Why doing both men’s and womenswear from the start is a bad idea

Buyers for SSENSE, Voo Store and LN-CC explain.

This article is part of our new series of newsletters offering advice for those brave enough to start their own brand. Read ‘Why you shouldn't name your brand after yourself’ here. And drop us a message or a comment if you’re a designer with a question you want 1 Granary to answer!

When establishing a vision for a brand, it’s easy to understand why a designer just starting out would want to offer both womenswear and menswear. Imagining a customer united by taste rather than by gender appearance seems obvious. Plus, when you look at the current industry, most brands offer both, and aren’t stopping there, expanding into beauty, food, film... The bigger, the better, it seems. But for a small brand, if wanting it all is not a sin, doing it all is certainly unwise.