Stuck in the middle: How can Britain’s independent designers scale?

This article is part of our Vogue Business Membership package. To enjoy unlimited access to Member-only reporting and insights, our NFT Tracker and TikTok Trend Tracker, weekly Technology and Sustainability Edits and exclusive event invitations, sign up for Membership here. In June, Christopher Kane became the latest British independent designer to teeter on the edge of collapse. His decision to file for administration followed on from the closure in recent years of a number of once lauded brands, including Sibling, Nicholas Kirkwood, House of Holland and Meadham Kirchhoff. It’s a story familiar to generations of London-based designers. Despite their globally recognised creative energy, they struggle to build their own businesses after an initial period of momentum. The survivors among Kane’s generation, who emerged from London’s fashion colleges in the noughties, include Erdem, Mary Katrantzou, Simone Rocha, Jonathan Saunders and Christopher Raeburn — who announced this week he is winding down operations at his Carnaby store and looking to tap more wholesale partners in addition to selling online (they all preferred not to comment for this Vogue Business report). The UK has impressive programmes to support early-stage creativity through talent incubators such as Fashion East and the British Fashion Council’s Newgen programme and its highly respected fashion schools and graduate opportunities. The British Fashion Council has worked to provide guidance on navigating Brexit and provide funding for emerging talent through its show funding programme, the BFC/Vogue Designer Fashion Fund, the BFC/GQ Designer and the BFC Fashion Trust. However, UK-based designers say the country has a fundamental problem. In a nutshell, it lacks the infrastructure to support emerging fashion businesses as they scale. “The main problem for me is the lack of support and funding that the government has given the UK textile, manufacturing and garment industries,” says Cozette McCreery, who co-founded menswear knitwear label Sibling in 2008 alongside Sid Bryan and Joe Bates. Sibling folded in 2017, two years after Bates died from cancer. McCreery says most independent designers have to look beyond the UK, which is a tough prospect in a post-Brexit environment. Many British brands outsource labour to Europe, then feel pressured to move there for reasons that are both business-based and connected to sustainable values. “It’s very hard to be UK-based and not have European support,” McCreery says. The British government seems to be listening — it announced last month that it plans to grow the creative industries by an extra £50 billion and create one million additional jobs by 2030, which could help independent designers if the plan is successful. British designers struggle to scale unless they make an impact internationally, agrees Jamie Gill, executive director of London-based independent womenswear brand Roksanda. “The UK market is small, and the interest in fashion and luxury as a country is not on par with other markets in the world and it’s very London-focused. Therefore, your growth market isn’t massive,” he says. Designers face multiple challenges, including managing production and cash flow, and finding a balance between wholesale and direct-to-consumer (DTC). Richard Quinn is among those who have branched out into more lucrative categories, such as bridal, to support some of their more avant-garde collections. Sponsorships, collaborations and consultancy work are all additional means of raising money. But, says McCreery, “if you’re relying on sponsorship money, if you’re not supporting yourself with your product, do you even have a business?” How things go wrong Designer Henry Holland, who folded his brand House of Holland in 2020, talks frankly about the decision. “We were underfunded and needed to scale, but that was on me,” he says. “I was too reluctant to relinquish control, and I didn’t really recognise the importance and need for funding for growth.” Apparently minor issues — an uptick in rent, an increase in the wage bill, an abrupt closure of a supplier — can spiral out of control. “When you first start out, you do smaller [wholesale orders],” says McCreery. “But, once you start getting huge orders from Net-a-Porter, you have to pay for your fabric to get over [to the UK], your sample machinist, logistics — and then you don’t actually have the cash to be able to make the collection.” In Sibling’s time, McCreery would ask department stores for a 30 per cent deposit alongside working with the likes of concept store Machine-A, which paid quicker. A scrappy approach to maintain a business ultimately goes nowhere. “There’s a culture [in the UK] of getting your mates in and pulling things together and making things work with not much money,” says Nicholas Kirkwood, who closed his eponymous footwear label in February after 18 years in business. “That’s beautiful but doesn’t set you up for being a big business in the end. You’d think brands would transition, but the reality is there aren’t many who have.” Gill of Roksanda emphasises the need for professional management. “You can’t do it all on your own. No visionary business outside fashion — any unicorn or any company that’s been amazing — did it on their own,” he says. “If you can loosen up the control and if the management team and creative founder are in harmony, then you can allow the freedom for growth. You know your team can represent the vision of the brand you founded.” Questioning the wholesale model Interviewees for this report agree that British independent brands should reduce their reliance on wholesale. A direct-to-consumer approach can be more effective in developing a brand and in establishing a close relationship with end-customers. “Unless you are the hot new thing or a very established brand, if you’re in the middle and you’re still very heavily wholesale, all the stores are vying for the same margins and you’re in a place where you need them more than they need you,” says Kirkwood. “You can be working with multiple branches of some of the best stores in the world and still be losing money.” Kirkwood saw how his reliance on wholesale impacted his creative vision when he took back ownership of his brand from LVMH, which owned a majority stake from 2013 to 2020. “I was thinking I was going to bring it back to what it was and I was imagining a new phase. But, there was resistance [from the stores] because they wanted to buy the same stuff they always bought and they weren’t interested in my agenda,” he says. Since closing House of Holland, Holland has developed a ceramics and homeware brand and placed greater emphasis on DTC. “We’ve relied so much less on wholesalers — our DTC business has naturally outgrown our wholesale business without much effort, whereas when I launched House of Holland, DTC wasn’t even really a thing and the reliance on wholesalers was huge,” he says. The formula for scaling How do independent brands enjoying international attention break through to the next level? Julie Gilhart, chief development officer at brand incubator Tomorrow, says: “It’s a little bit the luck of the draw, with timing playing a big role. Successful brands often exhibited adaptability, agility, and a proactive approach to addressing challenges. They embraced digital transformation, diversified their product offerings, offered excellent merchandising, competitive pricing, strengthened their online presence and prioritised customer engagement.” She adds: “Additionally, brands that [break through] effectively manage their finances and are able to find the best, right funding or support. Knowing when to stay in the London community or to step out onto a more global platform is important as well.” Are some brands just not meant to last forever? “I feel like my brand was born at a specific time and was really culturally relevant for that time, and then it’s hard to maintain that cultural relevance,” says Holland. “You can evolve and change with the market and your customer, but if you’ve built a really strong brand essence or personality, sometimes when you try to evolve it too far away from that original point it doesn’t succeed.” Kirkwood says business knowhow and support are more important than ever for designers in the 2020s. “For the generation before me, it was pure creativity and they didn’t need to really have any business acumen, and businesses went bust and then got reignited because people invested in them because they were a great talent,” he says. “A lot of my generation had to learn on the job and find a way to run a business to survive as well as being designers. The generation now has it even harder because they need to be the face of the brand as well — and be excellent marketers of themselves in addition to design and business acumen.” To receive the Vogue Business newsletter, sign up here. Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com. More from this author: The Vogue Business Spring/Summer 2024 menswear size inclusivity report Traceability gathers steam: Why the playbook was rewritten With budgets tight, emerging designers rethink their selling windows

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