KooClo
An online tee-shirt company for skaters and surfers, built end to end and then closed on purpose. The most useful thing on this page is why it stopped.
Objective
The tee-shirt market is saturated at the bottom and defended at the top, and almost all of the middle is slogans. In his own words, the aim was to offer creative and abstract designs that were different from satirical and slogan based tee shirts predominantly in the market, aimed at a skater and surfer audience.
That is a design position. The commercial question underneath it is whether a design position is enough to move product to strangers on the internet.
Creative response
Founder. Brand, garment design, supply chain, website, social and paid promotion.
- The brand and the garment designs, abstract rather than slogan-led
- A supply chain, set up from scratch
- A marketing funnel, running on the website and regular social activity
- Paid promotion, tested across different variables
Why it closed, in his words
That is the whole discipline in three sentences. The funnel was built, the variables were tested, the unit economics did not clear, and the answer was accepted rather than argued with for another year.
Knowing when a thing does not work is a harder skill than launching it, and a rarer one to find written down by the person who launched it.
- The brand and the garment designs, abstract rather than slogan-led
- A supply chain, set up from scratch
- A marketing funnel, running on the website and regular social activity
- Paid promotion, tested across different variables
Why it closed, in his words
The venture lasted nine months and the sales funnel consisted of regular activity on social media and the website. After testing different variables it soon became clear that the investment needed to promote the account exceeded the value of the product and so the venture was gently laid to rest.
The work
