Less Evening Wear, More Casual
“My partner, Amit Dolev, and I founded our boutique brand three years ago with a focus on women’s evening wear. Our unique designs helped us to build a loyal customer base, while at the same time we were designing, producing and marketing our clothes to individual stores and chains around the country. As fate would have it, we moved into our new place on Dizengoff St in March of this year and opened a showroom on the ground floor. We had gone through a rough winter, and we were preparing for the spring, which usually represents the peak of our annual sales. But even then we noticed a significant decline in sales – and within a week we had gone into lockdown, along with everybody else.
“As soon as the lockdown started, we furloughed a few of our six employees, and we were forced to terminate the employment of the others. We didn’t rest throughout this period – we continued to create new designs and prepared ourselves for the event season. At the time, we still believed that there would be a return to normal, and we wanted to be ready for the day the shoppers returned. It was not an easy time, financially speaking. The government support was too little, too late. We took out a loan and sorted things out with our suppliers.
“We were back in business in early May, and currently we’re looking at approximately 80% of our regular turnover from in-store purchases. Our sales to stores and chains, on the other hand, have come to an almost complete standstill. We decided to streamline and change the focus of our collection: whereas in the past, we had 70% evening wear and 30% casual, today it’s a 50/50 split. People have shifted toward more practical and functional clothing. Throughout the industry, everyone is going into survival mode, concerned about another crash. In the meantime, we’re focusing all our advertising and marketing efforts toward the internet, because we learned during the lockdown that it cuts out the middleman and gives us direct access to our customers. We deliver the clothes via a courier to the customer’s house within two days of purchase, and it works.”
The writer is the co-owner and manager of the “Amy” fashion brand.
Dizengoff 128, Tel Aviv. 052-6533341