Discover everything you need to know about the Groomer Community Program and how to get started today.
The Groomer Community Program is mostly aimed at brands who we see becoming overly dependent on online channels. While in the past we have been advocate about young people starting their own independent brands entirely from platforms like Instagram and Tiktok, recent studies have shown otherwise, with many stores faltering, unable to stand out from the crowd.
Over 90% of retail sales still involves some contact with a brick-and-mortar store, even they do not go through a cash register. Although their role might be changing, creatives running their own store are still responsible for selling the experience rather than the product, a kind of unique scent that becomes essential in distinguishing yourself from brands like Chanel, Dior, or Apple.
78% of millennials now prefer to spend more money on experiences than goods. Even through we are incredibly well-connected and could get anything that we could ever want online, there is something about our culture today that craves real social experiences, the kind of experiences that most brands fail to deliver on social media.
The Problem — Why Most Brands In London Fail
It all starts with a viral Instagram or Tiktok reel. You are scrolling through your phone at 10:00 pm before you happen to see a popular influencer promoting a brand that leads to a surge in traffic for a new line of shoes. After doing some research, you realise that the shoes cannot be delivered to your area and need to be collected in store.
You arrive at their store the next day and already you hear the busyness around. Since this was their first store in the city, customers coming from all kinds of viral loops online were making their way in to collect their orders and try on the new collection.
One of the assistants eventually finds you and ask weather you need any help. You tell her that you placed an order for the new line of shoes and that you are here to collect them:
“I’m sorry, but it turns out that the exact shoes you ordered were unavailable when we checked this morning at the warehouse. We have the shoes here but in a different pattern instead. Is that okay?”
Imagine you are the owner of that brand for a moment. You have spent months promoting the new collection online and building excitement for the new store opening. On social media it seems that the brand attracts a lot of attention with all the fancy campaigns. But the problem is that most brands at this point start to lose grasp of what actually attracts the right people to your brand, the kind of content that creates a community. Eventually, the brands becomes too stuck in the treadmill that everything else begins to falter. Operations become more complex. Revenue begins to spread thin across different teams. The same can be said for many creatives running small brick-and-mortar stores, trying to force growth by all means possible.
Why Should You Join The Program?
Our mission for this program is to help independent brands across London to better connect with their communities through their work. From launching your first product, to running your own store and managing operations, we want to make sure that everything you do is a unified experience. You are the visionary that sets the overall direction of the brand, not the one caught up chasing trends or putting away fires.
Outline project briefs
1) Groomer’s community program allows you to create a personalised action plan for your next big project.
Your brief will primarily consist of an overview of your project, followed by a breakdown of your target audience, key deliverables, and timeline of the project. This is especially important when working with partners and negotiating contracts in the future, even if you are doing things on your own at the moment.
With this program you will have a clear understanding about the importance of documenting every aspect of your work, regardless of the stage you are right now. To learn more contact us at contact@groomer-london.com with any questions you have.
Find suitable talent
2) Groomer’s community program allows you to find suitable candidates and influencers that are relevant to your project.
This process can typically be done on your own or by sourcing an agency to help you with prospecting. We want to make sure that you have the best experience when prospecting on our program, and why it becomes crucial for building relationships to your project.
Once you have a growing pool of prospects you will also have the inherited advantage to reach out to our community for specific recommendations and best practises. Otherwise, you can contact us at contact@groomer-london.com with any general questions you might have.
Create a promotion strategy
3) Groomer’s community program provides you with strategies and frameworks to create high-engaging promotional content.
Creating a promotion strategy will almost always include a social media strategy for platforms like Instagram and TikTok, banners, leaflets and posters to distribute across London, as well as monitoring key performance indicators. Listening and talking to your target audience also serves as part of your strategy, informing future brand decisions.
Over the course of many months, we have come to realise how brands can leverage content in ways never talked about before. Not only to promote an upcoming launch, but to spark entire movements when paired with the right direction. If this sounds interesting, reach out to us at contact@groomer-london.com with your suggestions.
Streamline operations
4) Discover the one checklist that most people ignore when starting and running their brand once you join Groomer’s community program
This checklist is more like a set of guidelines to follow whenever you are struggling to keep up with the workload. It is always easy to compromise these for the sake of pleasing everyone in the room, especially as your brand grows and expands. And so it comes down to reasoning that anyone who joins the program cannot expect everything mentioned above to work for you without the guiding principles.
Of course these guidelines will vary from person to person depending on the project. As always feel free to reach out at contact@groomer-london.com for your suggestions.
How Do I Get Started?
- Enrol into the program today
- Join the Slack community channel
- Access the community portal
- Reach out to us directly
1) Enrol into the program today
Follow the link here to sign up into the program. After the enrolment period ends, you will be prompted to join the waitlist instead for when the next enrolment period starts. Typically within the next couple of weeks or so.
2) Join the Slack community channel
Once checkout is complete you will be redirected to our Slack community channel within seconds. Follow the instructions to get familiar with everything, including the open spaces to start messaging with others.
3) Access the community portal
Select the Slack channel and find a page titled “Get Started”. There you can access the community portal, with additional templates and resources for your project. We recommend that you bookmark that page as we will continue to add new resources in the next few months.
4) Reach out to us directly
As always, we are available all the way through your journey — weather you are an apprentice starting out or a professional running your own team. If you have any questions or concerns about the whole program, feel free to reach out at contact@groomer-london.com.
PROMOTION
Get Started With The Groomer Community Program
Discover how you can become part of a growing community of independent brands and owners across London.
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