Diary of a new childrenswear retailer…five months and counting

Looking back on the launch of IndiaCoco only five months ago, it’s hard to imagine how we got everything done.  There’s so much about launching a new brand that no-one tells you – the days you’ll spend worrying about the details of packaging, photography, design, social media and PR, and that’s not even touching on the technical elements around back end systems, reporting, business plans and legal stuff.   

And that’s just the details – the big decisions need to be made much earlier on. Our brand began with a list of all the things we wanted IndiaCoco to be. Some of them were nice-to-haves (many of which we did anyway), whilst others were the pillars of the business – the values we live and breathe every day.  Our vision for IndiaCoco was to offer parents a world of original, high quality and great value children's clothes from the very best British brands, underpinned by exceptional and uncompromising customer service.

But of course it’s easy to put the words on the page – delivering our values every day is the hard bit. It requires us to be bold and purposeful; to ask ourselves all the time how we can do things better, and being open to change.  It also means taking on every challenge with passion, energy and fun, and getting as close as we can to our customers – social media has been a huge part of our communications strategy from day one, and it’s a great way not only to speak to our customers, but also to listen and learn.

So what have we learned over the past five months?  Lots!  Here’s a few of the biggest lessons.

From little acorns…when we launched the website we expected to be flooded with orders – how naïve! Of course friends and family placed orders, but we quickly realised that a huge PR and marketing job lay ahead of us.

Love your suppliers…We really value how we work with our suppliers - they all took a risk on us when we approached them in January 2012.  This is not just our story – it’s the story of the belief and commitment of every one of our ten talented and inspiring product brands too.

Be driven…For us every order is a new success, and we’ve now dispatched goods to the US, Europe and Australia. It’s all about working hard, then working harder – you need to commit to long hours, late nights and a strong work ethic.

Know your customer...we spent a lot of time working out who the IndiaCoco customer was, and what they really wanted. It’s a process that never stops - customer feedback is a gift and we use it every day to really try and do things better.

Stay focused…it’s easier said than done - in the first few months you can easily be drawn in a million different directions! New ideas are all well and good, but you need to spend some time securing the foundations.  Fresh innovations and new technology are all ahead of us, but we want to get our first few seasons under our belt first!

Don’t forget to breathe…running and growing a business is now an exciting part of our lives, but we always try to remember that the inspiration behind our brand is our daughters, Coco (4) and India (15 months). Working for ourselves means we can plan our hours around the school run and never miss a school event; sometimes it means our work day ends at midnight, but it’s always worth it!   

So – five months in, and our adventure is only just beginning.  We appreciate the support of all our customers and suppliers, and looking forward to sharing the next chapter with you…

By Claire Harper founder of new childrenswear retail brand IndiaCoco