Collaborating Vs. Competition
I asked on Instagram what our next blog post should be about and someone said collaboration vs competition. I had them explain a little and they came up with these questions for me to answer.
- How do you decide whether to collaborate or compete
- What do you look for in a collab
- Do you think your specific market is competitive?
This question has honestly never really come to my attention because I never feel like I’m competing with other brands. I think I created Opinion because it has a meaning behind it that no other brand has. If we had the same mission and vision as another company, then I would see them as competition, but I have never come across that in my years of doing this. When it comes to other local brands, we are all in this together. I love to see other brands win and succeed. I know what they are putting into it and the hard work they do, and they deserve all the success in the world!
When I want to collaborate with another brand, I need to know the owner or the people who created the brand pretty well. A brand can have an amazing product, great mission, but the people that are head of the company are not good people, and that’s something that I just can’t get behind.
The clothing industry is arguably one of the most competitive industries. The reason being is that literally anyone can have the chance to start their own brand, they can start it incredibly cheap, and there are lots of local small print shops that you can use to start your clothing brand. On the other side, it’s incredibly hard to make a name for yourself with so many other people doing what you are trying to do. You need to go above and beyond with quality, content, and your brand overall, and that can take a very long time, it can be a daunting task, but if you’re in it for the right reasons, you’ll do anything for any amount of time to make your brand work.