The State of Fashion report by McKinsey & Company for 2025 paints a pretty clear picture of the challenges and opportunities ahead for small, independent and artisanal designers like you. 

With so much uncertainty I thought it’d be helpful to break down the key takeaways and how they might impact your work moving into 2025.

A Shift in Consumer Behaviour
First off, the market is still pretty tough. Consumers are still feeling the pinch and are more price-conscious than ever but this shift is NOT just about discount shopping—there’s more demand for value, which includes embracing things like resale, off-price, and, believe it or not, even dupes!!

As an independent designer, this could mean reconsidering your pricing strategy but much more importantly, and what I tell the designers in Fashion Entrepreneurs Academy, it’s about how you communicate the value of your work.

Regional Shifts

Most fashion designers, when pricing their garments and products, will follow a percentage mark-up method which should ideally leave them with a workable profit margin.

However it’s never that simple because some customers don’t care what your make price is,  the pricing method used or even how much profit you made.  They just want the BEST!   ….  

Some want the cheapest but some customers want the BEST;   the most durable; lowest cost per wear; the most timeless or some want the best fit.

Of course it’s understandable that you use the percentage mark up method because it’s what you’ve been taught to do and it is the simplest way to approach pricing…..

But I don’t need to tell you that when your garments are priced like this you STILL get people telling you the price is too high! … and thousands of designers all over the planet use this method and STILL can’t sell enough to make a profit.

The popcorn you buy at the movies has a mark-up of around 1,000%.     You happ...

The biggest mistake I see most fashion designers making is thinking they can build a successful fashion business without learning some contemporary business skills or a launch formula and this is the worst assumption they could make.

But it’s not actually the designers fault.  Traditional fashion education wrongly lead them to believe that conceptual artistic skills is all you need to be a famous fashion designer!   So its understandable that’s what all designers think.

And if it was possible then all designers who launched a business without business skills would be a raving success and we all know that’s not the case.   Many graduate designers who thought the didn’t need any business skills are left penniless with a failing business after just a year or two.

In fact if you continue to think you don’t need any contemporary business skills you will just be investing in an expensive hobby with no strategy for growth and how many years can you keep doing that? 

So how can...