1 Granary Summer School: Not every order is a good order

By Jorinde Croese

Welcome to the third edition of our four-part Summer School series. Released every Tuesday in August, each piece takes the form of a conversation between 1 Granary and Copenhagen-based designer Cecilie Bahnsen. Our aim is to provide a mini mentorship: unvarnished, hard-won lessons drawn from a decade of trial and error. It’s what you aren’t taught but must learn about building and sustaining a brand.

What does a 27-account jump mean if you can’t finance it? Part three tackles the mechanics behind the magic: pre-collections and sell-through, invoice factoring, orders worth refusing, and what happens when one retailer becomes 30% of your business. Plus the phone call from a lawyer that saved her name. “Even though you’re super excited to have this incredible partner,” Bahnsen says of that retailer, “it’s also risky to have so many eggs in one basket.”

Jorinde Croese: Let’s talk about market realities. When did you decide to start doing pre-collections?

Cecilie Bahnsen: We did the first pre-fall collection in 2019. That was very much because we started seeing that the stores had 60% of their budget in pre and 40% in their main collection. Your pre-collection is on the shop floor for a longer period, and therefore it has a better sell-through, and people come back to you more. It’s also a really good way to start the conversations earlier in the season. It was a lot to take on, but it was an add-on that made sense.

I think you should stay open-minded about the different ways of doing it, including considering whether you should sell your collection during the pre-market and actually choose that to be your main moment. It’s where the stores have the most budget. When we started doing pre-collections, even though it was a big pressure to suddenly do it, it also allowed a whole different kind of cash flow for the brand, and it allowed a constant communication with the wholesalers. For me, they’re two different tools. You have your pre-collection, where you have many stories and you’re designing different kinds of categories that do different things, and then you have the show, which is this one perfect note, this creative explosion that then feeds into everything else. Two different ways of working, and creatively you challenge yourself to design the collection.

You mentioned sell-through. Have you found ways to really help with that from your end? I’m sure there’s a lot of learning over 10 years about how to influence that percentage.

Of course, the earlier you deliver, the better chance you have of a good sell-through. And then I think staff trainings are important. In the beginning it might be you or your agent who does them, but actually being out there, telling people about the collection, how it’s made and how it should be worn. It also teaches you a lot. People might see your brand completely differently to how you see it, or they’ve hung it in a way where you think: if I hang here instead of there, that would make more sense. That educational element, being out there with your product and describing what it’s about, is something we have seen help sell-through a lot. You can also do it online if you can’t travel. We’ve done that a few times, doing online trainings, and at least making sure that people can ask you questions if there are questions about the collection. That helps a lot, for us at least.

What about delivering to stores?

We have always worked with in-house logistics instead of outsourcing it, which has worked. You know where things are, but you also have the possibility of splitting shipments. If one piece is delayed, it’s not all waiting for that one piece; you can ship 90% of it. Those are nice options to have. You see it especially with some of the bigger accounts: it takes them five weeks to get the pieces online. So, one thing is that you ship and think, oh, I’m super early, but by the time they have it up online, it’s a bit longer. Some of that has helped us manage it.

Have you ever decided, at some point throughout these 10 years, not to accept an order? I hear of brands where an order looks good on paper but is actually going to break the brand, because of cash flow or other issues.

We have said no sometimes, or we’ve said that it should be smaller, to make sure that you have the best possible sell-through. Maybe it’s a style that you really love and want to continue for a while, so you want to make sure it doesn’t end up on sale because you oversold it. There’s an analytic side to it. Or it’s something where you think: if I say yes to this size, can I then deliver on time? Because if you can’t, then you sit with it eventually. Those kinds of conversations with the team, about whether you take something on or not, have been very important to make sure you do it right. And sometimes with capsule collections, it’s about making sure you’re designing them for the right reasons.