If you want to start a butterfly abaya brand. You don’t just want to build a business, but you actually want to build a brand.
In the beginning, the business will be supporting the brand. But as time goes on, you will start to reap the benefits of building a brand, and the butterfly abaya brand will begin to support the business.
However, this is a long-term strategy. Building a brand takes time, so make sure you’re in it for the long term — because yes, it takes time to build, but if it’s done right, it’s something that can last for generations.
If you’re after building a legacy and leaving something behind for your children, then definitely pursue this path. But be warned, it’s not for the weak.
Establish A Butterfly Abaya Brand Identity
So, when you’re starting to build a butterfly abaya brand, the first thing you need to do is establish a brand identity. What are the brand’s values? What is its mission? What makes this brand stand out from among all the other brands? What makes it unique? What is it bringing to the table that the other businesses and brands aren’t?
Because if you think of some of your favorite brands, these brands often have something unique about them — something a little bit different from the other one that’s its competitor. So, one of the main things in building a butterfly abaya brand that sets it apart from every other brand is its uniqueness. There has to be something unique.
Research Your Target Audience
The second thing you need to do is research into who your target audience is and try to narrow it down to the point where you can create a customer avatar for your ideal customer. In my business, when a customer places an order, I can tell which one of the three avatars that customer comes under.
So, for example, one of my avatars is Mariam, of course, and she has three children. She wears the butterfly abaya, but she wears color too. A majority of my customers in London are mums. But over time, I have built several customer avatars.
One of my customer avatars, I named her Abida, and she is a sister who wears gloves — even though we don’t sell gloves. She’s usually the one that buys the niqabs with the flaps that cover her eyes. She’s also the one that buys the longest khimars. So, when I get an order from a customer that’s bought my flaps, extra-long XL hijabs, I know that this is Abida — just with a different name.
So, that’s how specific you can get with your ideal customer. Get specific with their age, where they hang around, what social media platforms they’re on. This is a part of the process that many people skip, but it’s so important because everything else will be determined based on this ideal customer avatar: where you’re going to be advertising your products, what time you’re going to be posting, what color you’re going to make your branding — everything depends on this ideal customer avatar.
So, this is the most important thing. If you get this wrong, you’re going to be all over the place, and if you’re all over the place, you’re not going to get consistent sales.
Lay Out Butterfly Abaya Business Plan
The third thing you need to do is lay out a business plan, because in the beginning, for the first few years, the business will be supporting and building your brand. Without a business, there will be no brand, because building a brand requires funding.
And from all your revenue that you get within your business, a small chunk — a small percentage of that — has to go towards branding.
So, it’s very important that you build out a business plan, because this business plan will serve as a road map for building your business and building your brand.
Business comprises many different components: marketing, operations, admin, sales, finance, and many more. And within these components, there are hundreds of different elements that have to be working well in order for the whole business to work like a well-oiled machine.
Name Your Butterfly Abaya Brand
So, now that you’ve got your butterfly abaya business plan, the next thing you need to do is name your brand. And it’s very important that you go and check that the name you want to use for your brand is not already a registered trademark, to make sure that nobody else is trading with that name already.
And don’t forget to grab your name across all social media accounts and your domain. Once you’ve done that, the fun part begins.
Build Out the Visuals for Your Butterfly Abaya Brand
The fifth thing you need to do is start building out the visuals for your brand. The brand logo, the colors, the fonts that you’ll be using-basically all the fun stuff that people usually begin with after they skip all the important steps.
Trademark Your Butterfly Abaya Visual Brand Identity
Once you’ve got your visual brand identity, the next thing you need to do is trademark it. You want to trademark your brand name, your logo, to make sure that nobody else can use your logo or your branding to sell similar products in the same category. And while you’re doing this, you might as well deal with registering the business itself as well.
Source Your Product and Customize Your Product
The seventh thing is where the fun really begins. This is when you need to source your product and customize your product and think about the packaging you’ll be using. This is where your branding will really come to life, and this is what your actual customers will see.
Now remember, in the beginning, when I mentioned that the butterfly abaya business will first have to fund and build the brand? This is what I was talking about.
This is when your budget will determine just how much customization you can do with your products — which is why I recommend to have at least £2,000 to start with when building a butterfly abaya brand. And that’s the least, because the sky is the limit when it comes to customizing your abayas.
You may want to actually customize the butterfly abaya so that nobody has the same abaya anywhere in the world. This requires a lot of work, a lot of development, a lot of trial and error and testing. And this, of course, costs money and time. And not to mention that the minimum order quantity from the manufacturers is also pretty high, usually.
How is Your Abaya Going to be Arriving
Once you’ve decided how much customization you’re going to do to your butterfly abaya, then you can decide: how is your abaya going to be arriving?
I have some examples here. So, for example, is your butterfly abaya going to arrive in plain bags ? Or are you going to have custom-made packaging that is unique to your brand?
In addition to the packaging that your butterfly abaya is going to arrive in, what packaging are you going to use to send your products out to your customers in?
In my brand, we have custom poly mailers that we use to send out our products in, and we have a variety of sizes. If you go ahead with the sizes they already have and the colors they already have, you can order a smaller amount.
So basically, the more customization you want to do, the more it’s going to cost you — but the more it’s going to build your butterfly abaya brand. Because this is the main thing that interacts with your customers.
In addition to that, you might want to think about paper hang tags that hang off of butterfly abayas or cards that you might want to include inside the packages when you send them to your customers — and many more things.
Make Sure The Butterfly Abayas Are of High Standard
Like I said, this is the fun part. However, it can also become very tedious because there will be a lot of back and forth between yourself and the manufacturers to make sure that the butterfly abayas are of high standard and the quality that you want them to be.
But do make sure to get samples before you place any bulk orders — because things do go wrong. Trust me, I’ve played around, and I’ve learned some expensive lessons in the process.
Set Your Butterfly Abaya Brand Up Online
Once you’ve approved your samples and your manufacturer is finally producing your bulk order, the eighth thing you need to do is set yourself up online.
So, start writing up your bio for all your social media accounts, building your butterfly abaya website, systemize all the emails that will be going out to your customers, and systemize all your processes so you are ready to start taking orders.
Now, after spending so much money and time on your butterfly abaya branding, your packaging, and developing your butterfly abaya, of course you want people to run and purchase it as soon as it lands and as soon as you make it available.
Anticipate an Official Launch
It might be a good idea to anticipate an official launch. Create some hype, create some buzz on social media.
To do this, you can organize some collaborations to get influencers to mention your butterfly abaya brand. And if you’ve still got some money left in that budget of yours, you can even organize an event where you can invite some family and friends — but also some key influential people that can promote the launch of your butterfly abaya brand.
Monitor and Optimize
After the launch, once you’ve got sales flooding in, inshallah, what you need to do is monitor and optimize. So, monitor your butterfly abaya business — see how it’s going. How are the sales coming in? What is the butterfly abaya feedback? Where are sales coming in from more? And optimize according to that to bring in more sales, and to improve your butterfly abaya, and to improve your customer service.
Because working on your business and constantly improving is what’s going to build you a strong, reputable brand. Remember: a brand is what your customers think of you, and what they think of and what they feel when they come across your brand and your butterfly abaya.
So, although we don’t have control over what our customers think of our brand, and we can’t force them to like our brand, what we can do is show up correct and provide the best service and the best product that we possibly can.
And now — just persevere, because it’s a long-term game. And just keep reinvesting all your money back into the butterfly abaya brand, back into the business. And building an amazing team throughout the process is definitely a key to success.