1 Granary Summer School with Cecilie Bahnsen: Build a brand for the long run
In the first of our conversations with Cecilie Bahnsen, the designer looks back on ten years of building slowly – from betting on Copenhagen over London to treating suppliers as part of the team.
By Jorinde Croese
Welcome to our four-part Summer School series. After last year’s conversations with Palmer//Harding, this year the designer taking us to school is Cecilie Bahnsen. Released every Tuesday in August, each piece takes the form of a conversation between 1 Granary and the Copenhagen-based designer. Our aim is to provide a mini mentorship: unvarnished, hard-won lessons drawn from a decade of trial and error. It’s what you aren’t taught but must learn about building and sustaining a brand.
Everyone wants everything to happen at once but Bahnsen argues the opposite: build slowly, and build with people who grow with you. In part one, she walks us through the foundations: why she waited five years before launching, how a business plan taught her to pace herself, why the factory that sewed her first dresses still makes them today, and when to hire. “I am building a brand for the long run,” she says, “so it’s also okay that it doesn’t all happen tomorrow.”
Jorinde Croese: Let’s start with building and maintaining the business. How long have you been going now?
Cecilie Bahnsen: I’ve been in business for 10 years last August, so soon 11. With how much the industry is changing and moving, it feels like there have definitely been different phases in the brand.
How much time did you take between graduating and starting your brand?
Five years. I graduated in 2010, and I worked for Erdem in London for three years.
So you didn’t go into it blindly – you’d actually seen a London-based brand up close, and how they did it.
Yes. I started at Galliano, where I worked as a print designer, so I got to see a big house and that way of doing it. Then I went to London to study, and got a job at Erdem afterwards. It was a really incredible time. Seeing how much the brand grew in that period was amazing, but I also got real insight into how much more it takes than just the creative, and into the hard work and the passion it takes to take that on. At the end, I was like: I just have to try it out, and then see where it gets you.
When you started back in 2015, did you begin with something like a five- or 10-year plan?
Not really. First it was just full passion – I just had to do it. I had this need to start my own thing, and I couldn’t help but also want to move back to Copenhagen, starting the brand was kind of the only way to do that. Then, one or two years in, I entered the Danish design competition Wessel & Vett Fashion prize, and part of it was that you had to do a plan. It was actually super helpful and a really great guidance: it put down some of the goals of what I wanted to achieve and where I wanted to see the brand going, and it became a very tangible, easy tool to decide what you are doing and what makes sense. But it also helped me understand that it didn’t all have to happen tomorrow. Especially in the beginning you’re running so fast. All the opportunities are there, and you want it all to happen. But I, at least, am building a brand for the long run, so it’s also okay that it doesn’t all happen tomorrow. It’s good to learn that you can say no or wait a season or two until you and your brand are ready.