Building a community by aligning values—with Ulrika Luksevica, Son of a Tailor
Building a community by aligning values—with Ulrika Luksevica, Son of a Tailor
Ulrika is the social media and content manager at Son of a Tailor, a made-to-order clothing brand based in Copenhagen.
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A few weeks ago, we had the opportunity to do an email interview with Ulrika Luksevica, the social media and content manager at Son of a Tailor, a made-to-order clothing brand based in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Ulrika deals with all social media related content strategies as well as influencer marketing and community upkeep at Son of a Tailor.
Son of a Tailor has a unique challenge—being a made to order brand with T-shirts costing over €70, it’s not easy to build community around something that you can’t immediately buy and have within 2 days.
Their customer base definitely comes into a niche category of people willing to pay a premium for something they stand for, and their community reflects that.
Let’s have a look into how they build and maintain their community at Son of a Tailor.
What does community mean for you at Son of a Tailor?
Community for Son of a Tailor is very important, since all of our garments are made-to-order and custom fit to each of our customers’ individual sizes. The whole process is truly personalised.
As we are passionate about changing the fashion industry for the better, it is crucial for us to engage with people interested in this movement, thought-leaders of the industry and anyone who’s willing to learn!
This makes so much sense—particularly for the kinds of brands that have a strong stand on something that sets them apart. It’s the brand’s community that is going to be able to allow them to justify their higher price points.
How did you grow your Instagram community from when you started?
Our main goal has always been to educate and listen, when it comes to our community.
Hearing out our community and giving them the space to share their ideas and thoughts has been something we’ve honed in on.
That being said, we also try to provide a lot of useful and relevant knowledge on matters we’re working with, giving our community that extra ‘’fuel’’ to further their research and engage in these conversations.
Their community is built around two things: education and discussion.
Looking at their Instagram account, it’s a combination of posts educating their customers about the materials they use, their manufacturing processes, as well as their supply chain.
They also re-share content that customers have sent them that reflects their values, like photos of garment tags with information about who made the garment and whom it was made for.
Looking at the comment section, we see engaged comments with relevant questions as well as thoughtful compliments—a great sign of an engaged community.
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Do you do brand collaborations with influencers/ambassadors?
Yes, we do! But very rarely—we are truly selective on our partnerships.
Mostly, we look for creators and brands that match our core values of re-engineering fashion’s supply chain to deliver better for customers, workers, and the planet.
How do you define a successful collaboration?
A successful collaboration, of course, can and is often translated through the amount of engagement from the respective communities.
That being said, we often look for engagement that is beyond ‘clicks’.
If a collaboration has brought a spotlight onto issues in the fashion industry or simply started a conversation on how could things be done better, it’s a win in our book.
This goes to show that indeed there are and can be multiple different objectives for a brand collaboration. Some collaborations are purely for the engagement, others are for reach, some are even just to get good quality content to reuse for ads.
For Son of a Tailor, one of their key goals is to get conversations started about topics that they care deeply about.
Are you doing long term or short term collaborations usually?
We like to nurture our relationships with our collaborators most of the time, as we believe content creators to be a part of our community.
But we also don’t shy away from shorter term collaborations here and there—as long as it works with our core values.
“We believe content creators to be a part of our community”—I couldn’t agree more.
When you develop great relationships with content creators and include them as part of your community, you set yourself up for getting regular, high quality, authentic and relatable content from people that resonate with your brand, at a much lower cost.
How do you find creators/influencers that match your values?
We do a lot of research, simply speaking.
It is important for us to establish relationships rather than just sending product out and hope for the best.
We want to make sure that each content creator we work with is satisfied with the product first and foremost (aside from, obviously, being aligned with our values, I’ve mentioned a few times before).
It’s so important to establish genuine relationships with your community—otherwise, people are either not going to post about you, or worse, post something that is very inauthentic and goes against your values.
What specific challenges do you face as a made-to-order brand on social media?
We face a lot of disbelief on our prices and production.
That being said, it’s up to us to educate people on why is it important to know why does a T-Shirt cost more than €5, why should you know who made your clothes and what conditions they’re working in, and where do your clothes actually come from.
Wrapping Up
Thanks a lot Ulrika for sharing your insights with us, and thanks a lot to you guys for reading!
What did you think? How are you sharing and aligning your values with your customers? Hit “reply” and let me know!
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Such a good read and Ulrika sounds very educated on brands core values and identity!