In our discussion group of Portuguese clothing brands on Facebook more than once, some voices have been raised about "made in Portugal" and the fact that the Jon Olsson (a famous skier and Youtuber™ and millionaire) launched a clothing brand made entirely in Portugal when we - the typical Portuguese - don't.
Naturally, at Maudlin Merchandise we are 100% in favour of national production and we don't take 1% of the credit away from this skier and Youtuber, but we believe that we can't lump everyone together and criticise them. Portuguese for not having the capacity to invest €150,000 in a factory production from scratch is unfair, to say the least.
One of our niches is working with clothing brands and we can assure you that the average (or maximum) order doesn't reach those figures, nor is it even in the neighbourhood.
Take a zero off Jon's investment and you have a (very) wealthy entrepreneur who wants to launch a major clothing brand in Portugal.
Take away another zero and we lose access to factories altogether, and even then we're still talking about only a small number of people who will be able to support orders worth thousands of euros (in our experience).
The truth is that Jon is part of the one per cent who can invest more than 100,000 euros in a clothing brand and go directly to a garment manufacturer.
Although there are already several garment manufacturers in Portugal that work with the "little guy", the difference in costs compared to the promotional textiles we sell is very considerable and leaves too many entrepreneurs stuck in the water who tell us "maybe one day I'll be able to work with a garment manufacturer, but...".
Let's be clear, the Portuguese are not unwilling to work with clothes made in Portugal. What is lacking is capital, the confidence to invest and the ability to reach your target audience quickly and easily.
We all know that in Portugal we make fantastic clothes and that we have some of the best clothing manufacturers in the world. But we also know that they all need to be aimed at a wealthy market in order to survive. All those that were struggling on price closed down before or during the crisis. They weren't sustainable.
Another difference that Jon has compared to the "ordinary mortal" is a YouTube channel that allows him to reach a target audience that is equivalent to more than 10 per cent of the Portuguese population. We're talking about the opportunity to get free exposure to ~10% of the population of the country in which we live. That's what allowed him to sell EVERYTHING he had invested in just a few minutes.
Most of the brands we work with need weeks, if not months, to sell a tiny part of the stock he surely had because they lacked the exposure he - to his credit - achieved.
These are just two small - but important - differences that make all the difference:
- Investment capacity
- Possibility of disposing of stock
And the truth is that these are two of the main factors that make a brand successful.
Another very interesting point is that we don't know if the brand really sold out as quickly as he mentioned. We choose to believe what he says, but who's to say that he's not using a strategy so often employed by brands like Supreme (or Apple), choosing to create urgency in their buyers by saying that supply is low and demand is high? It's another detail that good entrepreneurs use to increase the hype around their brands and thus increase the cost of their products, because they become a rarity and a collectible.
