Small fashion brand founders on the impact of Brexit 2021 – Stylist Magazine

Fernandes Anjo has been considering recently what she can do to maintain her American base, but also claw back her European customers, and the solution, she believes, is in having wholesale retailers on each continent (her British wholesale partner is Selfridges). My long term plan is to keep the ethos of Roop here in the UK, but to have wholesalers in Europe and America, so that people can still buy from me and they dont lose any of the brand story, but its more readily available to them wherever they are, she says.

Due to increased courier costs, though, it now costs both Longe and Ciss, whose businesses are both direct-to-consumer, the same amount to send deliveries to America as it does to send to Europe, meaning both of them plan on moving their headquarters out of London in the foreseeable future.

For as long as I can, Im going to put off moving my headquarters, but eventually elements of it will have to move, Ciss says. Its kind of like starting my business all over again, because Ive lost all of the European customers that I worked so hard to get. Theres a lot of work to be done on gaining back my old customer base and re-introducing the brand to people.

Rush, though, who has worked in tandem with the government to advocate on behalf of the fashion industry, is clear on the progress thats been made. There is still a lot of work to be done, especially in an industry that is focused on achieving positive change, she states. Unfortunately, the challenges of Brexit didnt happen in a vacuum businesses have also had to deal with the additional impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, but what is important, now more than ever, is that our European and international friends remember that the UK is still open, despite Brexit.

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Small fashion brand founders on the impact of Brexit 2021 - Stylist Magazine