Avre Friday Briefing #23

Building the engine for Batch #2

Samples are finished, shoot booked 📸

Good news first: we're finally unblocked on Batch #2. The final trims arrived this week, all samples are now complete and we've got the photoshoot locked in for next week. After last week's delays, it feels good to have momentum again.

This week's challenge 🏔️

While we've been waiting for trims, we've been working on something equally important - how to get Batch #2 into the right hands. Like any small business, we want to find customers who resonate with our values and love our products. It's about getting our brand in front of people who appreciate heritage, craftsmanship and the stories behind what we make. So this week we've done a full on deep-dive into the world of marketing-tech.

Ten different conversations 

We've created ten different ways to tell the Batch #2 story. Some focus on the extraordinary history of Polish II Corps - their journey from Siberian gulags to victory at Monte Cassino. Others talk about the craftsmanship that goes into every stitch, or the sustainable approach of making only what's ordered and a few explore the style versatility.

The idea isn't to shout the same message louder, but to tailor our messaging and creative to different communities. History enthusiasts, quality seekers, people tired of fast fashion - they all have different reasons for valuing what we do. And the current suite of marketing tools makes this possible.

Testing what works 

Once we have the studio imagery next week, we'll start testing these 10 different variants with small budgets. The goal is to find out what genuinely resonates, before scaling up. Quality of engagement over quantity of reach = better ROI.

The technical setup 

Behind all of this is some fairly sophisticated tech. This week we've built the systems that measure each step - from someone seeing an ad to joining our mailing list. It means we can understand not just how many people sign up, but the quality of those connections. It's the difference between building a community and just collecting email addresses.

The target 

We have growth targets like any business. But really we just want to be sustainable, pay our people a decent wage, build great products and continue to support the charities we care about. So if we can find the right people - those who understand that some stories are worth wearing - Batch #2 should reach exactly the customers who'll value it most and everything else will fall into place. That's the theory anyway!

More updates as the testing begins.