Haeni Kim [00:00:00]:
What really kind of mattered to me and mattered to our team from the beginning is that how do we turn those people into brand advocates? Not just the ones who love us already and have a really positive experience with us, but also with the people who are not happy with what they had? And how do we learn from their experience and how do we make that better? And then they become the best brand advocates at the end because they'll be like, oh my God, they heard and they listened and then they made it right.
Paul Archer [00:00:37]:
Have you ever wondered why some brands grow exponentially, building legions of passionate fans that live and die by their logos and some, well, don't? I do, all the time. And that's probably because I'm a massive brand nerd. But I believe there's a secret sauce at the core of every remarkable brand. A formula that sparks the growth of passionate communities, of superfans, building a business and a reputation that will last for years to come.
In this podcast, we tap into the greatest marketing minds in the world as they share the exact tactics and strategies used to build the world's greatest brands. Dropping actionable insights every brand builder can apply.
My name is Paul Archer and I'm a specialist in Brand Advocacy and word-of-mouth. Having consulted for hundreds of brands on a topic co hosting with me is the wonderful Verity Hurd, expert on the bleeding edge of social media.
It's time to learn and build Brand Advocacy.
Verity Hurd [00:01:32]:
Hello and welcome to Building Brand Advocacy. Today I am joined by the founder and creative director of one of my favorite brands and they're known for feel good and wear forever clothes. They're making huge waves out there. And today we get to dig into the story behind KITRI. Welcome, Haeni.
Haeni Kim [00:01:49]:
Thank you so much for having me. Very lovely to meet you.
Verity Hurd [00:01:52]:
Lovely to meet you too. Honestly, I am fangirling right now.
Haeni Kim [00:01:55]:
You look amazing in that.
Verity Hurd [00:01:56]:
Thank you. Thanks.
Haeni Kim [00:01:58]:
Makes me want to bring up mine immediately.
Verity Hurd [00:02:01]:
I really wish you'd won the blue version. Now let's just go straight into sort of like your background and you've experienced different areas and particularly in the fashion industry, from marketing through to obviously like the creative direction. Now, I'd love to kind of hear your experience one in the industry, but how that's really influenced sort of your, like how kitchen standout, sort of the brand identity and your customer first model.
Haeni Kim [00:02:28]:
Yeah. To go really, really back. So I was born in South Korea, my family still live in South Korea, and I moved actually just myself over to England when I was twelve to pursue a dream of becoming a ballerina. It's really random. So, yeah, that was kind of my first dream, really, and moved over here studying ballet. And it's such a difficult career. And when I was 1920, I started kind of thinking about perhaps going a different way. And when I decided to quit ballet, which was a really difficult decision, I kind of looked to the next kind of passion that I had in my life, which was fashion.
So I decided to kind of look into that direction. I actually studied french business with business management, which is really random for someone who wanted to, you know, be in the fashion industry. In my head at the time, I wanted to be in the business side of fashion, so I wanted to learn French. I wanted to work in Paris and all these kind of, like, big fashion houses. And I thought, like, oh, French and business, that's going to definitely help.
But it did kind of afford me the opportunity to work in Paris when I interned there for a year and came back, and I worked for a London designer, high end designer, and I kind of went in as an intern and worked my way through lots of different departments, I think from a very young age. My father was an entrepreneur, and he's a businessman, had his own very successful company. I kind of really admired that.
And I think ultimately I knew that I wanted to start my own business at some point down the line. And having decided that fashion was the business I wanted to go into, I think I was just really keen on learning and absorbing as much as possible about all side of the industry. So I went in as marketing intern, and then because it was such a small company, which is also quite a great advantage to have early on in your career. I bounced around lots of different mentors who looked after finance, who looked after merchandising, who did marketing. So I kind of touched on everything from, I don't know, like, fashion shows to collection merchandising to, like, financing and accounting, all in kind of one area. So that was really kind of amazing to have so early in my career. And then I moved out to Hong Kong. For five years, I worked for a company as a sourcing and manufacturing company out there.
And this time it was like super value driven end of the industry. So you're kind of high street chains, supermarket chains, kind of mass product. So out there, I just wanted to get a different idea of what other sides of the industry kind of looked and felt like and how it worked. So I went from producing a company that produced twelve dress, you know, twelve dresses of one style to, like, 20,000. It was kind of like a huge learning curve. On how different all of that process is. And out there. I travel extensively around Asia, obviously, I was based in Hong Kong, and I just learned so much from that experience as well.
And from that point, they actually kind of asked me to put together a product development team out in London because a lot of their customers were based out in London and Europe, and they kind of felt this need that their buyers wanted to see what they are able to do. So with my experience on fashion in London, they kind of thought, oh, why don't you just go and give it a go? I came out to London, built a team together of designers, product development team here, tiny, and then just kind of started doing that.
And it really kind of gave me the opportunity to be more creative and work with people in a collaborative way and really understanding what our clients at the time wanted and what I wanted, like, and in the end didn't quite work out because I think what I wanted was quite different to what I wanted, but it all worked out in the end.
And then I came back to London after that experience because I have kind of gathered enough experience and knowledge to kind of know what I'm doing, but also quite naive and ambitious, apparently. And I just kind of felt like, you know what? I want to start my own brand. London is where I know and where I love. I started there. So I kind of came back and started the brand in 2017.
So that's so fascinating. Seven years now.
Verity Hurd [00:07:12]:
Yeah, that's. Yeah. Honestly such a fascinating story. And I love it. And I think, one, it just shows, like throwing yourself into things and also just accepting when things aren't like, obviously you mentioned your ballet career, and that is a difficult decision to kind of just go for any career when you just go, I really want this, but it's just not gonna work. And, yeah, I was a dancer. I was a contemporary dancer. Where did you train?
Haeni Kim [00:07:37]:
Well, I trained. I mean, I did all the summer schools, you know, like the Royal ballets and english nationals. And I particularly love dancing with national youth ballet, who I danced with for years, actually, until the very could potentially have been my last performance. But, yeah, I mean, from the age of like nine, I was ballet mad, like, every morning before school, every afternoon after school. And, you know, from your experience probably that it's such a competitive and all consuming world. So when that kind of ended, and to be honest, it ended because I just didn't have the right body, I.
Verity Hurd [00:08:17]:
Would have thoughtful that world when it comes down to something so based on appearance.
Haeni Kim [00:08:24]:
Yeah. And something that you can't change.
Verity Hurd [00:08:25]:
Yeah.
Haeni Kim [00:08:26]:
You know? So, yeah, I guess, yeah. That kind of, like, prepared me for a lot of the hardship that you go through as a business. Like, I was a founder, although it doesn't make it any easier. But, yeah, I mean, it's definitely, like, made me kind of, okay, what is my next passion? And just throw myself into it, as, you know, all in and see how that goes.
Verity Hurd [00:08:49]:
Incredible. Would you say that? I mean, is sort of like the ballet chapter in your life, has that had an influence on Kittri in terms of, like, from design to brand structure? Because obviously it's such a discipline, isn't it? Has it had much influence into the brand?
Haeni Kim [00:09:05]:
Yeah, I mean, I'd say so, to be honest, I think the first influence was the name. So when it came to naming the brand, everybody around me was saying, like, why don't you just call it your name, like, you know, and who've just experienced it? Haeni.
My name is actually, if you look at it written, which is how a lot of your customers are going to come to you, seeing it written. Yeah, it's pretty impossible to guess how to pronounce it. Way too many vowels in my name. And also, I don't know. I think I was still. I was naive, but also I had a very clear idea from the beginning that I wanted the brand to survive me, and I wanted the brand to have longevity, and I just wanted it to be not just about me.
So I kind of looked around to inspiration, and one of the obvious inspiration was dance. And kittery is the name of the ballet character, the solo that I danced first, when I was like, I still have photos, I was like, ten, maybe. Everybody wants to dance the role of KITRI because it was like this feisty, fun, playful character. And she had this great accessory. She had this red rose in her hair. The music's really vibrant. She had a fan. She doesn't marry for money, and she marries for love.
And it's just such an amazing role model for women, for ballerinas that age, rather than dying swan or princess that needs to be rescued. I kind of thought of it, and I was like, you know what? That feels right. We want to kind of capture that spirit of, like, lively, elegant, vivacious, feisty women, you know? So I also like the fact that it was five letter words with a t in the middle is symmetry.
Verity Hurd [00:10:57]:
Oh, I love the attention to detail.
Haeni Kim [00:10:58]:
With that and quite a strong, like, you know, sound like kitri. So it all kind of came together. So Kitri became the name of the brand. It was from a ballet called Don Quixote. So it kind of all stemmed from there. So that definitely had a huge impact on the brand and my career.
But, you know, I think the way that I design, the way that we look at our kind of collection is very much based on, like, how do we make women the center stage? You know, how do we make her, you know, the heroine of a story and how do we make her feel amazing and confident? How can she move in our clothes? How does she feel comfortable in our clothes? Because obviously, you know, dancing is so much about movement and feeling elegant and being totally in control.
So, yeah, I think that kind of comes very, very automatically to me and don't want things to be restrictive and also just that kind of sense of drama.
Verity Hurd [00:11:56]:
I love that.
Haeni Kim [00:11:57]:
Just kind of making sure that she feels like she's bringing it and she feels amazing in what she's wearing. That's kind of what we want to bring to the table.
Verity Hurd [00:12:08]:
So, yeah, I think I've just fallen in love with the brand a little bit more, honestly. No, I love that. And it's, you know, when we sort of ask people, they're like, their favorite brand, like, GANNI comes up a lot because of the GANNI girl. And, you know, and I think it's not the same, but a similar concept in, like, when you're wearing it, you see another girl wearing it and you kind of give each other like a little wink and like, yeah, we've got this and I love that.
And that's exactly kind of like what you've just described there and bringing that kind of, like, community of girls together that feel like that and that's so empowering. Absolutely love it. I mean, obviously kittery was born because you felt there was a gap in the market.
Haeni Kim [00:12:46]:
Right?
Verity Hurd [00:12:47]:
There was a niche there that you wanted to fill. Is that. That's right.
Haeni Kim [00:12:50]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've worked in the fashion industry since I graduated, really? I mean, even before that, and working with amazing brands and being around amazing designers and looking up to, you know, these incredibly chic, amazing, you know, elegant women. But in my early twenties, mid twenties, even, like now probably, yeah, you can't really have access or have, you know, can afford those amazing brands and amazing designs and their ideas.
And when I was kind of growing up in the industry, in my mid twenties and late twenties, when I started Kit tree, I was working so hard and working in the industry and I just really wanted something that was quality, first and foremost, unique design that didn't feel really, like too niche or too mass. I wanted something that's going to make me shine, make me feel great, and something that people will recognize as like, oh, you know, that's, you know, you're wearing something that's special, you know, without the price tag.
So I was really looking around, trying to find something to wear to like an event or, you know, with friends for dinner. And I couldn't really rely on any one or a couple of brands. So I started asking, and I'm working in the industry, so I should know.
You're doing market research all the time, competitive research and analysis. And I couldn't really quite put my finger on it at the time. I was looking at high street mainly because that's kind of the price point that I could afford, but the quality wasn't there, the quality that I was looking for. And also I just didn't like the fact that it was mass. So I turn up to an event and somebody would be wearing the same thing, or I don't have that kind of. I can't just look away when things are going to disintegrate in the wash, like, because I work in the industry and I know what quality feels like.
At the same time, I couldn't really afford designer brands and department stores that I really admired, but not necessarily just affordability, but the design sometimes felt too serious or too niche, and I couldn't really find that balance. So when I asked around my friends, they felt the same.
So I was like, oh, you know what? I think there is something here. You know, we're creative working professionals. We know what we're looking for, but it's not there. So why don't we go about creating that? So this was back in 20, 1617. So, you know, GANNI was just taking off. D2C brands were just taking off in America in a big way. Like, you know, Glossier is away. So that's kind of what I looked up to and trying to see how do we actually distill that into the consumer-first brand that I dreamt of.
Verity Hurd [00:15:35]:
Incredible. And did you have any sort of particular tactics that you use at the beginning of the journey you just mentioned? Obviously, GANNI was kicking off, there was more d two c brands kicking off. What did you do to establish your brand as the standout brand, especially when it comes to community? Because you've now got this army of kittery girls and they're proud to be as well.
Haeni Kim [00:15:57]:
I wish there was a strategy.
Verity Hurd [00:16:00]:
Do you know how many people say that or didn't really have a strategy?
Haeni Kim [00:16:05]:
I think back in the day I was just really convinced that there wasn't really anybody trying to solve the dilemma that I was trying to solve and casting your mind back. At that point, Instagram was. We were still using filters and taking photos of our food.
Verity Hurd [00:16:23]:
A different world.
Haeni Kim [00:16:24]:
It was a different world. I had a bit of like a d two c experience before. So when I was working in London, I actually grouped up with a couple of my friends who actually have incredible businesses themselves. Now we decided to do like a direct to consumer antiques brand. Like this was before Instagram antiques antiques situation. What we would do is we would go to flea markets and antique shows and just pick up lots of little trinkets that we loved. And then we just photographed it, rode copy ourselves, and just post it online. What was really amazing that I didn't really realize at the time.
Working in fashion, particularly in high end, is like the direct feedback that you get from your customers when you have a d two c brand. So we would post something. We'd post something on Instagram, we'd write an email. And the reaction that you get from that, it was so immediate and so unfiltered that it was such a buzz and we couldn't believe it. And this was like back in the day when there was no shopify, there was none of that. We literally got someone to code it for us and we put it up on square. I mean, it was pretty wild times.
Verity Hurd [00:17:31]:
You couldn't do it that long ago either, is it?
Haeni Kim [00:17:33]:
Yeah, you could do it like, no warehouse. Our flats back in the day were just, like, filled with just boxes. And I think that's where I got the bug and understood the importance of direct connection with our customers. So with Kidtree, I think in a way, I was trying to kind of replicate that. I love the idea of having. Understanding what the customers wanted from the beginning and, and being able to react to that quickly.
So I guess at the time, I was trying to kind of not only with the price point and quality and the design, I was trying to bridge the gap between, like, high street mass, like huge, you know, chain of supply and demand, and, you know, the layers and layers of corporate communication that needs to happen to bring a product to life and to the in customers hands versus high end designers who are. It was very exclusive back then.
They're a lot more communicative now. But you don't really get to understand whatever's going on. And they weren't really interested in what the customers wanted because they were very much like, this is what we imagine for you, and this is what you get. So I wanted to bridge that gap too. So we brought small curated edit of styles. Sometimes it would be four, sometimes it would be eight. What I knew at the time was that we wanted to bring regular professionals to our customers, to bring them back to our site, to get them excited about the drops and to really get a read super early and regularly on what's working and what's not. So we did super limited quantities, very frequent drops, a very curated edit.
And all of a sudden we started getting repeat customers because customers were kind of getting buzzed about it. They were really excited about it and we started being integrated into their routine. Every Sunday morning at 08:00 a.m. we dropped new products. I'd go on our shopify backend and I'd see people logging in from like 730, like loitering.
Verity Hurd [00:19:31]:
Nice. It was amazing.
Haeni Kim [00:19:33]:
And then you drop and then sales would start coming in. And I think Instagram was definitely important to us, but I think, you know, we didn't really understand the power of Instagram back then, but we were doing like, whatever felt natural to us, you know, here's a new job. What do you think? You know? And then gifting influencers that we felt was a good brand fit, who would become good ambassadors of the brand and who were really good friends with now.
Just gifting them, just saying, just tell us what you think. Do you like it? Would love it if you could wear it if you like the product. But I think at that point, once you have the garment in your hands and the quality is good, then you actually start building that relationship and it just becomes quite a natural thing. One story that I loved a few months in, it wasn't actually that long after we launched. We launched in February and we had our first pop up launch in Soho.
We launched in February. My husband and I got married in June and we launched our pop up in August or something like that, one after the other, getting hot palpitations thinking about it now, but that's what we did. Crazy.
Verity Hurd [00:20:46]:
You do go all in, right? Go big or go home.
Haeni Kim [00:20:51]:
And when we did our first pop up, we had customers come into the store. We had, you know, various events and activations. All of them said to us that me and my friends have a WhatsApp group to talk about what you guys are dropping next. And because we released, we released teasers of what we were about to release.
Verity Hurd [00:21:09]:
Yeah.
Haeni Kim [00:21:09]:
And they used to talk about which ones that they were gonna buy and which ones that they love within the WhatsApp group, which was just mind blowing to me. We were only going for like six months at that time. But yeah, that's the power of like, you know, community and word of mouth, I guess. Like even unbeknownst to all of us in our team, these little like pockets of community were pockets communities, yeah, were happening.
Verity Hurd [00:21:33]:
Yeah. I mean we all hate sort of saying the word authentic, but that is such an authentic journey, isn't it, to kind of get to that point. And that's obviously something that we talk about a lot, is obviously word of mouth and it's, I think a lot of brands are sitting on a goldmine of opportunities that they just don't, they don't know because it's almost like this dark social now, isn't it?
Like with the DM's and a lot of the engagement is happening more in the DM's and you know, brands aren't ever going to see that, but having those conversations and opening up that dialogue is when they're going to find out that that word of mouth is actually just naturally happening.
And that's the whole, that's what is going to drive a brand these days 100%. So I love that story. I listened to a podcast from you two years ago and you were talking about at the time, the main focus was around the product, obviously, and you said that the next big push was going to be the marketing side of it. I'd love to just kind of understand. Obviously it's been two years.
What has that journey looked like? What are some of the biggest things that you've learned? The challenges as well.
Paul Archer [00:22:43]:
Hey, it's me again. This podcast is sponsored by Duel, which is my company, actually. Duel is the leading Brand Advocacy platform used by the top retail consumer brands, including Unilever, Charlotte Tilbury, Elemis Loop, and about 50 more to manage, measure and scale their Advocacy member, affiliate, creator and brand ambassador operations. The platform offers unparalleled scale for complex brands by automating nine out of ten of the standard Advocacy management activities and allowing them to focus on arming their Advocates with the right tools to tell the brand story and drive Social Commerce, they can grow faster for less.
We only work with 15% or so of the brands we speak to, but we try and add value in many other ways, this podcast being one of them. So if you are a brand that's interested in this, maybe a large consumer retail brand, ideally you're doing $20-$30 million as a minimum, and you're pretty advanced on social and you need to know what the next stage is, then please get in touch. Email me at paul@duel.tech, that is Paul @ D, U, E, L Dot T, E, C, H or Google Duel dot Tech.
Haeni Kim [00:23:49]:
It's crazy to think that we've been going for seven years and. But within that seven years, it feels like a lifetime, but also like a blink of an eye. When we started in 2017 and the brand was just growing and growing and growing, and we hit the pandemic. So that was when we were just about to have our second birthday. So we are an independent brand, small team, and it just kind of threw us for a loop. And we thank God we were small and agile, actually. But there were a lot of kind of complexities that came with that. We had just taken on wholesale.
Amazing timing. Since we started wholesale, partners have been knocking on our door and to say, we'd love to stock you. We'd love to stock you. I wanted to start the brand as D to see for a reason. So we kind of held back for a really long time. And then after that initial first year and just trying to really kind of work out where our place was going to be, I thought, you know what? Actually be amazing to have key wholesale accounts that we partner with, and they could be really drivers of word of mouth. Like you said, place of discovery and reaching more audiences. So we decided, you know what, let's go for it.
And as all those orders came into our warehouse, which we were running ourselves at the time, pandemic hit and everything stopped. And it's amazing, really thinking about it now with such a small brand and a new brand. Like 90% of our orders from wholesale cancelled. So we were put into this kind of tailspin from 2020 with this huge amount of stock. And mind you, we were all about limited stock.
Verity Hurd [00:25:32]:
Yeah. Yeah.
Haeni Kim [00:25:34]:
So staying agile, staying focused, and really driving sales was our key to survival. So how we balance that with our brand messaging, but also how we make sure that we survive that with brand messaging intact, which is so, so, so challenging. We really focus on product, making sure that, you know, we were designing new products that people wanted to buy within that time of pandemic where everything was turning really casual. So we had to pivot a lot with product. We had to pivot a lot with our sales strategy. And all of that was just like a blur. Is that now like a blur? To me in 2022, when I recorded that podcast, my focus was really, okay, we're past that now. How can we actually start strengthening brand again? We pulled all of that back.
We feel like we're now getting to a position where we're in solid growth and we are understanding where our customers lives are. Right now. But I do still think that there's a huge shift in customer behavior from pre pandemic to where we are now. So what we kind of lacked during those times due to kind of business challenges and, you know, various different things that we had to kind of pivot, really wanted to refocus on brand marketing and what our customers are looking for. So what's really tricky about brand marketing for me and our company is that particularly in times of, like, sales became so important for survival, you can't really directly justify that cost to finance. Do you get this a lot with brands?
Verity Hurd [00:27:13]:
All the time.
Haeni Kim [00:27:14]:
It's always such a fight, like mental struggle.
Verity Hurd [00:27:20]:
Yeah, yeah.
Haeni Kim [00:27:21]:
Because I love brand and that's why I do what I do. I love product, that's what I do, what I do. But I think two finance and two numbers, two accounts, it's just like x needs to bring an ROI of, you know, why and, you know, you put in this and, you know, we need to see at least this, you know, and that is quite understandable and digestible. Whereas, you know, brand marketing coming in and going like, okay, so we're going to do this, like, event and we're not going to see anything in return for ages.
Verity Hurd [00:27:51]:
Like, this is my life.
Haeni Kim [00:27:57]:
Like, we're going to do this beautiful shoot, but there's not going to be a direct return. Is that okay?
Verity Hurd [00:28:04]:
I'm laughing, laughing and also crying inside because honestly, it is my life and it's the same. Like when we interview other brands as well, especially from the brand marketing side, it's just the same. But actually what I'm loving right now is that, and Vogue even did an article on it. I can't remember when, if it was early this year or last year, that brand is having a resurgence and I think it's right. And it's almost like brands are now coming back to that. This is what is going to stand the test of time. And so many people are now putting more effort into brand. But you're right, it's such a hard battle.
Haeni Kim [00:28:41]:
Yeah. You know what's interesting, like from 2022 when we kind of started shifting our focus towards really understanding marketing and what our strategies were, because previous to that it was kind of like ad hoc, we just kind of did what felt natural to us and I guess that kind of that, for the lack of a better word, authenticity worked for us. And then we kind of went quite hard into performance marketing for the first time. We've been very, very careful about that previously because I just couldn't understand it.
Verity Hurd [00:29:17]:
It's a very different skill set, isn't it? Very different way of thinking.
Haeni Kim [00:29:20]:
Absolutely. And 2022 till now, I've been learning a lot about performance marketing and you know, there's been some big learnings there that I probably wouldn't, hopefully will never make that same mistake again. Just really over focusing on sales and forgetting and that kind of quick sales to make sure that you're meeting your targets, you're meeting yourselves, you know, all of that.
Yeah, that kind of looking at more of a long term goal of the brand. I just kind of very naively thought we have this organic and we have really great brand will from existing customers who are brand advocates.
We are okay to do performance marketing that we can deploy to get sales and etcetera. But I think what I didn't really understand is that you're going to deplete that really quickly unless you have that kind of longer term brand segment that you're really kind of focusing your energy on for your future sales. So yeah, that's been a tough learning.
And I think in times of like particularly startups and in the last, God, five to seven years, everybody's gone through so many ups and downs. Good times, amazing bad times, horrendous. And we all do what we have to do to survive and pay our employees. And those decisions are not made lightly. But also, as I guess the founder, you do have to keep an eye on the long term because you might be okay today, six months, but in a year, two years time, what is that going to do to your brand? So that's been a really valuable learning and really kind of understanding. I think now finance is beginning to see it as well, which is great. They're like, oh, I see why you're talking about brand all this time. Okay, let's do that.
Verity Hurd [00:31:23]:
Now you've won.
Haeni Kim [00:31:28]:
But yeah, we're really now focusing on kind of going back to our roots, beginning to understand grassroots customers, VIP's that are so important for our brand from the beginning. And again, things have changed so much from the beginning that we really want to understand where our customers are finding the importance of our brand now in their life.
So in the beginning, I started the brand for creative working professionals. In the day, we were all wearing heels, traveling cappuccinos, trying to be Carrie Brashaw, you know, running in and out of office to bring in. That was our working life. After the pandemic, things have changed so much. Our customers have also grown up with us. They might be mothers, they might be freelancers, they might be, you know, working nomads, they could be, you know, in the city.
They may have moved out of the city now. What do they do? Like, how do they live and what is relevant for them now? So I think I'm really using this term to reconnect with our customers and trying to understand what they are feeling and what feels important to them now. So a lot of the things that are like grassroots, like dinners, surveys, kind of highlighting some of the key creatives that we love working with and who we really admire and trying to kind of inspire customers to see what we're doing now and how that could fit into their lives.
Verity Hurd [00:32:50]:
Yeah, love that. I suppose I want to touch on a couple of things that you've mentioned there. I suppose first thing is, obviously, you said that you used, you were gifting a lot at the start as well. I suppose. First off, has there been any sort of favorite collaborations that you've done?
Haeni Kim [00:33:08]:
Difficult. We've done collaborations from the very beginning and I think that's because we all work in the creative industries and we naturally lean towards other creatives. And, you know, being a relatively young female founder, I just loved, I gravitated towards these other young brands that was just starting out and ambitious and doing something interesting and something creative. And I just loved the idea of collaboration.
So we partnered up with quite a lot of, like, really, really new brands in the very beginning and new artists that were just starting out. And, you know, some of the ones I can think of is like Josie Devine, who did beautiful kind of sunbathers print for us for one of the summer collections. We worked with Fair Home studios when they did candles during lockdown, and it was literally coming out of their kitchen. We worked with amuse Labouche, who, this brilliant homeware designer who just started out her own kind of collection, and I loved it.
And then we just did a collaboration on the back of that. She's hugely successful. So we've done lots of different kind of adjacent creators industries to fashion, which I think is quite an interesting thing for our customers.
Verity Hurd [00:34:23]:
Yeah, I think it's important as well. We've talked about this around coming out of your own category as well, because the reach of that and you're tapping into new audiences, and as long as it aligns, I think it works brilliantly.
Haeni Kim [00:34:36]:
It kind of showed us that we're aligning ourselves with other brands and people that our customers that we'll naturally be looking at, and it makes sense for us and quite like that kind of unexpected little twist.
Verity Hurd [00:34:49]:
Yeah.
Haeni Kim [00:34:50]:
So they've all been amazing like, I loved working with all of them. And then the big collaboration that we did was with content creative influencer Jessie Bush, who we love. And she had been one of our kind of dream boards from the very beginning of Kit tree. She's just got this really cool Flm less creative way of dressing and just really kind of frank and, like, just really easy to get on with. And she is actually fun. We have the same birthday.
Verity Hurd [00:35:19]:
How nice.
Haeni Kim [00:35:20]:
Do you know? And how that came about, I also think was really authentic because when we went into pandemic, I don't know why we keep on talking about, well, I keep on talking about pandemic.
Verity Hurd [00:35:33]:
I know, but it's such a big impact, hasn't it?
Haeni Kim [00:35:35]:
Yeah, because we were doing frequent drops and we did small drops. We didn't really follow a traditional fashion calendar. And when we went into lockdown, we still, and that was February. We still hadn't shot any of our summer collection yet. That was coming out in May, June that year, and all studios were closed, couldn't do any shoots.
We didn't know when we could next do the shoot, and we had all this product just in our warehouse what to do. So we kind of reached out to some of the influencers and content creators at the time that had supported us from the very beginning through gifting, one of whom was Jessie. And Jessie, actually, her husband is a very talented photographer, and Jessie herself used to be a photographer, and obviously they lived together and they were isolating together.
So we asked her, like, you know, would it, would you be interested in shooting our capsule summer collection in your home, the way that you would wear it in a kind of, in a natural way? And she did, and it was just amazing. Lovely to work with over Zoom. And when we launched our collection, it just, like, just blew up. And it wasn't even like a, like a design collaboration. It was just photographs that she took in our home in her style. And it just really resonated with our customers. So after that, we decided, oh, my God, our customers love this. Shall we actually do a design collaboration? So it just came about in the most kind of organic way.
And we did spring Summer co lab, which was 20 pieces, did a tiny little mini summer collection, and then another autumn winter collection throughout the next year. And that was just such a joy from the start to finish. Lovely to work with. Just someone that I can imagine our customers just kind of wanting to hang out with and a huge success. So that's probably the most memorable so far.
Verity Hurd [00:37:41]:
Lovely. How does sort of your influencer or creator strategy look today because obviously people are working with all sizes of influencers and creators now, is it still very much, very natural? Just how does it work at kittery?
Haeni Kim [00:37:59]:
So we have like a big dream list.
Verity Hurd [00:38:01]:
Nice.
Haeni Kim [00:38:03]:
And then we kind of sit down together and decide, okay, so who are the people that we really want to work with this season? What does a season collection look like, who it's going to resonate with the most and start kind of working it out that way? We have a certain percentage of our stock that is like put aside for gifting very small, but it's still kind of safeguarded and start reaching out. I think we do have different levels in terms of reach. So you have your kind of big influencers with bigger reach and then you have kind of that mid and then also micro.
So people who, content creators who create beautiful content and is a really good fit for the brand and the look and feel of the brand, but might not have that kind of 200, 5300 thousand reach all the way up to millions and et cetera. But most, I think the most important thing for us is that is it going to feel like a natural fit rather than like, huh, why they're doing that, you know, and we see that all the time with big brands and as customers ourselves in our team, we kind of feel like, did you see that?
That was a bit random, you know, and that's not what we want for our brand at all. So I want to make sure that they resonate with the brand. Our customers will love seeing them in our clothes and, yeah, that's kind of how we do it. There isn't really a huge amount of strategy going behind that.
Verity Hurd [00:39:37]:
Yeah, but I think that's probably the difference between building a brand so, so beautifully like you have with kittery is that, you know, you're always gonna, I know you guys, you know, you said you've got a dream list, but there's always going to be people knocking at your door and people that are just naturally buying and then showcasing what they're wearing and yeah, I. So, yeah, I suppose that you don't need to think about it too much. It's just naturally going to be there for you guys. What would you say is the biggest lesson you've learned when building such a loyal community?
Haeni Kim [00:40:09]:
That the bad reviews also matter. Not necessarily reviews, but customer feedback is so important and it has been from day one. There is so much noise and there's definitely an element of keyboard warriors out there and just kind of they want to be seen and more often than not they're all really reasonable complaints. And customers, we're not perfect, so we do make mistakes. And customers, quite rightly so, feel like they need to get better service or better. So I think it's really easy to kind of dismiss that as like, oh, my God, they're just being, you know, as a brand. But what really kind of mattered to me and mattered to our team from the beginning is that how do we turn those people into brand advocates, not just the ones who love us already and have a really positive experience?
Verity Hurd [00:41:08]:
Interesting. Yeah.
Haeni Kim [00:41:09]:
But also with the people who are not happy with what they had and how do we learn from their experience and how do we make that better? And actually, the people who didn't have a great experience with you from the beginning, but then actually the brand went over and beyond and helped you out, and it became, and then they become the best brand advocates at the end because they'll be like, oh, my God, like they heard and they listened and then they made it right.
Verity Hurd [00:41:33]:
Yeah.
Haeni Kim [00:41:34]:
And I think those are also just as important as the good ones. Our customer reps have, you know, detailed answers to most common questions and complaints that they might, they might receive. And that goes through, through that process. And most of the time, that's kind of where people are. Oh, okay. Thank you very much for your help. Where's my tracking number? How do I do the returns? All of those kind of very run of the mill D, two c questions. But when there are more difficult, challenging customer complaints or feedback, then they escalate.
So they have a really clear route to escalation that will reach one of our team, and our team will have a slack channel for just pure customer service. So if it's a fits fit complaint, or if it's a question about what size they should get, all of those things are actually answered by our immediate team, which is, I think, really important. And also that feedback is invaluable to our next product fitting or our next product design, or how we communicate that online for our ECoM team, or how we shoot it for our creative team.
So it's just all around just really amazing feedback. And if there is anything else more serious, then it gets escalated directly to me or my husband and business partner. So then we will sit down together and go, how do we solve this? How do we make this customer feel really hard and make her feel understood? And how do we make this better?
Most of the time, we would write back ourselves directly from our email account to explain, to apologize, and to offer a few different solutions. So rather than just kind of sorry, this can't be done, or sorry, what can we do? We try to give them multiple options. So a, you can do this and do that.
B, you can do this and we'll give you x. So they feel like they're, you know, that we're listening and we've thought about multiple different ways of solving that question and just really trying to be in their shoes and how we would feel if we were the customers ourselves. And that's it really, like, we don't necessarily have like a magic answer for everything. My God, there is so many crazy situations where you're like, you've been shouted at, my husband's been shouted at, and you're like, and then 16 emails back and forth later they were like, oh, no, it was just with our neighbor the whole time.
Verity Hurd [00:43:51]:
Oh my gosh.
Haeni Kim [00:43:54]:
And in those situations you're like, that's fine. I'm so happy you found it. But, you know, it is like that. And just trying to understand and where their frustrations come from and act with empathy and kindness.
Verity Hurd [00:44:09]:
Yeah. Okay. If you were to offer brand leaders out there any advice for building brand advocacy, what would be your advice?
Haeni Kim [00:44:20]:
I've been thinking about this building advoc, like, your customers are be all and end all. They are the most important. I think during the last seven years there has been times where, where I've lost focus of what I know my customers want because I was trying to build a different segment of the business or when I was trying to concentrate a little bit more on growing a wholesale business. And you need to have that laser sharp focus on listening to your customers and making them happy. And I think ultimately that is where it is. And product is also where you're going to win them over. And it's so easy to forget product. And I know lots of people talk about, oh, everybody can make really brilliant product.
It's about X, Y and z. I've really like, because there's so much noise around social media, around even like social proof, and people reviewing your products online and telling you how amazing it is. It's actually, I think now got to a point where you distrust that there's mistrust there. So unless you can prove yourself with a product, I don't think anything else that you can do, can really do anything. Like it comes from a product, it comes from the customers loving your product, and advocacy will come from that naturally. So every time we've hit a challenge, every time we've hit a bump in the road, every time we've just kind of gone. We put this much mountain like performance marketing, but it's not working. Why? Because the product wasn't right.
And I think happy customers are the best advocates for your brand.
Verity Hurd [00:46:02]:
Yeah. Great advice. What is next for Kittery?
Haeni Kim [00:46:07]:
Lots. I think it's gonna have to be a store. So we're looking at that right now. We've done pop up stores before, which have been incredible for us in the beginning. Again, we did two back to back. One in 2017, one in 2018 when we first launched, one was in Marylebone in London. One was in Soho, purely around, like, brand activations and word of mouth awareness. And it really worked.
But it's now just trying to understand, like, where will we go, where do our customers want us to be in? And really kind of building a footprint on how if kittery world was in a store, what would that look like and how that can be scaled. So that's kind of our next big, big challenge, I think.
Verity Hurd [00:46:53]:
Love it. And I'll be the first there.
Haeni Kim [00:46:55]:
Please.
Verity Hurd [00:46:58]:
Honey. This has been absolutely lovely. Honestly. I've loved digging into the story of the brand and, you know, sort of finding out more about the journey. Thank you so much for joining us today.
Haeni Kim [00:47:07]:
Thank you so much for having me. It's been lovely speaking to you.
Paul Archer [00:47:12]:
That was another episode of Building Brand Advocacy, the world's top brand building podcast. To find out more about Building Brand Advocacy and how this podcast is part of a bigger plan for our brand building cookbook, then make sure to search for Building Brand Advocacy in Apple podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or anywhere else that podcasts are fine. And make sure that you click subscribe so you don't miss any future episodes. Thanks to dual for sponsoring. To find out more, go to www.dual.tech. That's D U A L dot T E C H and on behalf of the team here at Building Brand Advocacy, thanks for listening.
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