Reflective Journal entry SPARK week
Daniel Gosling is a fashion designer and business owner.
He is the third owner of the Stolen Girlfriends Club, part owner of The Department Store, Owner of Black Box Boutique and owner of Stem Distribution.
Daniel started with snowboarding and skating type clothing and now does high fashion so his clothing ranges from high-end to low end but ‘not so mainstream’.
The reason Daniel teamed up with two of his best mates to start up the stolen girlfriends club was because they wanted to make stuff that they loved, that other brands couldn’t give them and they wanted to sell things that they would actually wear.
The Stolen Girlfriends Club started with sections including men’s, women’s, and jewellery but has now recently added the sections accessories and footwear as well.
As the owners are three males they decided that the brand for the men’s range should be more ‘manly’ and toughened it up by rebranding to ‘Stolen’.
Daniel thinks that some of the most important things in running a business are networking, learning from mistakes and having a good, catchy and unforgettable brand name.
In relation to the Black Box Boutique Daniel was walking through Auckland and fell in love with the shop and that is where it began.
Black Box Boutique sells mostly imported mid to high end boutique fashion.
The Department Store is located in Takapuna, North Shore Auckland and Daniel started this business within six months of coming up with the idea.
The Department store is different to Daniel’s other three stores as it is the first of its kind in New Zealand and not only has many clothing stores but also has cafes, beauty therapy, hairdressers etc.
Daniel describes The Department Store as ‘experiential’ as you can walk in and not feel obliged to buy something, you can just walk in and have a coffee.
The Department store has 40% menswear which makes a change from most stores which have much less menswear.
The Department Store also does a newspaper in which they make their own content and try to include their brand personality and voice then leave in store for customers to read and deliver locally.
The most recent of the business that Daniel owns is the White Box Boutique which is similar to the Black Box but online as he knows as well as the rest of us that the shopping industry is moving rapidly towards online.
Daniel says that ‘brand is a valuable asset’ and the Stolen Girlfriends Club brand had begun before they actually had anything to sell.
The brand Black Box started because the store looked like a black box and he wanted it to look kind of like a sun eclipse, but black.
Daniel uses the Black Box logo on the re-usable bags at his stores and on USBs that they sell in store and are even looking at making Black Box jandals for summer.
The Department Store is quite a generic name although within it are some great well-known brands and because it is so big there is something for everyone.
Daniel is in charge of deciding what goes in The Department Store and says that he is very selective of what goes in and is very protective of the image.
One marketing campaign that The Stolen Girlfriends Club has done that I thought was really clever was a new idea that the three owners came up with.
They teamed up with Red Bull and held a runway show with their clothing range, through the New World supermarket in Auckland.
It was filmed and put onto YouTube where they received 61,873 hits therefore spreading their name worldwide with something different and showing their own brand personality and voice.
Daniel ended with a comment that I thought was quite valuable and that was that you should always value your staff as they are an extension of your brand.
