Building A Brand

By June Ramli

It has been more than a month since I last updated my column on my efforts to build an Australian brand from scratch and sadly there hasn’t been much movement since the last update on Sept 27.
The product is still stuck on the labelling stage as I haven’t been able to get that part quite right.
My mistake was that I chose to do the labels on my own rather than seek professional help due to costing.
Instead, I got a freelancer whom I have never met before to design labels for me.
The experience has been rather educational and I would not recommend this move to any first-time skincare brand owners.
Why? This is because commissioning a freelancer with no background knowledge on how to design a skincare label will make you lose precious time on the correct way to design the labels of a skincare product.
I simply had to do a lot of back and forth in just getting the labels correctly done and I believe that all this would have not happened had I engaged a professional designer from early on.
The manufacturer was nice enough to tell me what was lacking but correcting it took time as the freelancer that was working with me was based abroad and with the time difference and all it took me days to sometimes get a simple issue to be solved.
Mind you, I am not a green bean entrepreneur.
I have experience in creating a brand from scratch and that is my ever so famous Batik Lingerie under the brand name “June Saira Lingerie.”

But the labels from the lingerie line were much easier to do in comparison to the skincare and hair care products.

For these labels there is a copywriting involved as you will need to get someone to type out the “how to use” the brand section that must be placed on the labels itself.
Once again, I would like to reiterate that getting an experienced designer would help you get things right from the start.
Right now because I used a freelancer who does great design work but little experience in designing a skincare label and as such there was a lot of back and forth in figuring out the right way the labels should be.
I have also spoken to manufacturers and they said the current labels that I have sent to them are ideal for the first batch of production.
They have advised me to tweak the design as time goes by.
I have also changed account managers since I last wrote this column as I wanted a more trusting and experienced personnel to service me and my brand to greater heights.
That shift has caused some delays as well.
I am not sure if I will be able to get the products out before the end of the year but I am hoping that it will come out before 2021 concludes.
My next challenge is now getting the word out and figuring out where to sell the brand.
I would like to put my products at the supermarkets such as Coles, Woolworths and even swanky stores like Sephora but at the moment, I have no clue on how to get this done.
So, I guess, this would be my next challenge, figuring out how to get this done.

June Ramli

June Ramli is the editor of DailyStraits.com. To stay in touch with June, look her up on Twitter @junesairaramli