How to Tell Your Fashion Business Story: 3 Simple Ways to Improve Your Marketing

Business storytelling plays a significant role in shaping a fashion brand’s identity and communicating it to customers. Not only customers but investors as well, as they need to be inspired by you and your product or service. 

The founder of Story Magic, Jessica Mastors, joined us for a Mingle Mastermind session to share the 3 different types of stories and the different situations where you should use them when telling your fashion business story. 

Included in this session were Fashion Mingle members Dee Rivera, Cat Schuller, Shirin Movahed, Dale Noelle, Randi Seiff, Kim Moh, and founder Melissa Shea.

What Is Storytelling in Fashion?

Storytelling is an important part of communicating your brand, everything from the main idea to its inception, products, and services. With that said, it is essential to know how to express your ideas in a concise and easy-to-understand manner. 

Types of Fashion Storytelling

For an entrepreneur growing a fashion business, you should know what type of storytelling to use depending on the situation. 

Inception Story 

The inception story describes your personal story of building your fashion business, how the idea came to you, and how you decided to implement that idea. It describes everything from the first idea to going live with your business.

Jessica says, “It’s a turning point, whether you learn something, you discover something, you see something in a new way, you see an opportunity, you make a discovery, that’s an inception story. It’s very valuable for a founder when they’re pitching, for example, because investors want to know why they would invest in you, why you are the right person to do this, and what’s going to motivate you to keep going when it gets tough.” 

Key Points That Are Must-Haves for a Good Inception Story:

• How the fashion business idea came to you.
• What made it seem important to you.
• How your expertise makes you the right person to go into this part of the fashion world.
• What steps did you take to implement your business?
• After all the hurdles, how you actually started operating your fashion business?

Impact Story

After you have started your fashion business, how is your service or product helping your target audience? That is the impact story! Your goal is to describe the impact you made before and after you launched your fashion business. 

For example, share stories of a past customer and how your product or services helped them. 

If you are a fashion business startup, you can tweak your style of storytelling and state the expected changes your customers would achieve from your service or brand.

Jessica says that impact stories are not about what happened in the past. We use what happened in the past as a proxy for what could happen in the future. The story is really about what happens NEXT.

Key Points That Are Must-Haves for a Good Impact Story:

• Feedback from previous customers so that you can share your brand’s influence on their lives.
• The conditions before and after you started your fashion business.
• The direct impact of your business on the fashion world.

Value Story

In simple words, a value story shows how decisions are made based on certain principles. 

According to Jessica, the value story has a lot of room for creativity in how you tell your stories on the different social media platforms or through opportunities you may come across.  

There are so many places in a business where people get tested. Will you take the easy way or the hard way? Will you prioritize integrity or will you prioritize the cheap way? How do you resolve tough decisions? What principles or values are you consulting?

The thought process that goes in these areas where your business may be challenged shows your true intentions and values regarding your fashion business. 

Jessica says, “Stories about when we make those decisions and how those manifest to us can speak volumes about how committed we are to those values. It’s one thing to say that I’m really honest and I have my values up on the wall of my Startup as opposed to actually telling a story that gives us a vicarious experience of how that value was put to the test and upheld.”

It’s important that your stories are authentic, says Dee Rivera, founder, and CEO of DCG Media Group. Dee emphasized how brands need to think outside the box to have a bigger impact and to tell an authentic story, as people easily differentiate between authentic efforts and a copycat. 

Key Points That Are Must-Haves for a Good Value Story:

• How do you make decisions in your fashion brand?
• What principle do you follow?
• Tell a story that shares your personal experiences so that it has credibility. 

How Should You Tell Your Fashion Business Story to Improve Your Marketing?

The word ‘storytelling’ is often confused with other words with different meanings. Some think it is a history or a ‘why’ statement. In reality, it is a way to turn information into meaning.

Know the End of the Story

This keeps you on track and gives your story meaning and value. Branding and product development expert Randi Seiff says to stay on point and deliver the true meaning in your words rather than covering everything all at once.

Focus on Yourself

Investors want to know who you are as a person so focus on yourself in your fashion business storytelling. 

Keep It Short

Stay on point during your storytelling. It is best to be selective of what you are communicating to the listeners. We do not want to abuse our audience’s time and attention.

Why Is Curiosity Important for Storytelling?

Storytelling is a co-creative act. It should be two-way even if you are the one telling the story. It should be a conversation with your audience’s imagination and make them feel the experience.

You have to know who you’re talking to, what they care about, what they’re thinking about, and which parts of your story are going to resonate with them and be relevant for them.

If we keep talking nonstop and say all the details altogether, the listener does not get the opportunity to ask questions about specific areas. 

Curiosity is the essence of good storytelling, to bring that curiosity to your clients and also have them be curious about you.

Curiosity keeps your listeners attentive and urges you to their undivided attention to your story. People get bored easily so you should have an A game when telling your fashion brand stories.

You want your listeners to ask follow-up questions and pinpoint certain elements of your story to further understand you and your fashion business. 

Catherine Schuller, founder of Runway the Real Way and an advocate for inclusivity and sustainability in the fashion world, says that the core of good storytelling when selling your product or service is to make your potential clients curious in an effort to capture their interest.

Jessica’s Fashion Business Story Exercise

Jessica asked Houston fashion stylist Kim Moh to share an Impact Story for her business in the live Mastermind exercise. Kim recalls one of the customers she worked with through her wardrobe styling business MohStylz.

Kim explains how she helped the client learn how to best dress her new body after losing weight. She taught her to choose suitable clothing that would emphasize her new figure for personal and professional situations.

As a result, the client learned that she could take Kim’s information and style herself confidently. The satisfaction of seeing that growth inspires Kim to continue her work. 

This experience echoes Jessica’s advice to stop investing in the product and start investing in the person. 

Jessica further states that it was not hard at all for Kim to think of a specific person. These ideas showed up for her and her journey of transformation. That is the biggest challenge of storytelling in fashion.

That one client or that example can serve as a very powerful metaphor for the transformation that you’re offering people through your business.

Jessica says, “We get to revel and enjoy her success in a way that is not self-promoting, not self-conscious. It’s not about us, it’s about the impact that we had on this person and to say that she had this experience and that’s why I do what I do. It frees us from that pressure which is one of the magical aspects of a story.”

Are You Ready to Write Your Inception, Impact, and Value Story?

As an entrepreneur, you need to make a connection with clients, customers, and investors. You want them to feel the impact of your story and commit it to memory. If you can understand the power of words and be selective of what to share at what moment, you can become an effective fashion business storyteller.

If you need help crafting your stories, Jessica offers 1-1 coaching, webinars, and seminars. Get started by downloading her 5-Day Kick Start Course. To stay up to date on the latest tips and tricks for perfecting your fashion business marketing skills, sign up for a free Fashion Mingle profile.