I returned to posting short form videos about the fashion industry after some initial struggles during my Cut30 run.
Some of my videos have gone semi-viral, and that exposed me to a much broader audience of folks who are running fashion brands or trying to get them started.
Before we get into it, I want to thank this week's sponsor: Move Supply Chain. Move Supply Chain helps fashion brands prevent stock outs, improve product margin and increase sell through rates. Think of Move as your fractional COO for supply chain.
Click here to book a quick fit check.
A few things I realized:
- For many fashion founders, Meta ads aren't even on the roadmap. They are overwhelmed by the complexity or don't understand the powerful potential of ads.
- A significant number of founders are starting with a product idea, a vibe or a "vision", without deep market research or experience.
- Many people think that the legacy fashion system is still relevant; they think a runway show at NYFW will "make" their brand.
This inspired me to go back to basics as I'm brainstorming new ideas for the newsletter, and for posts on social.
This week I want to talk about the three foundational pillars of a successful fashion brand in 2026. You can still succeed without these foundations, but you'll struggle to maintain that success for more than a few seasons.
#1: White Space In The Market
Fashion is the consumer product category with the lowest barriers to entry. It's not beauty or CPG, where you risk maiming someone if the formulation is wrong. That makes the market incredibly competitive.
But despite this competition, new brands launch every year and scale up to seven and eight figures in revenue within 18-24 months.
How do they do it? By identifying white space in the market: a consumer need that is being ignored completely, or being served insufficiently.
White space appears all the time because consumer preferences shift rapidly in the fashion space and incumbents are slow to respond.
Alo Yoga literally said "what if we take athleisure (bro coded, technical, performance-focused) and made it cute, feminine and fashion-driven?"
Trish Wescoat Pound literally looked at The Row and said "your margin is my opportunity".
Dad Gang literally asked "why don't we make hats...for dads...to celebrate the fact that they're dads?"
Finding white space doesn't have to be complicated. You don't need an MBA and five years at McKinsey to do this.
But it does require you to immerse yourself in the apparel/fashion market and get to know your customer deeply.
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Harsh truth: some brands do everything right from a positioning, product design and marketing perspective and still get stuck.
The reason? Operational challenges. Production lead times are too long and best sellers are out of stock for months. Vendors don't deliver reorders with consistent quality. Inventory piles up from less popular styles, forcing the brand to run deep promotions.
Sell through rates slip and cash gets trapped in the business, even though customers are raving about the product.
Brands doing $1-20M/year in sales are often too small to bring on an experienced COO to bring structure to this chaos. And that is the problem Move Supply Chain was built to solve.
Move Supply Chain helps brands turn operational chaos into clarity with expertise that spans sourcing and vendor management, inventory planning, logistics and new product development.
If you want to reduce production lead times, reduce stock-outs, increase inventory turnover, or reduce your COGS, Move Supply Chain can help.
If you're frustrated by stockouts, long reorder times or slow sell-through, click here to book a free call with Move Supply Chain.
Anyone who books a call through that link before April 31st will receive a free trade sourcing support for Vietnam and China–a $1k value, absolutely free.
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#2: ONE Killer Product To Fill That Space
Once you hone in on your white space, you need to design the ONE killer product that is going to win over your customer.
This doesn't necessarily mean that you're only launching with one product in one colorway.
But you should define a framework for your killer product and limit initial product development to between three and six iterations that check all of your boxes.
Before it became a fashion girl favorite, Khaite went to market with two killer products: denim and cashmere.
Founder Catherine Holstein knew from experience that those two categories drove volume at multibrand retailers like Barney's (RIP), Bergdorf and Saks.
She made a number of design and fabrication choices that helped her denim and cashmere stand out, so they would win over shoppers who typically purchased from designer collections.
Khaite always had a RTW component but, for the first five years, the focus and energy was primarily poured in to denim and cashmere.
When that business was solid, Khaite started hosting runway shows and releasing more "directional" collections...but they never killed the cash cows.
#3: A Go To Market Strategy With Strong Product-Channel Fit
A department store buyer or a magazine editor is not coming to save you. Brands that succeed in 2026 launch with a Go To Market strategy, aka a game plan for generating your own consumer demand.
This GTM strategy will most likely fall into one of three buckets:
- Organic Social and/or Performance PR: building up a following on Instagram or TikTok by posting viral content, or working what is left of the tastemaker industrial complex to get mentions on shopping-driven Substacks and websites
- Paid Advertising: typically Meta and Google ads, but this can also include TikTok shop + affiliates, or an affiliate-driven product seeding and influencer program
- Grassroots Selling: getting in front of your customer where he or she lives via trunk shows, farmers' markets, pop up stores or even a permanent retail location.
There are two important things to keep in mind when you develop your Go To Market Strategy:
First: you should pick a path that is suited to your skills. If you have a background in sales (retail or B2B), grassroots selling could be a good fit. If you have scroll-stopping looks and/or great charisma, organic social could be the way to go.
I love ads as a GTM because the only criteria are willingness to learn, flexibility and strong unit economics. If you have a business background and cringe at the thought of getting on camera, ads are the way to go.
Second: the brands that grow fastest engineer their products to suit their GTM channel of choice.
Brands excel with Meta ads when the product has strong margins, is scroll-stopping and is trend-aligned.
Brands excel with grassroots selling when the product line is robust enough to form full outfits, the products work well together in capsules, and there are unique details that make the buyer feel special.
I'm honestly not sure how I would describe the best products for organic social and performance PR. I think this category is more about the founder's personality than specific product attributes. But the product should hold up to pillars #1 and #2 described above.