The mistake designers always make when pricing their collections
Too many designers think creativity alone can carry their collections, but without the right groundwork, even the strongest ideas quickly unravel.
We need new roadmaps in fashion. Leaving design school with an uber-creative graduate collection, some Instagram clout, and an i-D feature is of little use if there isn’t good business nous underpinning it. With this in mind, we’ve partnered with AZ Academy, a Milan-based fashion course born out of the late Alber Elbaz’s AZ Factory – his brand turned fashion incubator – and overseen by Richemont, Creative Academy and Accademia Costume & Moda (ACM), to democratise access to its valuable lessons on how creative people can build commercially-successful brands. Read the first edition here.
By the time a designer’s sketch hits the catwalk (or, more likely, the feed), the damage may already be done. That poetic silhouette, the meticulous detailing, the big conceptual swing... all impressive, but without a clear pricing and merchandising strategy behind it, even the most beautiful collection can sink without a trace.
Laura Santanera wants to stop the bleeding before it starts. A fashion industry veteran with over 30 years of experience, Santanera is one of those rare behind-the-scenes figures whose influence runs deep. Having worked across global brands, consultancies, and institutions, she now teaches Merchandising and Pricing at the AZ Academy program at Accademia Costume & Moda in Milan, helping emerging designers and entrepreneurs turn creative visions into viable businesses. Through pricing strategy, segmentation, and good old-fashioned market research, she teaches designers how to think beyond the sketch – transforming raw creativity into collections that are not just compelling but commercially coherent.
Because in fashion, great ideas are only half the battle. The other half? Profit margins, target markets, and price elasticity. Not exactly sexy. But absolutely vital.
Creativity vs. commerciality: a false binary
"Creativity and commercial viability aren’t enemies," Santanera insists. "But most designers treat them like they are." It’s a mindset she sees time and again, especially among younger talents – that the moment a product is deemed “commercial,” it must be creatively compromised. “They think commercial means sacrificing quality or design,” she says. “Actually, it just means the product is conceived to make a profit. That’s it.”
The emotional tug-of-war between artistry and commerce is especially acute in fashion, where cultural capital often outweighs financial logic. But Santanera urges designers to resist the allure of pure aesthetics unmoored from strategy. “Creativity is not just about what you feel – it’s about how effectively you communicate that feeling through product,” she explains. “And if your pricing, your structure, your segmentation don’t support the message, the story falls apart.”
In her classroom, Santanera challenges students to treat every decision – every seam, fabric choice, or silhouette – as a business hypothesis: will this resonate, and will it sell? So, her first task is often to disarm this bias. Not to tame their creativity but to reframe it. Yes, creative expression is important, but it can’t float untethered to market realities. That’s why, before she dives into the technicalities of collection planning, Santanera zooms out. She starts with the basics, testing how well a designer understands the context they’re designing for. “It sounds silly to clarify the product they're thinking about, but it’s not. Sometimes they have amazing ideas, but the translation into a specific, market-ready product is unclear.”
That means going back to a set of deceptively simple but essential questions:
Who is the product for?
What occasion is it for?
Who are your competitors?
What do they charge, and why?
“You’re not designing in a vacuum,” she adds. “Freedom is important, but not total freedom. You’re doing something that must make sense to the person you want to reach.” This understanding requires confronting tough questions about pricing, positioning, and product segmentation – concepts many fashion schools still treat as secondary to the “real” work of design. But in Santanera’s view, knowing your audience is step one. “Creativity is expression, yes,” she says. “But it’s also a dialogue. You have to consider who’s on the other side of it.”
The collection as a book: building structure
Once that foundation is in place, she introduces one of her favourite metaphors: the collection as a book. “There are chapters. Structure. A storyline,” she explains. “But too often, designers come armed with a concept and no arc; no through-line to tie the pieces together.”
She encourages students to imagine their collection with both horizontal and vertical structure. Horizontally, it’s about product segmentation: categories, materials, styles, occasions of use. Vertically, it’s about pricing tiers. Together, this creates what she calls “the architecture of the collection.”
Of course, different brands require different architectures. “If it’s footwear, don’t split by material. Split by use: sneakers, dress shoes, boots,” she says. “If it’s bags, maybe split by material – unless it’s a luxury leather brand, in which case you split by type: tote, saddle, backpack.”
Another key tool Santanera uses is the occasion of use. It’s not just what the product is but when it will be worn. Is the product for a single moment – formalwear, evening wear – or is it adaptable to multiple settings? The answer can inform segmentation, pricing, and even category development. “It’s not always about just splitting by material or style,” she says. “Sometimes occasion is the strongest organising principle.” For example, a capsule built around transitional, day-to-night dressing will need a different pricing ladder than one built around seasonal statements.
Designers are also encouraged to think beyond their initial product category. “Many come in with one idea – say, a coat – but haven’t explored how that concept could stretch into a full product range. Thinking across categories opens up business potential and clarifies the collection’s internal logic.”
There’s no universal blueprint. A streetwear drop requires a different internal logic than a luxury handbag range. A capsule of evening wear won’t be structured like a seasonal denim line. But the principle remains the same: segmentation should be the DNA of your collection - whatever the market, whatever the aesthetic.
Cost now or cry later
If segmentation is the skeleton, pricing is the lifeblood. Yet, it’s almost always an afterthought. “In Italy, we say ‘a babbo morto’ – which basically means you missed the boat,” Santanera says. “You’re too late.” That’s why the most common mistake she sees is designers waiting until the end of the process to think about cost and price. By the time the samples are sewn, the fabrics ordered, the lookbook styled - the damage is done. The budget’s blown. The margins are dead on arrival.
Her solution is to bake pricing into the creative process from the outset. “Before they experiment with samples, I make them create a collection briefing – where they assign target costs to materials, production, everything.” It’s uncomfortable. It adds stress. And that’s the point. “If your pricing model is cost-based, you need to start from the beginning,” she says. “Otherwise, you won’t be able to create a product that’s both beautiful and viable.”
This is where fashion education often falters. Many schools teach value-based pricing as the default – pricing based on what the market might pay. But Santanera advocates starting with cost-based pricing as a reality check. “If you don’t know your break-even point, you’re flying blind.”
For example, knowing that a certain jacket must retail under £600 might prompt a rethinking of fabric sourcing or a new approach to construction that maintains the silhouette while reducing waste. These aren’t compromises; they’re strategies – and when built into the design process from day one, they create collections that are not only exciting to look at but possible to produce and profitable to sell.
“When you price from the beginning, you're grounding your creativity,” she says. Rather than chasing a fantasy margin after the design is done, she urges students to consider cost as an input, not an afterthought. “You set the parameters, and then you innovate within them.” It’s this shift – from reactive to proactive – that separates fashion as an expressive art form from fashion as a sustainable business.
The chameleon model of pricing
When it comes to determining the actual price tag, Santanera asks her students to take inspiration from an unlikely source: the chameleon. Why? Because a chameleon can look in two directions at once.
“One eye looks externally – at the market, your competitors, customer perception. The other eye looks internally – at your own margins, your cost structure, your business realities.” It’s a balancing act. On the one hand, you need to understand the pricing strategies of brands in your arena. No, you’re not copying them – but you’re not ignoring them either. On the other hand, you must ensure each product is profitable.
“Sometimes you’ll have to sacrifice something,” she says. “Maybe a material, maybe a detail. But if you don’t analyse both the outside and inside perspectives, you’re just guessing.” That dual vision – looking outwards at the market and inwards at the business – is something she drills into every collection planning session. It’s less about spreadsheet perfection and more about strategic instinct.
While Santanera gives students tools for collection planning, she’s not interested in just dumping spreadsheets on them. “They’re visual thinkers,” she says. “If I only explain concepts, it doesn’t stick. They need examples. Exercises. Simulations.”This includes showing students how different pricing strategies affect profitability. Beyond cost-based and value-based pricing, she also discusses psychological pricing (using round numbers or strategic thresholds), tiered pricing (multiple versions of the same product at different price points), and loss leaders – items priced low to drive traffic, knowing profits lie elsewhere.
She also stresses price elasticity: how sensitive your customer is to changes in price. “If your price goes up 10%, will you lose customers?” she asks. “If you drop price, will your volume increase? That’s elasticity. And every brand has a different curve.”
Learning to build under pressure
There’s a recurring theme in Santanera’s teaching: structure is not the enemy of creativity. In fact, she argues, it’s the only thing that gives creativity power. “You can be incredibly creative,” she says, “but if no one understands what you’re offering, or if your pieces are scattered across price points and product categories with no cohesion, your idea gets lost.” What’s more: “If you don’t make money, you don’t get to keep designing. It’s that simple.”
To help drive this home, she uses case studies – fictionalised versions of real-world merchandising briefings from brands she’s worked with. And she never chooses easy wins. “I always show collections from difficult moments,” she says. “Creative director changes. Overextension. A downturn in sales. A team under pressure. Because that’s when your strategy gets tested,” she says. “It’s easy to make things look good when the brand’s on the rise. But what happens when it’s not?”
Students are asked to devise merchandising plans in less-than-ideal conditions. How do you relaunch a collection mid-season? How do you simplify your offering? Where do you cut SKUs without killing your narrative? “They learn to build under constraint,” Santanera says. “And they learn that the merchandiser is not the enemy of the creative – it’s the person who helps the creative survive.”
What Santanera teaches is not always glamorous. It’s numbers. Market analysis. Hard decisions. But in a fashion ecosystem that loves to romanticise intuition and spontaneity, her approach offers something far more sustainable: a blueprint. She’s not here to flatten anyone’s vision – just to make sure it can stand up in the real world. And doing so by asking the tough questions, reminding young designers that inspiration without infrastructure is just expensive chaos.
“Fashion is emotional,” she says. “It’s about identity, desire, self-expression. But it’s also a business. If you want your ideas to last, they have to live in the real world.” And in that real world, commercial strategy isn’t the opposite of creativity - it’s actually the thing that makes it sustainable.
Because the truth is, even the most radical ideas need structure to survive. Without a strategy, creativity burns fast and bright – and fizzles out. With one, it builds momentum. Santanera’s work reminds us that fashion’s future won’t be shaped solely by visionaries but by those who understand how to make vision last.
By Amy Francombe
"Because the truth is, even the most radical ideas need structure to survive. Without a strategy, creativity burns fast and bright – and fizzles out. With one, it builds momentum." Well put.