Photo Credit – Barrett Dennison with El Osito Films
After spending over 20 years as a federal officer serving her country with a background in psychology and criminology, Tess Mann fulfilled her dream of becoming a full-time fashion designer and retail store owner in Tennessee. Mann is the fashion designer behind the Tess Mann Haute Couture and Couture by Tess labels in addition to owning a bridal boutique under the name, Couture by Tess Bridal. In September 2018, Tess became a US Trademark Designer with her designs being protected by the US Patent Office. She served the Memphis, Tennessee area for a little over six years with a part-time bridal boutique located on the top floor of her home while continuing to design and plan for the future. Upon retirement from the Bureau, Tess and her husband, Joe, opened Couture By Tess Bridal on 31 W. Broad Street in Cookeville, Tennessee in November of 2019.
Mann faces many of the same challenges that most fashion designers face. Where do you find ethical, yet affordable manufacturing partners? How do secure funding to excel in the fashion industry? These are questions almost all designers face as they navigate being creative with the practicalities of selling their goods and running a business. Learn more from Mann’s experiences, challenges and lessons learnt.
Challenges and Lessons
Finding a reliable and trustworthy factory was a challenge. Although materials and production costs in China are definitely more economical than using American or European factories, Tess found there are definite risks when working with a Chinese factory. There are international boycott issues that can affect production and timely delivery, as well as security risks when sending funds for payment of services. Many legitimate factories will use a credit card, PayPal, or bank transfers. She learned to be very careful of those indicating they only accept Western Union. In many cases, this is a scam.
As a fashion designer, she must consider the risk of having her designs copied and further mass-produced and sold behind her back to other designers as a private label. There are unscrupulous factory owners or employees who will produce your designs and pass them off as the factory originals. You see this everywhere in the bridal fashion industry when shops indicate, “This is our ‘private label.”, she said. Through these experiences and lessons learned, she decided she needed to go in a different direction…especially when she had a trademark to protect.
In the end, she decided to work with a factory out of New Delhi, India based on their reputation in the design community as well as their proven standard of quality. She found Tarak Nath Mishra through LinkedIn, and then further researched the designer house in London, UK where he had professed to work. They had several conversations not only through email, Whatsapp, and actual video calls where Tarak provided an actual tour of his factory and introduced her to the essential members of his team. Her gut instinct told her this was a factory she could trust. As you gain maturity and wisdom, your gut instinct is very rarely wrong.
Tess noted that if you want to begin any business, especially in the fashion industry, you must develop a strategic business plan that will not only cover the first year or two of your business but extrapolate out to your expected status in five years. You are going to have a lot of your own personal assets used as collateral for a business loan. The other option is you will have to find investors that will require a huge portion of your proceeds for the first several years in business. No matter which avenue you choose to venture down, start small and do not put yourself at risk of going over your financial means. She was in a prior employment position and was fairly lucky with her personal savings over a period of 20 years. She invested into her 401K in anticipation that she would use some of those funds to begin her business. She also began conversations with their local banking institution. They had accounts at both large-scale national banks as well as a small family-owned bank with only 2-3 locations. They decided they would receive the most interest in helping their business venture succeed out of a small banking institution. Although they were still required to use their personal property as collateral for a business loan, they have one-on-one excellent customer service with their bank. Whenever they have a concern or a problem arises, there is a real person on the other end of the phone call. More importantly, she could drive right over to the bank where everyone knows your name and there is a serious endeavor to help you in any way possible. At some point with the expectation that her business will expand, Tess too may have to turn to find legitimate investors or a business partner to provide the additional cash flow with efforts to enable the success of the brand both nationally and internationally.
Advise
Do not expect to be successful overnight, she mentioned. Do not expect success in your first three years unless you have some major financial backing behind you which affords you a complete marketing, targeting, and public relations team behind you to get your name out there and your brand in front of the right people. National consensus in a business requires 5-7 years to begin to turn a profit and approximately 8-10 years to be deemed successful. For most of them, “the average Joe,” it requires a lot of hard work, late nights, sleepless nights, doors shut in your face, and people who do not return your phone calls or answer your emails. If they want to succeed, they need to grow a thick skin, push forward, and assign small goals for themselves and their team. Make sure they have one positive thought and action every single day to validate that their vision is worth it…because it is.
If you would like to get in touch with Tess Mann or her company, you can do it through her – Linkedin Page
