded to other companies' sustainability communications in the form of blog articles or website responsibility content. My interest in the topic deepened during my Master's degree studies and also grew into a research topic for my thesis. I see strategically implemented sustainability communications as a significant part of the business development of clothing companies and I am passionate about creating communications based on customer understanding.
Sustainability communication tasks: strategic development of communications, social media content, website product cards and text content, VSME sustainability reporting, blog articles