“Before, we were a tiny fashion brand that did everything on its own. We also sometimes printed something ourselves on clothes in the office. And suddenly, an e-mail with a proposal for licensing cooperation from a world-renowned company that has very strict criteria when it comes to the selection of business partners – says Monika Szyndler.
The Szyndlers invited the brand’s clients to the Naoko.AI design team.
On the other hand, they had beginner’s luck when a decade ago, i.e. at the beginning of their adventure with design, they got a fan page supervisor on Facebook.
– This service was just entering Poland, and we were one of the test brands to which new tools were made available. We were told, for example, how to communicate with fans, at what times or what formats to use. This allowed us to significantly increase our reach and engage our community better,” he recalls.
Customers could share their ideas and preferences. The AI then processed this information.
However, when at the beginning of this year Monika fell off the climbing wall, which she climbed without protection, she was lucky in misfortune, because she broke her spine so “luckily” that after a few months she completely regained her fitness. However, while in the latter case you can actually talk about happiness, in matters related to business it is definitely a sign of modesty.
The Szyndlers met 12 years ago in Łódź, where they both come from. Monika had just graduated from high school and was going to Asia for a modeling contract. In turn, Jacek, 10 years her senior, a graduate of economic and financial studies, has already had a lot of business projects on his account. Earlier, e.g. He ran a restaurant, a cleaning company and a tourist office. He also organized conferences and trainings on EU projects. At the same time, he was doing a PhD in innovative marketing techniques, but he interrupted it when he decided to join Monika in Thailand.
Naoko Collection
They spent a year there, getting to know the fashion industry from the inside out: they worked with designers, clothing brands, photo shoots and shows. They were also fascinated by Asia itself, which they thoroughly explored, which culminated in a honeymoon in Japan. The etymology of their brand name is also Japanese, as “Naoko” is a popular female name in this country.
They returned to Poland out of necessity, bringing asymmetric T-shirts with original prints from a friend of theirs, which at that time were not so popular here.
– We showed them at Fashion Week in Łódź – they all sold out within a week. This made us think that since we have creativity and entrepreneurship in us, we can produce T-shirts ourselves here in Poland. So we took the first EU subsidy and bought a printing machine – says Jacek.
Creative approach to design and the ability to play with fashion they have already proved during the next Fashion Week in Łódź, where they showed up with sweatshirts with the inscription “Schleswig&Holstein”. In this way, they referred to a joke that a TVN journalist made to bloggers, asking them during the Warsaw Fashion Weekend about non-existent designers, including about Schleswig and Holstein. The Szyndlers’ idea caught on – the clothes were sold out, and the sentence “Life’s too short to wear boring clothes” became their motto, which they are faithful to this day.
This can be seen in the colorful and imaginative collections of Naoko, which may evoke associations with the Spanish Desigual. They also have in common with the latter that they use licensed brands. Currently, they have access to 18 licenses, such as: Harry Potter, Powerpuff Girls, FRIENDS and Jetsons. They approach their projects in an unconventional way, combining the images of these characters with their own ideas.
– On the coat with the Jetsons from the Hanna-Barbera cartoon from the 1960s, we put the inscription “The future is now” because the main character, George Jetson, was born in 2022. The vision of the future shown in this fairy tale – with home robots, children learning remotely and artificial intelligence – is happening now – says Jacek.
It’s hard to disagree with this, especially since the Szyndlers themselves reached for AI to design their latest collection, which premiered on June 19 this year. However, unlike the clothes of other brands prepared by AI, in Naoko the first violin was given to the clients and fans of the brand – the artificial intelligence only analyzed and put together thousands of data obtained in this way, which Monika Szyndler calls brainstorming with clients and AI.
“Fashion has always been a reflection of the times we live in, the fruit of a mix of culture, human creativity and economic conditions. Today, along with technological progress, changing consumer behavior and a growing emphasis on sustainable development, the fashion industry is preparing for a radical change – claims Marta Fryzowska, Vice President of VRG, responsible for the fashion segment. In her opinion, the future of fashion is the simultaneous development in both worlds, the real one and the one created with the use of artificial intelligence.
– The Naoko.AI project uses the ideas of crowdsourcing. It is the customers who will decide on all models and cuts, but thanks to the use of AI in the process of designing and creating the collection, the final launch of the product will take place much faster. The use of artificial intelligence also means cost reduction and better inventory management, resulting from a more accurate understanding of customer needs, and as a result, avoiding excessive production and storage of products – explains Jacek Szyndler.
Although it is AI that proposes the shape of the collection by creating product visualizations, the last word belongs to the designers of the Naoko team, who will give the collection its final touch. Photo: Filip Miller / Press materials
This approach, i.e. putting the customer first and supporting each other in communication with the latest technologies has been close to the creators of Naoko from the beginning, i.e. since almost a decade ago, during cooperation with bloggers (including Paulina Jagodzińska, Charlize Mystery and Ola Kwaśniewska), they felt the power of the online community.
– I remember how we worked with Jessica Mercedes, and then for a week we sat at Praga and made exactly the same T-shirts that she showed, because there were so many orders from her followers – recalls Monika.
They draw on this valuable lesson and the power of social media to this day, thanks to which they regularly reach the top of the rankings of fashion brands that engage their community the most. In last year’s ranking of communication in social media “Fashion_pl”, prepared by the Blue Lis agency, they took second place, right after Ewa Minge and ahead of Patrizia Aryton.
At the same time, their effective social communication translates not only into the number of followers and views (Naoko has almost a quarter of a million fans on Facebook, hundreds of thousands of reels on Instagram or 50 million monthly views on Pinterest), but also into revenues, which in 2022 exceeded PLN 50 million (a jump of 60% y/y) with a profitability of between 10 and 20%.
Today, the creators of Naoko manage a team of 50 people, producing clothes almost entirely in Poland, and their boutiques can be found in large shopping centers in Warsaw and Poznań. They also strongly focus on the development of their e-commerce platform, and at the beginning of 2023 they established cooperation with the Zalando marketplace. They also have plans for more collections in cooperation with the community and AI. Such a strategy is to enable them to break the threshold of PLN 100 million in revenues in the next few years.
Market trends are conducive to this, because according to the analysis published in March by the consulting company McKinsey, in the period of three to five years, generative AI can increase the operating profits of the fashion and luxury products industry by USD 150-275 billion.
2023-06-25 20:29:30
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