VIGNETTE 3:
NEW DESIGNER MASK LABEL BORN OUT OF COVID-19 REDUNDANCIES
The By Mischo label which was founded by Ayla Bligh to provide work for herself and five other women in the New Zealand fashion industry recently made redundant.
A New Zealand fashion label which was established late last month has already sold out of its limited- edition stock lines and had orders from the United States and the United Kingdom. The By Mischo label was founded by Ayla Bligh to provide work for herself and five other women in the New Zealand fashion industry recently made redundant due to the pandemic and is selling up to 50 orders an hour for their limited-edition designer masks. Bligh said she was a reluctant entrepreneur having seen first-hand the challenges of running a fashion label in this country.
“I have trained and worked in the fashion industry for many years, most recently as an account manager for a textile firm and seen just how hard it is to make a business succeed. I reached out to others in the fashion industry via trade community groups and was able to connect with a number of seamstresses who were looking for additional work as the rest of the industry has been hard hit.”
Bligh said her sales break came after the promotion of the label’s new website on a New Zealand-made Facebook page.
“I am new to social media marketing, and so I have been teaching myself as I go playing around with a few ads etc. When the new website was launched. I posted it on a Kiwi-made Facebook page called Chooice. The sales response was immediate, and we had more than 50 orders in the first hour alone … and even had requests to send orders as far away as California and the United Kingdom. As a result, we are moving to scale up production with the purchase of more fabric and materials.”
Bligh said she is focused on developing export sales in anticipation of demand eventually tapering off as the country moves down alert levels.
“The next steps for the business will be to focus on building an export brand which allows us to better support our local team by producing at higher volumes. We are also launching a range of smaller size masks for children and have expanded our delivery options over the weekend to include contactless collection for locals.”
(Source: https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/prosper/your-stories/122665661/new-designer-mask-label-born-out-of-covid19-redun- dancies)
Internationalization of the Firm
Task
• • Do: Research, Explain and Describe reasons to export your product
• • Read: P. Chapter 9 and KH Chapter 8.
• • Report: max. 800 words
• • Hints: The COVID pandemic has made people redundant; Ayla Bligh has worked in the fashion
industry for many years; She has a network of collaborators; There is demand for the masks from around the world.