New year reflection and advice on starting something from scratch

Happy new year to you all! Welcome to the first post of 2015!

It seemed a little odd to us for a brand to do one of those ‘looking back on the year’ posts, however we know we have come a long way this year and wanted to dedicate a post to the end of 2014.

In terms of growth and development, Vivien Kondor have reached new highs this year – we finally launched our 42 nail polish collection and our gift sets. Two new social media sites were launched, as well as this here blog. We were blogged about, tweeted about, we went to exhibitions… we could go on and on.

So how do we feel about being a new brand in the cosmetics industry? What have we learned from our experiences this year?

Photographs featured above from: Elanor's Nails, The Naily Mail, Fashion Glammy (pictures used from Instagram), _miriilein, Nail Lacquer UK

The cosmetics industry is a huge and incredibly competitive one. It seems that people tend to find brands that they like, brands that they trust, and stick with them. Understandably too, cosmetics is in no way just about ‘looking pretty’. Cosmetics is about self-confidence. It can even become a way to represent your personality and your taste. It’s natural to think that when we find a brand we like and are comfortable with, we should stick with it.

 This makes breaking through extremely difficult for a new brand. Sometimes it can feel a little bit like a game of ‘who can shout the loudest’, with so many different brands fighting to be heard. We feel, here at Vivien Kondor, that there are three crucial steps to establishing and developing a new brand:

Step One – produce a product that excites you. If you don’t believe in your product, how do you expect anybody else too? Try and try again – it probably won’t work out the first time, or the second time or maybe not even the third – don’t stop until you know you've got it right, your enthusiasm and dedication will come across later in the development process – and will only ever work in your favour.

Step Two – spread the word. Get people talking, get people interested. Send out samples and allow people to use your products and decide for themselves. Don’t tell people directly how to feel about your brand, allow them to come to a conclusion themselves.

Step Three – grow as a brand. Hopefully, if you have performed the first two steps successfully, this should come quite easily. People will see a confident brand that believes in their products and are clear about what they stand for, and they will see others talking about you, using your products and posting on social media – they will be intrigued, they’ll want to see what all the fuss is about for themselves.

This is in no way restricted to the development of a brand, if there is anything you are trying to succeed in you can take these steps into account. Vivien Kondor have been approached by a huge number of bloggers who are just starting out – we are sure you could apply these steps in a certain way to the development of a blog.

Apologies if you came to the blog to read about our products or find some nailspiration – any other day you’d have come to the right place! However, people have shown us a huge amount of kindness in the last few months as we launch our brand, particularly bloggers (who, by the way, inspired us to begin this blog).

It is the beginning of a new year, and although 2014 was a great one for Vivien Kondor, we are leaving it behind and moving forward as a brand – but we couldn’t leave without saying thank-you.

Anybody attempting to build something from scratch, stick it out and remember Rome wasn't built in a day – good things take time. Anybody who helped us out in 2014, blogged about us, retweeted us, posted about our products, or of course brought some of our collection – we cannot thank-you enough.

Here’s to 2015! Let’s hope it’s a good year for all of us.

Love,

The Vivien Kondor London Team