Gift Focus inc Attire Accessories - July/August 2020

120 SMAAK AMSTERDAM www.smaakamsterdam.com @smaakamsterdam course, it is an international business with stockists throughout Europe and the UK. Do you engage in social media and how does it help your business? Social media is vital to any business in 2020. We love the way we can talk to our customers directly. They feedback on what they think and they let us know what they like and don’t like! We bear this in mind when designing new collections – it is a vital part of our marketing activity. How has the product changed since you started and how would you describe your current collection? The design process has developed quite a bit since we first started. We can tell from our best-selling lines what details our customers like most snd we make sure that these feature strongly in our new collections. Our current collection is very typical Smaak: feminine, modern and chic with a twist. We’ve introduced several new models such as Bowie, Victoire and Robine and this season we have included some beautiful pastels such as light pink, mint and yellow. How often do you launch new lines? We introduce new models every season but we make sure that our most popular shapes and classic colours feature in all the collections. It’s important to keep our customers engaged in the brand – there’s nothing worse than being bored! What trade shows do you attend and why? Smaak attends Berlin Premium because it attracts huge numbers of visitors from our main markets in the Netherlands, Germany and Austria. This year we attended Scoop International for the first time to launch Smaak into the UK. Scoop’s visitor profile perfectly matches our own marketing targets in the UK. What are your bestselling designs? This season Blake, Robine, Silke, Kira, Kaylee and Alida. As a new brand, what is the next step in your company journey? Smaak has been selling across Europe for ten years. We are a new brand in the UK and if our launch at Scoop is anything to go by, retailers here are as receptive to our beautiful collection and excited by our ideas as our more established customer base in other parts of Europe. When was the website launched and how does it support the business? The retail website was launched in 2010 and last year we launched our B2B site, which has been met very enthusiastically by our retailers. They can now see our continuously updated stock levels in real time before they place their orders. This means little or no disappointment. What have been the key milestones in the business? Key milestones have been the launch of the first collection in 2010, opening of the shops in the same year and 2011, introducing the B2B website last year and launching into the UK at Scoop in February. How do you view the current market and what trends, both in business and product do you see emerging over the coming months? It is clear that more and more consumers are opting for online shopping, however, I’m pleased to say that my customer base is split pretty evenly between the Smaak online business and our bricks and mortar shops, located in Amsterdam and the Hague. We made a decision in 2018 to change our wholesale business from forward ordering to a live B2B ordering system. Our retailers were very happy with the change; now they can order stock at the beginning and throughout the season and have it in the shop in days. What are your future plans for the business? We will be opening a Smaak store in a major new shopping mall in the Netherlands and renovating the interiors of our existing shops – all to keep our customers excited and engaged with the brand.    What are your greatest achievements so far? We survived the financial crisis to build Smaak Amsterdam into a thriving, successful brand without the help of external investors.