Introduce your business and tell us your story: How did you decide on what to sell, and how did you source your products?
The People Vs. dream was born from a desire to make high quality, vintaged-inspired, fashion fundamentals for the people. With a collective passion for art, music, surf and the streets, our journey began with a small boutique space in the alleys of Bali. In those early years we spent countless hours trawling flea markets for silhouettes and experimenting with washing, dying and innovative printing techniques to establish what would be come our signature detailing and hand-feel. Three years on, come Sydney via New York City and in-between, our new Shopify website / online store has allowed us to expand our global family giving us the perfect opportunity to present a premium brand experience alongside our product positioning. Our goal this next 12 months is to give a voice to the anti-establishment by creating unisex grunge garments for the moment.
Embodying the laid back personality of our founders, we blend contemporary street wear with retro surf-punk styling and rock nostalgia. Through a process called ‘boutique laundering’ each garment is individually created by our factories with rips, holes & abrasions for our signature look. We wanted every garment to be extremely comfortable to wear and it’s our unique garment construction sets us apart from the rest. For that super soft hand feel we use lightweight premium cotton-jersey. Our signature features include pigment dye and sandblast washes, our back hem-rip detailing on tops, 3-pleat stripe on the back pocket of our shorts and branded paper-tags that wash in over time.
How did you earn your first sales? Which channels are now generating the most traffic and sales for you?
Our goal is to put as much value-for-money in every garment we produce. Since starting online we have moved to sharper price-point with our signature categories like muscle tanks starting at just $49.95, tees at $59.95, shirting from $69.95, boardies $79.95 and our denim gussett shorts at $99.95. Through a consistency of building a premium brand identity, our social media channels certainly bring the most amount of traffic heat to our online store. From Facebook to Pintrest, Tumblr and the Shop Our Instagram function we see the best results.
Tell us about the back-end of your business. What tools and apps do you use to run your store? How do you handle shipping and fulfillment?
We are currently running the Foursixty shoppable Instagram gallery which sees great traffic and easily customized to sit on our page - both homepage and individually. We like the idea of not everything being purely sales driven but also brand building too. We do this internally & use the Shopify weekly hints to improve the customer experience.
What are your top recommendations for new store owners?
Think about your whole package and the user experience from start to finish. We know our package is not perfect but strive to create something incredible over the next 12 months but constantly updating our theme and site.