Igor Ivanenko is the owner of the luxury streetwear brand Only The Blind. He explains how the business is reacting to the impact of coronavirus.

LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM, May 5, 2020 /EINPresswire.com/ -- We started to feel the impact of the epidemic when one of our manufacturers in China faced a lockdown and was unable to deliver one of our orders for a very large retailer. Some time passed, and things seemed to be recovering in Asia, but this was just the start of the epidemic.

One of the largest retailers in the UK were looking to stock us for the AW20 season, but due to the impact the lockdown had on them, they had to pull out from launching new accounts.

Our UK manufacturer delivered our SS20 collection on time before the lockdown and our other manufacturers were able to deliver the rest with only a slight delay. We shot this campaign in Dubai in December already, so the content was ready to be published to launch the campaign immediately.

We decided to close our London office in March 2020 and the Design, Marketing, Sales and Admin teams started to work from home for their wellbeing and safety. The same week we closed our London retail store and by the end of the week a compulsory lockdown was announced for the UK.

Our warehouse is run by a small team and was able to remain open following government guidelines ensuring the safety of the team. It was crucial for us to remain open online and continue fulfilling orders as normal, as there was now no revenue stream from our London retail store or any wholesale orders as all stores were reluctant to buy in stock to stores that were closed globally.


What’s changed?

Working from home didn’t massively impact us, as we all stay in contact throughout the day on Skype. Having built a good relationship with many influencers in the fashion industry, they’re still able to provide us content and promote it.

We now focus on growing the online business and improving the website with new features, design changes etc. as this is now the only point of sale for us due to people not being able to visit shops in person and staying at home.


More about the brand

Founded in 2016, Only The Blind is a Luxury Streetwear Brand based in London, UK and has always had a really loyal following from its customers and many artists due to the quality of the products and the strong message behind the brand. The full name is Only The Blind Can See and we strongly believe that even if there is no clear path and no result in sight, you persevere and with that dedication you will reach your end goal. This is really relatable to those in the creative industries.

We’re honoured to have such a loyal following and have had artists reach out to us saying they love the message behind the brand and seen wearing it such as Teyana Taylor, Madison Beer, Hailey Bieber, Yxng Bane, Maleek Berry, Skepta, Nicky Romero and many others.

Our pieces are all cut and sew and made on the most premium materials we can source and feature highly intricate embroideries and prints that we fully design in house. We’re really excited that we were able to manufacture some pieces in England for our most recent collection on super heavy premium 500 GSM cotton and are planning to move the majority of the production to the UK by the end of the year.

No one knows when this pandemic will be over and when we will be returning to normality, so we’re taking this time to dynamically plan everything for then. We’re finalising our SS21 designs now and waiting for the restrictions to ease so our factory in England can sample these.


NHS Collection

During this time of crisis affecting all of us globally we wanted to support the amazing health care workers in the NHS.
We have decided to produce an exclusive collection of t-shirts and a sweatshirt with a re-designed artwork of one of our most popular pieces, ‘The Girl With The Pearl Earring’ featured with a NHS blue face mask.

These pieces are printed individually in London and Only The Blind will donate 100% of the profits to the NHS.

You can check Only The Blind at www.onlytheblind.com and @onlytheblind.

Igor Ivanenko
Only The Blind
+44 20 7266 6505
email us here
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