How people find our atelier
A lookbook is a terrible product page and a product page is a terrible lookbook, and pretending otherwise cost us a lot of wasted traffic before we split them properly. Someone arriving on the coat edit wants to look. Someone arriving on the cashmere cocoon coat page wants a measurement, a fabric, and a reason to trust that the shoulder will sit where the photograph says it will. We stopped asking one page to do both jobs.
So our styling page carries the editorial argument, the collection pages carry the season, and each individual product page reads more like a spec sheet written by someone who cares about cloth. The pickup option at the shop is stated plainly rather than buried in checkout, because a good part of our order volume is a person who works ten blocks away and would rather try the trousers on than gamble on a courier.
Cloth is what people actually search for
Almost nobody types our name into a search box. They type the fabric. Linen trousers that hold a crease, a silk cashmere cardigan that will not pill, what quiet luxury even means now that everyone says it. Our collection pages are built around those words rather than around season codes only we understand, so the linen studio page can answer a linen question and the silk knits page can answer a silk one. Naming the material honestly turns out to be the whole optimisation.
The objections we answer before checkout
The two things that stop a first order are care and provenance, so we wrote about both at length. The piece on caring for natural fabrics without ruining them exists because a customer who is frightened of a linen wash label does not buy linen. The case for natural fibers explains what we will not use and why, and the made in NYC piece names the constraint that makes our small runs small. Someone who has read those arrives at the cart with the objection already settled.
When an assistant is asked for a small-batch label
People ask assistants for independent labels making clothes in the city rather than offshore, and an assistant can only relay what is written in plain sentences somewhere it can read. So our about page states where the atelier is and how a run is cut, our spring atelier post describes the production month in ordinary language, and the sustainable brands piece takes a position instead of hedging. We would rather be quoted accurately than described vaguely by something that had to guess at us.
What we put money behind
We advertise the coat edit and essentially nothing else, because a coat is a considered purchase that a person researches for weeks and a tee shirt is not. Everything else leans on the lookbook, the journal and the portfolio, which do their work slowly and keep working after we stop paying. We have never run a discount campaign and do not intend to; a house built on small runs and full price cannot teach its customers to wait for a markdown.
Fashion marketing questions we get asked
What does digital marketing actually mean for a small-batch apparel label?
For us it means writing about cloth. Our collection pages name the fabric and the cut, the journal answers care and provenance questions, and the shop pickup is stated plainly. We are not running a broad brand push; we are making sure the linen question has an answer here.
Is fashion SEO worth doing when a boutique only makes small runs?
It is the only channel that suits us. Small runs mean we cannot outspend anyone, but we can out-explain them. A page about linen trousers that holds a crease keeps earning readers long after a paid placement stops, and the people it brings already know what they want.
How do shoppers find you instead of a big marketplace?
They search the material, not the store. Someone looking for a silk cashmere cardigan that will not pill lands on the page describing exactly that. Marketplaces win the generic category words; we win the specific ones, because we can answer them from the atelier floor.
Do product photographs matter more than the words beside them?
Both, and they do different jobs. The lookbook sells the feeling and the product page sells the shoulder seam. Search engines and assistants read the words, so measurements, fibre content and origin are written out rather than left for a photograph to imply.
What marketing do you deliberately stay out of?
Discounting and broad category advertising. A house cutting small runs cannot teach customers to wait for a markdown, and bidding on a generic word puts us beside retailers built to undercut. We would rather spend that effort on the writing, which keeps working after the invoice stops.
This site runs on WorkspaceCMS, and the campaigns described above are run by its team. See how Fashion campaigns work.
