Cinnamon Swan - Sustainable Swimwear New Zealand
I started working with Founder Geoff Gates to help shine light on his dream of creating brand with wellbeing at the core. Where feeling your own kind of beautiful goes hand-in-hand with caring for our environment. The story started with his sustainable fashion brand Cinnamon Swan.
He had clearly come up with an amazing idea and I was keen to help him introduce it to New Zealand.
Startup with a Swan story
The first step was to get the story from Co-Founders Geoff and Annaline on exactly what lead them to create this brand. I set about interviewing Geoff to be as clear as possible on what the driving force was, so I could help highlight all the best elements of their story and share the right information to help the brand grow.
#shegotswan The vision behind the brand is - sustainably made and iconic. Made so the wearer feel uniquely awesome in their own skin. Geoff coined this as ‘Made To Be Seen’. Showcasing the wearer’s own kind of style, the idea of that style having no boundaries and, limitless possibilities.
The vision told that anyone has the power to be a Swan. That was how #shegotswan was born. A hashtag I created tell each unique story and make it shareable on social media. This concept coupled with ‘Share your Swan Story’ and the ‘Made To Be Seen’ tagline brought this brand right into the spotlight taking New Zealand on a journey of an iconic, sustainable swimwear collection.
Sustainable + Iconic
Each piece in the collection is made from recycled materials such as plastic bottles. Ensuring we always look after our planet as much as we do our style.
With Geoff and Annaline creating such an epic collection I wanted to ensure the experience of their brand was expressed the best way thoroughly no matter where you experienced their brand. Working closely with Geoff we created a lookbook to showcase the collection and set about building relationships with some stores.
Mentors + Marketing
My main aim was getting the right people to connect with Geoff and with two of us on the case it wasn’t long before some really amazing mentors were made. We worked from the ground up connecting and getting the word out to stores around Auckland.
I believe the golden key to powering a startup is to have the right people in your corner cheering you on. With that in mind I successfully connected Geoff to an amazing friend of mine who is significantly connected in the fashion industry.
INSTORE Cinnamon Swan Experience AT HOT BODY SWIMWEAR
Geoff has put his heart and soul into every single part of Cinnamon Swan so naturally when it came time to support him in creating the very first instore Cinnamon Swan experience at Hot Body Swimwear in Newmarket, I was eager to help as much as possible. I provided some brand guideline on signage and visual merchandising and created some of the instore signage.