hi,
starting something new… every week i want to give you a little peek behind the scenes of what’s actually happening in the business. the good, the messy, whatever’s on my mind that week. so here’s the first one.
summer is a weird month for a jeans brand. people just buy less jeans in summer, which is why we’ve always had a small core collection of dresses too. but we’ve been getting a lot of complaints that we don’t have enough of those dresses in plus size. so that’s what we’ve been working on behind the scenes, and they’re coming very soon.
the other summer thing… return rates. right now we’re sitting at about 50%, when normally it’s closer to 30%. people order a bunch for their holiday and send a few back, which is totally normal, nothing wrong with it. but it does tighten cash flow, because you’re taking in a lot of orders and then refunding a chunk of them later, which leaves less room to fund new drops. finding that balance between launching new things and keeping cash flow healthy is just… the summer struggle every single year. we’re doing really well this year though, it’s just always an interesting month.
our first ever limited edition jeans sold out in a day
so we launched our first limited drop: strawberry matcha, matcha colored denim with a pink patch. only 50 pairs. and they sold out within a day.
honestly i want to do so much more of this. little limited drops of really special designs, where you either got it or you didn’t. collector’s items. i think that’s something fashion is missing right now, everyone kind of has the same stuff, and it’s so cool to offer something one-of-one. yes, it’s more expensive to produce in small batches, and yes, it’s not the most “scalable” thing to do. but i don’t care, i think that’s exactly the kind of brand i want to be. i had no idea how people would respond, and it was great. more limited drops coming soon.
something happened at a festival that’s never happened to me before. this weekend i went to a festival, and i saw so many girls wearing seishiki studio jeans. so many. the girl standing in front of me in line when i walked in was wearing my jeans.
i think i spotted around twenty of them over the day, and i went up to a few of the girls to say hi. i don’t think i’ve ever experienced that before. and it hit different because right now, behind the scenes, this is a season where growth feels a little hard.
so seeing that… it gave me such a boost. if you can walk into a festival and see that many girls wearing your brand, on a day when everyone’s dressed in their best outfit, that means something real is happening. it’s easy to forget that when you’re deep in the hard, behind-the-scenes parts of running a business. that was just the best feeling. genuinely such an honor.
that was my week. thanks for letting me share a little bit of it with you, see you next week.
with love,
chanou
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