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Comment by jkahn | Hacker News Reader

I know nothing about fashion so take this with a grain of salt.

Your products are definitely on the very high end of price when it comes to clothing. Do people buy expensive clothes from a brand they've never heard of online? Maybe you're better suited to a bricks and mortar store so people can touch and feel the product, without the heft of a well known brand behind you. If not a store, then supplying other stores.

The discounting strikes me with cognitive dissonance. You're trying to sell a premium product - why would you discount? Personally I'd never buy clothes that were this expensive outside of a premium suit. I am a purchaser of other premium products, though. Look at what the brands you want to imitate do. Do they discount? Do they do run out sales? Better to just change your price if you didn't pick the right one. If someone's looking for a discount, they're probably after a $20 sweater, not s $500 one.

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Bricks and mortar store is something we are considering. To be fair, we don't have enough money to actually setup a "proper" store BUT in London it is possible to open pop up stores, which you can rent for a few days or a few weeks. We are probably going to do that as I'm 100% convinced that our products are actually the best marketing we have.

Beside that, the "discount" topic is a hot one. We are still in the process of testing our assumptions. So far, all we know is that if we sell full-price imitating the "big brands" in our segment, we get 0 attention. As you mentioned, people are after brands and we are still unknown.

Now we are trying to see if there is a segment of people who care about quality and is ready to pay a bit of money to get higher quality but still would never pay 250$ for a scarf from the big brands as they realise that it's all about the empty brand with little quality behind.

Thanks a lot for the feedback, it's really important to have the chance to speak with someone about this stuff (other than my wife, of course).

I'm the farthest thing from an expert here, but why do you need your own pop-up store? Could you also try getting an existing brick and mortar store to carry part of your product line? That might result in a few sales and give you some insight into buyers, both at the retail and the individual level.

If you have good products, try some of the trade shows first: http://www.modemonline.com/fashion/mini-web-sites/tradeshows

Thousands of wholesale buyers will be able to see your products here. You will find out quickly enough if your products are good or not, based on the actual quality of your product.

You'll also meet industry people that can help you with advice or offer to sell you your products. Learn from the fashion experts there.

Professional marketeer here. I came to say something close to this comment. There's a bunch of good advice in these threads but the fundamental point is here. You're trying to sell upper end products without any brand strength to justify this. Until you can establish some kind of premium knowledge/experience with the brand, sales are not going to happen.

This will take some seriously good marketing or luck to make successful. It can be done but it's not a natural/easy win.

My thoughts exactly.

A mistake many people make is trying to go premium without having built the brand first. As a customer, I am not convinced why I should pay more when I don't see the value.

You may want to spend some time working researching directly to understand why someone would/would not want to buy your product. If you can find a way to interview those people who've visited your website and then left, you'll get some insights.

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