We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Ginger Nichelle a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Ginger thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What do you think it takes to be successful?
I think I define success differently than the average person. For me, it really isn’t about making millions of dollars, fancy cars, or a mansion. Now, don’t get me wrong, all those things would be great, and I’m no fool, I would take them gladly. However, I really base my success on how I can reach people and change their lives for the better. For me, success would look like being able to hire friends and colleagues I’ve met over the years to work with me and my brand. Success would also being able to pay everyone within the same range of of livable pay so they don’t need to worry about working side jobs just to make ends meet. Success would ultimately designing and creating any and everything I want without worrying if it will sell or not because I have found my customer base that will buy anything I create.
When it comes to changing lives, I am starting small by offering a range of sizes XS-5X on all items I create for my brand. I started out by selling extended sizing because I know it can be hard for people to find clothing that fits their sizing when a brand only offers 3 sizes (for example, S, M, L). I wanted to be able to offer something different so that everyone can have something cute & unique for them. The friendships and creators I have met on my journey of growing my brand has made me want to hire a ton of people because of their skillset. My biggest dream is to have a small but mighty team of people that can really help my brand grow. Even the people that I have hired for my brand has said they can tell I am close to being at that point of success I want. I do create a lot of garments I want based on my brand aesthetic, but there are so many ideas that don’t make it off the cutting table because I have to decide what will sell or what will just sit in my store and not sell. My hope is to turn this around someday soon so I can enjoy the art of creating without worrying about selling and marketing.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
I have wanted to be a fashion designer for most of my young life. It all started with creating clothing for my Barbie dolls at a young age, then taking sewing classes a a local fabric store, to creating a fashion club in high school that ended with a end of the year fashion show. Then finally going off to college to study fashion design. I actually started with creating cosplay commissions for people who went to Anime and Comic Book conventions back in 2007. This was because I was (and still am) a huge nerd who loved to go to conventions and dress up. During this time, I wasn’t sure what category of fashion I wanted to work in, but creating costumes brought me so much joy, I stuck with that for a long time. Even with this side business of creating cosplays, I also worked in the corporate fashion industry as a designer, then eventually moved into technical design. As a technical designer, I am in charge of making the garments fit before going into production and the clothing hitting the store. I really enjoyed this because both my main job and my side job worked hand in hand in helping me become a pattern maker. I created cosplay commissions for over 10 years and eventually wanted to start my own clothing brand. This came about after being on an international design reality TV show. After not winning the competition, but making wonderful friendships, I decided to throw myself headfirst in to creating my brand. I soon after showed my first collection in LA Fashion Week 2016, and opened up my etsy store. Soon after I opened up my website, and went on to show at New York Fashion Week 2017 & 2018, as well as small fashion shows around L. A. I have had the name Lolita Royalty Clothing in my head for a long time because my aesthetic is inspired by Japanese street fashion Lolita and Harajuku fashion. I also draw inspiration from what Barbie would wear.
I really wanted to start my brand for those people who wanted to look cute and unique and be unafraid to be bold with bright colors and prints. Since the beginning I wanted to provide clothing to everyone no matter their size or gender. I wanted everyone to just love themselves in their wardrobe. This is why I offer all styles on my website from XS-5X and I even offer to make custom garments if the person does not fit into my size chart. I always wanted to have a size inclusive brand because working in the fashion industry you don’t see every brand offer this, even when they have the millions of dollars to invest. I may not have the capital to invest and make exclusive plus sized clothing right now, but since I have started my company with including extended sizing, it will always be apart of my blue print.
Currently I do 90% of my business myself. I say this because I have be able to hire several people to take on tasks I had to do before. For example, I used to take all the photos for my webstore and edit them, however for the last several years, I was able to hire a photographer for every shoot. I used to only be able to take my photos outside on street or in a park, but now I am in a place where I can rent out studio space for our photoshoots. I used to pattern and sew all the photoshoot samples for the shoot, but now I can hire a 1st pattern maker, and seamstress to sew the samples. I typically still make all the orders, but I soon will be handing that off to a small production house as well so I can focus on designing and fitting the garments as well as marketing. I’ve definitely have grown over the years, but I still have a ton of growing to do. This excites me, and honestly, I can’t wait to see what is next in my journey.
We’d love to hear about how you keep in touch with clients.
I make sure to keep my social media up to date so my clients can know what I am working on all the time. I drop hints on social media what I am working on or just show day in the life videos about what it’s like being a LA designer. I also have a large email following that I send my email updates out to every week about what I am working on or letting them know about launches to new merchandise I have made. I am trying to get more in-front of the camera, but as I am a shy person, it is a little difficult for me. However, I try to at least explain my process the best I can so my clients understand that I am a small brand. I say this because most people I talk to think that I am a large brand with 10 or so people working under me, (whew! I wish!). I am trying to move into showing my customer base that I am a relatable brand because I am just like them. A girl who love cute and unique clothing!
Do you sell on your site, or do you use a platform like Amazon, Etsy, Cratejoy, etc?
I currently sell on my personal website www.LRoyaltyClothing.com that is a Shopify store, and I also sell on Etsy. I will soon be selling on Tiktok as well. Personally, I like selling on my website the most. It allows me to be creative with how my storefront looks and to me, it shows that I am more professional because I have a storefront. I still use Etsy because it does feed into google and Pinterest, and I still get orders from Etsy. However, the cost of running a store on Etsy has become more expensive than it used to be. There are so many fees that come with an Etsy store, that it makes it harder to sell for profit. I typically need to make my prices $10-$20 more expensive on Etsy just to make the same amount I would make on my website.
Now, I would say the cons of running my business off my own website is that I truly need to update it and update it often otherwise it will look like the site is not being updated or that it is a scam site. I have to constantly change the look or feel of my website so that it has the best customer experience overall by adding plug-ins or apps to make this happen. I’m not a web designer, so this can be a bit of a learning curve for me even though I am pretty computer savvy.
With all that said, I would say that Etsy does have a few pros: for example, Etsy is very user friendly. You can easily set up a shop within an hour. Since Etsy is a known and trusted site, many people would rather purchase from that platform instead of a random dot com website because they know they can contact customer support if there are issues. Etsy also feeds into Google and Pinterest so the SEO is already set up and great for someone just starting out. Really, it all depends on your goals and what you want to accomplish.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.LRoyaltyClothing.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/L.RoyaltyClothing
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/lroyaltyclothing
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/l-royalty-clothing
- Twitter: www.twitter.com/lroyaltyinc
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/lroyaltyclothing
- Podcast: https://feeds.buzzsprout.com/1611034.rss
- Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/LRoyaltyClothing
Image Credits
https://www.instagram.com/blackwell.photos/ https://www.instagram.com/cicerophotography/