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Rogueline: How A Revolutionary San Francisco Firm Is Bridging The Gap Between Business and Fashion

This article is more than 5 years old.

Vishal Kalia, Founder and Owner of Rogueline in San Francisco

Vishal Kalia

Up until now, there’s been a huge missing link in the fashion industry between designers and business, a gap that is finally being filled by Rogueline a new and exciting company out of San Francisco. Conceived by Vishal Kalia, Rogueline officially launched six months ago after conducting extensive research for three years collaborating with the Macy's Fashion Incubator SF, SF Fashion Community Week, and the Academy of Art University and SF designers. The company is a Full Resource Center for Fashion, eCommerce, Retail, Modeling and Beauty with 200+ tools, ready blog and marketing templates. It also has an active Youtube channel with over 120 videos that addresses both simple and complex questions young design firms often have, from how to find royalty free images for social media campaigns to how to create an Instagram campaigns that builds followers. Rogueline’s staff are specialists in the fashion industry with an in-depth knowledge of fashion marketing and fashion law. That might not sound as important as it is.

Like every industry, fashion has its own language and terminology so it’s essential for lawyers to understand fashion specific terms intimately. Fashion is also a business that incorporates a large number of people from the initial designer to pattern makers, manufacturers, textile developers, finishers and shippers each with their own vocabulary and systems. Most design is done overseas which also means understanding legal parameters in other countries, tariffs on imports and specific wording for customs. Beyond the legal needs of designers, is the fact that the majority of designers are not business people. Some are, like Tory Burch or the late Kate Spade or the eternal Ralph Lauren but that’s often because they came from business or marketing backgrounds first and then moved into fashion. There’s also the fact that while leading fashion universities are starting to offer entrepreneurial training to their fashion design programs, the majority still have not and as a result, the average fashion graduate doesn’t know how to create a business plan or how to market themselves, let alone, what legal contracts are needed or what strategies to use to build their business beyond posting images on Instagram. Considering the talent that’s out there, it’s a huge loss of opportunity for both consumers and graduates that so little fashion specific business support exists.

At the moment there are 19,000 small design companies in the US and that number is growing by 3.8% with an estimated value of 46 billion. There are also 67,000 accessory companies so there’s huge potential for growth and investment. Take these factors into account and it’s easy to see why there’s such a huge demand for an agency like Rogueline that provides designers with marketing, legal and business consulting from people who understand fashion inside and out. Strangely enough, there doesn’t seem to be another business out there that’s offering just this mix of support and services.

The beauty of fashion and the reason why so many companies are rushing to snap up designers is its capacity to add value and connection and that’s a key factor in the difference between marketing for a standard business and marketing for fashion. While you might need 7-10 points of contact for the average marketing campaign, you’ll need 15-20 in fashion. You have to create experiences and value connections and thats an important lesson for every type of brand because all companies make mistakes in the beginning. Through fashion marketing it’s become clear that if a brand has created a real connection with its customers then more often than not, consumers are likely to forgive and be patient.

What happens when designers don’t find the help they need? The majority end up spending thousands of dollars on websites that don’t provide the retail structure, CX, and marketing features to build their business, thousands more on marketing that promises to provide huge followings by people without insider knowledge, and even more on legal help that doesn’t help. Unfortunately, it’s a story you hear a lot in fashion because small business owners often have little experience in eCommerce, legal or marketing and often spend thousands on people who tell a good story but don’t deliver. One fashion brand Vishal encountered had spent 10,000 on a lawyer who simply didn’t get the business but was still very happy to charge a small fortune. Given the high cost of manufacturing when starting a design business, this is a lost expense designers can’t afford and is often the thing that leads to business failure.

No surprise then that the company is starting to get requests from all over the world, not just San Francisco.  The company plans to focus first on small design companies, then boutiques (there are 700 clothing boutiques in SF alone) and then accessories. While the company is open to investment and planning expansion, first and foremost, Vishal wants it to maintain its value offerings which means growing by word of mouth and developing the business one carefully vetted person at a time.

Perhaps one of the reasons why no one else seems to have thought to fill this niche market is because when people think about fashion, few people think about marketing, legal contracts, or business plans. They envision glamour and beautiful fabrics, textures, shapes and colors. As the immortal bard would say “therein lies the rub.” The eternal struggle of fashion design is the fact that it is both art and business. It is about making people feel good while also fulfilling needed functions, and bottom line, it’s about commerce. Rogueline’s platform is aimed at taking the onerous parts of business off designer’s shoulders and make it so they can make it so they can focus on being creative and doing what they love.  Good news for designers and one that will have most jumping up and down.