In this special “Best of Founder Stories” episode, we revisit highlights from four powerful interviews with fashion entrepreneurs Stella Carakasi, Linda Lundström, Kristi Soomer, and RozeMerie Cuevas.
If you've ever wondered what it really takes to build a fashion brand from the ground up and stay true to your values while doing it, this episode is for you. Over the past few seasons, I've had the privilege of speaking with some incredible women in fashion, designers and founders who've carved their own paths, built purpose-driven businesses, and stayed resilient through the highs and lows of entrepreneurship. In this roundup, you'll hear highlights from four powerhouse conversations.
Stella Carakasi on pivoting her business model and staying authentic as a designer. Linda Lundstrom, a Canadian fashion icon known for her ethical approach to design and manufacturing. Kristi Soomer, who built a profitable slow fashion brand from scratch. And RozeMerie Cuevas, who took her Vancouver-born brand Global while protecting her brand's DNA.
Each story is different, but the common thread is clear. These founders lead with purpose, adapt with grit, and never lose sight of why they started.
Whether you're launching a brand or navigating your next chapter, you'll walk away with timeless advice, hard-won lessons, and the reminder that success in fashion doesn't come from following trends, it comes from following your truth.
Start with strong brand values. Each founder emphasized the importance of leading with purpose, clarity, and authenticity from day one.
Resilience is everything. The journey is filled with highs and lows. Your ability to adapt and keep going is what sets you apart.
Let your customer guide you. Staying in tune with your audience helps shape products that resonate—and drive sustainable growth.
Your brand DNA matters. A clear creative vision and consistent identity are essential, especially when scaling globally.
Purpose drives innovation. From capsule collections to new retail models, each founder found creative ways to align business with mission.
Believe in the signs—and yourself. Linda Lundström’s story reminds us that trusting your intuition can lead to magical outcomes.
Growth takes grit. International success doesn’t happen overnight. RozeMerie Cuevas shares how she scaled with a handshake, a vision, and relentless execution.
In this episode, Glynis Tao discusses how AI is changing the way SEO works, especially for fashion brands. She breaks down the differences between traditional SEO and AI-driven search, focusing on why authority and content structure matter more than ever. Glynis shares a case study featuring Nomi Designs to show how consistent, strategic blogging led to a feature in an AI Overview. She wraps up with straightforward tips to help you keep your SEO strategy effective as search continues to evolve.
🔥 My Online Visibility Roadmap uncovers the hidden technical + SEO issues holding you backand gives you a clear plan to fix them.
AI is changing how people discover your brand and products.
Traditional SEO focuses on optimizing for blue links.
AI SEO is about optimizing for visibility and AI-generated answers.
Content must be original, structured, and helpful to be cited.
Blogs are essential for training AI to see your brand as an authority.
Topic clusters help build topical authority for search engines and AI.
Use schema to make content easier for machines to understand.
Helpful content is prioritized by Google's helpful content system.
Brands need to create content that aligns with natural language queries.
Helpfulness beats fluff in content creation.
What is AI SEO and how is it different from traditional SEO?
AI SEO isn’t about ranking in the top 10 search results anymore. Tools like Google’s AI Overviews and ChatGPT are now summarizing answers and linking to trusted sources. If your brand isn’t seen as authoritative or helpful, it might get skipped—regardless of where you rank. SEO today is about being cited, not just clicked.
Why is your traffic dropping even if your rankings look fine?
If you’re still ranking well but seeing fewer clicks, AI could be the reason. Google’s SGE now shows AI-generated summaries at the top of results pages, pushing traditional listings further down. In March 2025, 13% of all queries triggered an AI Overview, double what it was two months earlier. You haven’t done anything wrong—search behavior is shifting.
What kind of content shows up in AI search results?
AI tools prioritize content that’s clear, structured, and helpful. Blog posts with specific answers, strong headings, schema markup, and a clear brand voice have a better chance of being cited. TLDR summaries, FAQs, and expert insights all help AI recognize your content as trustworthy and worth referencing.
Real example: How Nomi Designs got featured in AI Overviews
Nomi Designs, a sustainable linen clothing brand, saw major results from a focused blog strategy. Posts like “Can You Wear Linen in Winter?” and “How to Pack Linen Clothes for Travel” earned top placements in Google’s AI Overviews and brought in tens of thousands of impressions and clicks. The key? Clear structure, useful content, and strong internal linking.
What SEO fundamentals still matter (and matter more)?
Schema markup (FAQs, How-tos) helps AI understand your content
Helpful, expert-led writing builds trust with both users and machines
EEAT—Experience, Expertise, Authority, Trust—has become essential if you want AI tools to recognize your brand as a credible source.
How can you future-proof your SEO strategy?
Start by auditing your content for quality and authority. Remove fluff, add schema, and repurpose your strongest content across platforms like LinkedIn and YouTube. Most importantly, stay consistent and update older posts. AI search rewards helpfulness, not size—so even small brands can compete if their content genuinely serves their audience.
Chapters
00:00 The Impact of AI on SEO Strategies
01:15 Understanding AI SEO vs Traditional SEO
04:27 Building Authority in AI Search Engines
07:42 Creating Effective Content for AI Visibility
11:42 Future-Proofing Your SEO Strategy for AI
Transcript
Glynis Tao
AI is changing how people discover your brand and products and where you can make yourself visible. By learning how to adapt your SEO strategy while your competitors are away at their summer cottage, you are taking the important steps to future-proof your website's search strategy. In this episode, you'll learn how to adapt your SEO strategy and stay visible in AI-powered search engines like ChatGPT, Google's AI Mode, AI Overviews, and Bing Copilot. Let's do this.
Welcome to Chase Your Dreams, a podcast for fashion entrepreneurs who want to build a purposeful and profitable clothing business so they can make a living doing what they love. I'm your host, Glynis Tao, an apparel business consultant and SEO specialist with 20 years apparel industry experience. I'm also a mom to a wonderfully energetic little boy named Chase.
Hi and welcome back to the Chase Your Dreams podcast, the show for fashion entrepreneurs who want to build a purposeful and profitable business so they can make a living doing what they love. I'm your host, Glynis Tao, an apparel business consultant, SEO specialist, and founder of Chase Your Dreams Consulting. I help fashion, beauty, and lifestyle brands grow their online presence through SEO and AI search optimization.
In today's episode, AI SEO is here, how to future-proof your fashion brand online, we're talking about the rise of AI in search engines and what that means for your brand's visibility. If you've noticed that your website traffic is down, even though your rankings seem stable, it might not be you, it might be Google. We'll explore how AI is changing how people search, how content is surfaced, and what you can do to adapt your strategy to stay competitive.
So let's just start with the basics. What is AI SEO and how does it differ from traditional SEO?
Traditional SEO focuses on optimizing for Google's 10 blue links, ranking on page one by using keywords, backlinks, and on-page content. But AI SEO is about optimizing for visibility and AI-generated answers like ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google's AI Overviews. These tools don't just list your page, they summarize answers and cite authoritative sources. So if your brand isn't seen as an expert, it may be left out of those answers entirely. It's not about rankings anymore. It's about authority and being referenced. In other words, it's no longer just about getting clicks. It's about being cited as the source.
So Google's Search Generative Experience or SGE and Microsoft's Bing Copilot are two of the biggest disruptors. In fact, according to SEMrush, over 13% of Google queries triggered an AI overview in March 2025. That's double what it was just two months prior. SGE generates summaries at the top of the search engines results, reducing clicks to traditional organic listings.
So if you just think about the traditional Google search engine results page prior, previously we used to type in a keyword into the question box and then it would come up with an answer, the list of websites that you can click on. SGE generates summaries at the top of the search results, reducing clicks to traditional listings and Bing Copilot is integrating chat GPT directly into search experiences. So even if you're still ranking number one, you may be seeing fewer clicks.
Something that I talk about in detail in episode 45, Why Your Website Traffic is Dropping and What to Do About It, if you haven't listened to that yet I break down how to diagnose traffic drops using Google Search Console and how to spot issues that are caused by AI search. So have a listen to episode number 45. So the overall impact would be that there is less real estate for organic results, but more emphasis on authority and structured data so what kind of content gets cited in AI answers.
Blogs are still a powerful tool, especially when they're original, well structured, and helpful. So the way that LLMs work, their large language models, they look for original, structured, and helpful content. And so that's why it's really important now more than ever that your blogs and your content have FAQs, schema, and are written in an expert voice. These are things that will help your blogs become more likely to be cited. So AI tools are trained on written content and they favor blog posts that include several things such as specific answers to user questions, clear headings and subheadings, FAQs and schema markup.
And you can also have a TLDR summary or key takeaways, key takeaways at the top of your blog. And this is also something that I emphasized in a previous episode. That was episode 43 on How Blogging Builds Brand Trust and Boosts Sales. In that episode, I basically emphasized the point that blogging isn't dead. In fact, it's essential to train AI to see your brand as an authority. So make sure you have a listen to that episode.
In essence, that episode emphasizes the point that your blog posts can be your ticket to being mentioned in AI summaries, but only if they're structured well and actually solve a real problem for your audience.
Other tools you could try using are Reddit, LinkedIn, and YouTube as offsite content that influences AI visibility as well. Those are other areas and places that AI engines pull other information and data from.
Let's talk about the SEO building blocks that still matter and now matter even more. First of all, I talk about this a lot and also I have several blog articles written about it. It's about topic clusters and that's our practice of creating multiple related pieces of content around a central theme that helps build topical authority. That's a key signal for both search engines and AI. So I use this strategy for myself, my own blogs, and also for my client blogs.
Also, another thing you want to keep in mind is to use schema markup. So this is structured data like FAQs, how-to, and product schema that make it easier for machines to understand and site your content.
And also, the other thing you want to keep in mind is helpfulness. How helpful is your content? Because Google's helpful content system and AI Overviews prioritizes content that is people-first, expert-led, and designed to actually help. So AI doesn't just want keywords now, it wants clear, credible content from brands that it can trust. So that's where EEAT comes from, otherwise known as EAT, and that stands for Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness. Your site needs to show real authorship, updated posts, and a clear brand voice to earn that trust. I have several articles I talk about this, I will link to in the show notes.
AI power search engines like AI overviews and search GPT are changing how consumers are discovering your products. So these platforms are prioritizing more conversational intent-based search results. In order to stay visible, brands need to create content that aligns with natural language queries and prioritizes user intent. This means adapting your product descriptions, blogs, and FAQs to answer customer questions directly.
So let me give you a real example here. One of my clients, Nomi Designs, creates minimalist eco-friendly linen clothing that is sourced ethically and produced locally in Victoria, BC. We helped them develop a blog strategy focused on thoughtful, well-structured content that reflected their values and voice. As a result, several of their blog posts were recently featured in Google's AI Overviews, which is a major win in today's search landscape. So two blogs in particular are ranking right at the top in Google AI Overviews. So there are, Can You Wear Linen Clothing in Winter? is one. And this blog comes up as the number one result and AI overviews with a link directly to their website. And at the time after this blog was posted three months later, the blog had had 22,800 impressions and over 525 clicks. And it's also their second best performing page on their website. Currently, that blog ranks for over 1,000 keywords.
Another blog on their site, called How to Pack Linen Clothes for Travel. In the last six months, just before I hopped on to record this episode, I just went and checked in Google Search Console. In the last six months, this blog had over 47,200 impressions, 1120 clicks, ranks for over 1,000 keywords. Its average position is number seven. It's cited in the AI Overviews with a reference link, and it shows up as a number two position on the Google search engine results page. So this just shows you how powerful blogging can be if you follow a strategy.
So let me just break it down to you exactly what we did. So first of all, we created an SEO blog strategy for them that involves creating contextual content that aligns with their particular brand products categories. Okay, in this case, just linen clothing. We researched relevant blog topic ideas and then created a topic cluster that focused around a main topic with a proposed internal linking system. This helps to strengthen your web page's ability to rank. Another thing that internal linking does is that it helps to build and position you as a trustworthy subject matter expert in your audience. And this is important because Google wants to rank sites that demonstrate experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness.
The next thing we did is that we developed a blog brief and outline with clear section headings like the H1s and H2s, sections that were all listed. All the client had to do was fill out the brief with their firsthand experience and expertise. The blog then got optimized for SEO, such as title tags, meta descriptions, proper headings, image alt text, and then we also check for spelling and grammar. Then the blog is posted onto the website and submitted for indexing on Google Search Console. So all in all, even with fewer total clicks, we saw higher quality traffic and increased conversions. And that's the proof that with the right SEO strategy, even small fashion brands can compete in the age of AI.
Another point I want to mention is that their organic traffic contributes to half of their revenue and sales from their site. So if you are interested in learning more, you can read the full case study that's posted in my case studies area on my website.
So how can you future-proof your SEO strategy for AI? Well, I've covered a lot in this episode, but there's a few things that you can do to get started. The first thing you can do is to audit your content for authority. This is content that demonstrates your expertise and credibility across all your pages. So take a look through your content and remove anything that may not be as high quality as just maybe more fluff. Just get rid of them altogether because it could be doing more harm than good.
And then another thing you want to do is to use schema, especially in FAQ, how to's for blogs and product pages. You want to post helpful original content, right? Going back to the fluff, you want to avoid fluff. Fluff can be good in some places, but not when it comes to your content. You want to repurpose content on multiple platforms. You want to post full original content. You want to be the go-to source in your niche because you want to be known as the go-to expert in your industry or niche.
Then you want to repurpose content on multiple platforms. So once you've gone through and done all this work, right, you might as well use it and publish it, post it across all the other platforms like on LinkedIn, YouTube, on your social media. You know, you also want to share it, maybe in an e-letter, right? So you want to get it out there as much as you can. And most importantly is to stay consistent, build topic clusters and update older posts regularly to be able to maintain its freshness.
The brands that win an AI search aren't the biggest, but they are the most trustworthy and helpful. So in other words, this sort of levels the playing field because the big brands don't necessarily mean they have the most authority, right? Any business now of any size has the opportunity to stand out and show up in search now just by building your expertise, your trustworthiness and just think of everything that you create as being really helpful.
Helpfulness beats fluff. That's my last thing I would say is the takeaway you want to get out of this is helpfulness beats fluff any day.
So thanks for listening to this episode of Chase Your Dream Podcast. And if you found today's episode helpful, please be sure to subscribe and leave a review. Don't forget to check out the AI SEO case study with Nomi Designs, which I will include a link to in the show notes. And also the previous episodes on blogging and traffic drops.
If you need help building your SEO strategy for the age of AI, please reach out to me. Call or visit my website, glynistao.com, for SEO strategy and services. I have a new page up now dedicated to AI SEO, and I'll have other free resources and more to help support you along your journeys. Until next time, take care.
In this episode, Glynis Tao discusses the reasons behind declining website traffic for fashion e-commerce sites in 2025. She explores the impact of AI on search behavior, the importance of understanding traffic quality versus volume, and how to diagnose traffic issues using Google Search Console. Glynis also explains the need for a solid technical SEO strategy and the role of high-quality content in maintaining visibility and conversions.
Top rankings don’t guarantee clicks if AI answers show up first.
Lower traffic is not always bad as it could mean better-qualified visitors.
Use Google Search Console to identify what’s causing the drop.
Replatforming without redirects can negatively affect SEO.
Technical issues like slow speed and duplicates hurt rankings.
Find out if the drop is seasonal, sudden, or gradual to fix it right.
Blogs still build authority and feed AI content.
Helpful, specific content keeps you visible in search.
SEO audits catch hidden issues that impact website traffic.
Prioritize conversions over traffic volume.
Themes
Why don’t top positions guarantee higher traffic anymore?
You can still hold top positions in Google and see traffic decline. That’s because the search landscape has changed. AI-powered tools like Google’s AI Overviews now answer user questions directly on the results page, leaving fewer reasons for people to click through to your site. It’s not about dropping off page one—it’s about how people find and consume information. If you’re seeing fewer visits but stable rankings, AI could be the reason.
What do fashion brands need to know about traffic quality vs. traffic volume?
It’s easy to fixate on shrinking traffic numbers, but volume alone doesn’t tell the full story. The real question is: who’s visiting your site and are they ready to buy? A drop in overall sessions could be filtering out low-intent visitors, leaving behind more qualified shoppers. Brands that create content addressing specific pain points often attract fewer—but more targeted—visitors who are closer to making a purchase. Understanding this shift helps you focus on conversions, not just clicks.
How can you diagnose website traffic drops using Google Search Console?
One of the most valuable (and underused) tools for troubleshooting traffic loss is Google Search Console. Start by comparing clicks, impressions, and average position over different time ranges. Then dive into specific pages and search queries that are losing visibility. Look for patterns: is traffic down across the board, or isolated to a few key URLs? Is it linked to mobile usability issues, indexing errors, or slower site speed? These clues can point to whether the issue is content-related, technical, or algorithmic.
Why could replatforming or redesigning your site lower your visibility?
Switching platforms, especially moving from Shopify to a headless build can trigger unexpected traffic losses if not managed carefully. Changes to your URL structure, page hierarchy, or internal links can confuse search engines and wipe out your historical rankings. Without proper redirect mapping and pre-launch planning, even a beautiful new site can lose months (or years) of SEO value. Before migrating, brands need a clear redirect strategy and a site audit checklist to avoid preventable setbacks.
What are common technical SEO issues that hurt fashion e-commerce sites?
Slow load times, missing canonical tags, duplicate content, and crawlability problems are some of the most common issues holding back performance. Left unchecked, these problems quietly chip away at your search visibility and user experience. A technical SEO audit—run through tools like Semrush or Search Console—can help you catch and prioritize fixes based on severity and impact. Even a few improvements can make a measurable difference in how your site performs in both human and AI-driven search.
Why aren’t all traffic drops created equal?
Understanding the type of traffic drop you’re seeing is the first step toward fixing it. A sudden, sharp drop may signal a Google algorithm update. A gradual decline might point to technical issues or a recent redesign. If traffic fluctuates seasonally, it could just be tied to buyer behavior. And sometimes, it’s simply a reporting glitch. Distinguishing the cause helps you respond with the right solution, instead of making blind guesses or panicking unnecessarily.
Why does a blog strategy still matter in the age of AI search?
AI-generated answers are pulling information from the best content available—and your blog could be one of those sources. High-quality blog posts still play a strong role in attracting traffic, building trust, and training AI tools to recognize your site as authoritative. To stay visible, your content needs to be helpful, specific, and written with both humans and search engines in mind. Blog posts that solve real problems, showcase your expertise, and reflect your brand voice can still drive meaningful results in an AI-first world.
Chapters
00:00 Understanding Traffic Declines in E-commerce
06:31 The Impact of AI on Search and Traffic
11:27 Diagnosing Traffic Issues with Google Search Console
16:30 Technical SEO and Content Strategy for Recovery
Transcript
Glynis Tao
Why your website traffic is dropping and what to do about it. Here's a candid breakdown of the most common reasons fashion e-commerce websites are losing traffic in 2025 and how to fix them. In this episode, we are going to cover the impact of AI overviews on organic search, technical SEO red flags to watch out for, how to spot issues using Google Search Console, when to run a full technical SEO audit, and quick wins and long-term strategies for recovery. So let's get started.
Welcome to Chase Your Dreams, a podcast for fashion entrepreneurs who want to build a purposeful and profitable clothing business so they can make a living doing what they love. I'm your host, Glynis Tao, an apparel business consultant and SEO specialist with 20 years apparel industry experience. I'm also a mom to a wonderfully energetic little boy named Chase.
Your organic and direct traffic is down, but your site looks fine. Your rankings seem stable and your team is out of ideas. Sound familiar? In this episode, I will break down the real reasons your traffic might be dropping in 2025 and what you can do to fix it. From the growing impact of AI power search to overlooked technical SEO issues, I will share a practical action-oriented guide to help you recover visibility and conversions.
Whether you're a DTC brand or shifting into wholesale, this episode will give you the tools to diagnose the problem and move forward with clarity.
Hi, I'm Glynis. I'm the founder and CEO of Chase Your Dreams Consulting, which is an apparel business consulting and online marketing agency that specializes in SEO and AI search optimization for e-commerce companies. I help fashion, beauty, and lifestyle e-commerce brands create optimized content and attract potential customers through organic search results.
In this episode, you will learn why website traffic can drop even when your site looks healthy, the hidden impact of Google's AI overviews and declining click-through rates, what to look for in Google Search Console, the five most important technical SEO issues on Shopify and headless builds, why blog content still matters and how to make it work for AI SEO.
So let's just talk about the difference between traffic volume and traffic quality. I recently had a conversation with a potential client that runs an e-commerce website saying that they had seen a consistent decline in the website organic and direct traffic over the course of six to seven months and they weren't sure what was going on with it and came to me for help and try and hoping to find a solution to solve the problem to understand what is causing this decline in their organic and direct traffic to their website.
And so to be able to understand what the difference is between your traffic volume and traffic quality, the difference is that you know, traffic volume could be, you may be getting a lot of volume to your website, but perhaps they're not necessarily all converting or turning into sales, right? Because the quality of the traffic. So in the case where today we are seeing a lot more searches happening on other platforms, CI search platforms such as AI overviews or chat GPT, Claude or Perplexity. People are asking questions, looking for answers and typing in questions into their searches. So it's not just the way that search is changing, the way that people are asking questions on search engines.
So in the past where people were using more keywords, they're typing into search engines and then they would get a result on search engine results pages. And then that will require the user to go and click on the blue link that takes them to the website page to find their answer. And they may be looking, but if they don't find their answer, then they would have to go down the list and maybe go to the next website and go read through that. And they keep doing that until they find their answer.
But now with AI overviews and AI search engines, they are providing the answers directly right in the search area so that the people don't need to click to go to the website anymore. They are getting their answers directly in Google. So in the case of AI Overviews, they're typing in the questions and AI Overviews is giving them the answers and doesn't even require them to click on the link to go to the website anymore to get their answers. So Google and other search engines are now focusing on specific keywords, but it's generating answers where the users can get the answers to the questions directly right there.
This could be one of the reasons for the drop in organic traffic because there's less clicks happening across the board. And so you may be seeing perhaps lower volume of traffic, but perhaps maybe your sales have remained the same or perhaps even increased because it's probably due to the quality of the traffic that is going to your website through these searches. Because now the type of questions that people are asking and looking for a solution to, they happen to know your website is creating this quality content that directly addresses your customers' pain points and challenges, then that's a way for them to discover you. And it could be coming through any of these search platforms. And the better you're able to address your customers' problems, pain points and challenges, the better you're able to help them solve this problem. Then you have a better likelihood of converting this client or customer with your product or service.
So, think about it just in terms of, perhaps, you know, volume of traffic has gone down, but has your quality of traffic, you know, remained or have improved or increased over time, right? This is now a different way of looking at things. In the past, we were looking at traffic volume and how much volume we're getting. Think about how much you think of it now in terms of the quality of traffic that you're getting. If somebody is typing in a question and looking for an answer to a particular problem, they're probably, you know, really further along in their purchasing journey. And if your website, your product or service is able to solve this person's problem, then you have a better likelihood of converting them. Nowadays, it's not just the amount of traffic that you're getting, but also the quality of traffic that you're getting because of the way that search landscape is changing.
And so let's talk about how AI search is causing fewer clicks, even when rankings are stable. So this goes back to what I'm saying previously about, you know, increasing the quality of your content. So I have a previous episode that I talk about blogging and how blogging builds brand trust and boost sales. And you can listen to that episode.
AI search is causing fewer clicks. In some instances, some websites have seen up to 25% drop in clicks and traffic and overall traffic. So you got to be able to measure this and see like how much of your, how much is your search traffic being impacted and think about, you know, what is the content that you are creating on your website now, because now it's really more important than ever, but this could also be a reason why you are seeing a decrease or decline in your organic traffic, okay? Because AI search itself, AI search engines are providing you with the answer without having the user to click on a website directly, okay? So that could be explaining the reason for you're seeing a drop.
But in the case of this potential client who came to me who experienced a decline in their direct and organic traffic, they couldn't figure out why and what was going on. And one of the questions I asked them was, have you re-platformed or redesigned your website? And they had to mention that, yes, they changed from Shopify to a headless website. So in this instance, the decline could be explained by change in website structure and URLs. And I actually have another episode where I talk about how to prepare and plan for website redesign. And so there are steps that you need to do in order to prevent potential loss in organic traffic prior to migrating your site, okay, over to a new platform. And so you want to make sure that you have several things in place beforehand. You want to be able to map out your website. You want to identify which pages have the most organic traffic and you want to be able to preserve that traffic.
Map out your website pages, URLs before you move over to the new website. And once you have the new website and you launch, you want to make sure that you have proper redirects in place as well so that you don't lose traffic over time. That's very important. And so in this case, this had to do with a change in website structure.
So there are ways to check for traffic declines using Google Search Console. And I will walk you through that. So what you can do is you can use the performance report and compare current data with past periods. So you want to look for significant drops in clicks, impressions, and average position. Then investigate specific pages and queries to identify the source of the decline.
So I'm going to give you a more detailed breakdown step by step on how to do this. First, you want to access your performance report in Google Search Console. You select your property and then click on performance in the left-hand menu. By default, the report will show you data for the last three months. So you want to set your date range and compare previous periods. So you can click on a date range filter and select a custom range. For example, you can compare the last three months with the three months before that. So you can compare, you know, the last three months to the previous three months. And just by selecting your date range. Next, you can, you want to analyze the data. So you want to focus on clicks, impressions, and average click through rate and average position.
So look for significant drops in these metrics. Then you want to click on pages to see which pages have experienced decline in traffic. And then you're going to click on queries to see which search queries have seen a drop in clicks.
Then you want to investigate this further. To investigate this further, if you see a drop in clicks for a specific page, then investigate that page's content structure and SEO. If you see a drop in clicks for a specific query, you search why that query might be performing worse. Check the Google Search Console coverage report to see if any pages have indexing issues. And you can review the Google Search Console mobile usability report for any mobile related issues.
Lastly, we'll go through the debugging stage, okay? And so if you're unsure why the traffic dropped, you want to try to narrow down the affected pages or queries. Compare the drop period with a similar period to identify the source. See if the drop affects one page, a few pages, or it's site-wide. Look for direct errors in the coverage report and check for Core Web Vitals issues in the Core Web Vitals report. By following these steps, you can effectively use Google Search Console to identify and diagnose traffic declines on your website. And also, Google has a very helpful debugging Google traffic search traffic drops page on their site. This talks about, you know, a drop in organic search traffic can happen for several reasons. And it may not be straightforward to understand what exactly happened to your site. So you want to just go through the steps and be able to identify, investigate the reasons for the drop in search traffic. And then you can come up with a plan on how to address it. But there are four main causes for drops in organic traffic. And I'm just going to explain and walk you through what these are right now.
Okay. So if you see a sudden drop in website traffic, that could be due, that's a sudden large drop that's site-wide, that could be from an algorithm update. So that's usually if you see a sudden drop in your traffic, because Google is always improving and how it's assessing content and updating its search ranking and serving algorithms accordingly. And so they are making so many updates nowadays, you know, like they've made thousands of updates, algorithm updates over the past year. And so that's why you want to take a look and see how drastic is the drop. Another thing that could be causing a drop would be say seasonality. And so if you're seeing kind of more, you know, up and down, activity that could just be due to seasonality. If your products are seasonal, you're selling seasonal products, then you kind of see a lot more of that up and down kind of activity.
And another issue that you could be seeing is the, in the case of this potential client who I was talking to, saying that they were seeing a gradual decline. This to me, would be more of an indication of technical issue, which in my case, I was saying probably due to site structure change in which they, know, previous pages that were ranking had changed in the URLs and they may not have done the proper redirects. So they're sort of starting to see that gradual decline in traffic. Okay, so then you want to take a look at and do a technical SEO audit in this case.
And the last issue could be due to a glitch or recording glitch and that could just be something like your traffic could take a dip, but then it returns back to normal levels. So you have your website traffic and then you sort of see this slight dip, but it eventually returns back to normal. So hopefully it stays that way. And so in that case, you know, maybe you had some broken links in your site. So these are some technical things that you really want to take a look at and assess the situation.
Okay. And just to talk a little bit about technical SEO, I'm going to actually create another episode that talks about the five most common technical SEO issues that I've seen in Shopify and what they are, what the issue is, why it is important, and how to fix it. Technical issues can take form in, page speed, load times in canonical tags, duplication errors, and that sort of thing. And so in the case of this potential client person who I was talking about, I really recommended that they do a technical SEO audit and you can do that in Semrush. And what that does is it checks your site and makes sure that there aren't any crawlability issues that may affect your site's ability to be indexed, probability and indexing issues.
And also if there's any duplicate content or duplicate title tags, meta description, it'll tell you, you know, what are the major issues and errors that will need to be addressed immediately, what priorities, what things would need to be fixed first in order to get your site health in a way that it performs properly. And so that's what I think an SEO audit is important to do so that you're able to diagnose the problem, right? And know exactly what needs to be done to start fixing that and start to regain and repair and, you know, restore that website traffic that they were previously getting. So that was pretty much my recommendation to them.
The last thing I want to talk about, and this was another recommendation that I had mentioned, was how I always encourage all my clients to have a blog strategy. And why this is important is because in today's world of AI search engines, the search landscape is changing, right? So, I mean, traditional SEO still works and is still around and still important, but it's building on that layer that's for AI search. So AI search engines like AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, all those, which I had mentioned earlier, could be causing clicks to go down and overall traffic to decline. I actually recorded a previous episode that talks about how blogging builds brand trust and boosts sales, which I encourage you to have a listen to because I think it's important.
And I still encourage all my clients to use the strategy of blog creation, but you're not just creating content for the sake of content. You’ve got to make sure that you're creating content that, you know, it's high quality, that's written by people, for people, that also helps address the common problems and pain points. But not only does the blog do that, but it also helps you establish your expertise, experience, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness as well, which is a huge factor for search engines and AI search in deciding whether or not they will rank your content or not. And so these are the things that you need to start thinking about in terms of how you're going to adapt and the type of content that you are going to be creating.
And I will be talking more and creating more content in the future about AI search, generative AI, AI optimization, GEO, LLMO, all sorts of things like that because I've been having so many conversations lately and people reaching out to me asking me questions about how to optimize for AI search and is SEO still relevant?
So please stay tuned. I will be creating more content and more future podcast episodes around these topics. And I'd love it if you can let me know if there's anything you'd like to learn more about.
Please send me your questions or any ideas, topics that you would like to hear more about. And I'd love to create those for you. So thank you so much for tuning in today. And I hope you found this episode to be helpful. Thank you so much for listening and have a great day.
In this conversation, Christine Daal, CEO and founder of Fashion Angel Warrior, shares her journey from fashion designer to coach, emphasizing the importance of confidence, community, and a holistic approach in fashion entrepreneurship. She discusses her unique coaching methods, common mistakes made by fashion entrepreneurs, and the significance of adapting to industry changes. Christine highlights success stories from her clients, showcasing the impact of her coaching on their businesses. She also addresses the future of fashion, including the need to develop more workers for local apparel manufacturing and improving sustainability to keep up with global standards and consumer demands.
About Christine Daal
Christine Daal is the CEO and founder of the fashion consulting and marketing agency, Fashion Angel Warrior. Her experience spans over 20 years in the industry, reaching the position of VP of design and merchandising by the age of 30, and then starting her own successful fashion line. For the past 10 years, she has coached fashionpreneurs on how to leave their nine to five and have a profitable business. Through one-on-one coaching, group coaching masterminds, fractional CMO services, online courses, retreats, manufacturing tours, and digital marketing services, Fashion Angel Warrior has become a one-stop shop for e-commerce brands.
Confidence plays a direct role in building a successful brand.
A holistic approach blends mindset, lifestyle, and business strategy.
Build your audience and email list before launching any product.
Don’t invest in inventory without first validating demand.
Track key metrics like traffic, email list, and average order value.
Choose coaches and service providers based on results, not hype.
Know your budget and revisit it before making major decisions.
Successful founders outsource strategically and focus on what they do best.
Community support is essential for long-term growth and resilience.
Sustainability and adaptability are no longer optional, but are expected.
Moms can build legacy brands that create freedom, income, and impact.
Interview themes
What are common mistakes that fashion startups make, and how can they be avoided?
Christine Daal has seen too many early-stage brands go under—not for lack of passion, but because they spent their budgets in the wrong places or worked with the wrong people. Common mistakes include hiring the wrong agency, underestimating the power of community, and trying to do everything solo. Her biggest red flag? Founders investing tens of thousands in inventory before building demand. Christine’s first step with every client is to review their budget honestly and plan strategically. “Compliments don’t make you money,” she says. “Results do.”
How can you launch a fashion brand with no product?
Through her “no product fashion line method,” Christine teaches clients to flip the traditional launch model. Instead of designing and producing inventory first, brands build community—an audience and grow their email list before they release their first item. Some clients have ranked in the top 20% of Shopify stores for traffic the week they launched with no product on hand. The approach reduces financial risk and creates demand before production, setting up founders for stronger sales and sustainable growth.
What do successful founders have in common?
Christine’s most successful clients are committed, coachable, and clear on their strengths. Many are moms working late nights or early mornings, multitasking between life and business—but always willing to do what it takes. They don’t try to master every skill themselves. Instead, they focus on what they do best—like designing—and outsource the rest, whether it's accounting, analytics, or ads. They also tend to prioritize health, organization, and mindset—understanding that how you care for yourself affects how you lead.
How does confidence affect business outcomes?
Christine takes a holistic approach to coaching—blending business strategy with mental wellness and confidence-building. She’s helped clients unlock major growth just by helping them feel empowered to make decisions: hiring a seamstress, collaborating with a designer, or pitching to a store. When founders feel confident, they take bolder actions—and those decisions directly impact their bottom line. For Christine, mindset isn’t a side note. It’s a growth driver.
A client case study: from unprofitable to multi-7 figures
One of Christine’s long-time clients was generating $500K in sales—but spending $600K to get there. Together, they cut $100K in operating expenses and doubled the brand’s online revenue. The result? Profitability for the first time, and a six-figure month shortly after. Over the next few years, Christine helped him scale to 7 figures, overhaul his email strategy (growing email revenue from $2.5K to $10K per campaign), and increase site conversion rates to nearly 4%. He even let go of two other coaches and chose to keep Christine. “That was the ultimate compliment,” she says.
Where does Christine start when a founder says, “I need more sales”?
Christine starts by getting straight to the numbers: website traffic, email list size, social media following, and average order value. With just those four data points, she can calculate revenue potential and uncover what’s holding a brand back. She also helps founders shift from gut-based decisions to data-informed ones. Whether it’s pricing, product design, or inventory planning—every decision should be tied to a measurable stat. “Show me the numbers,” she says. “That’s how you grow.”
What should brands focus on as the industry changes?
Christine believes fashion entrepreneurs must evolve alongside the industry. That means shifting to community-first marketing, adapting manufacturing models (especially as tariffs and labor shortages rise), and taking sustainability seriously. Whether it’s building private feedback groups or learning to sew as a backup skill, Christine urges founders to stay flexible, use tech tools wisely, and listen to their customers early and often. The future belongs to brands that can pivot—and care.
Why does Christine love working with moms founders?
Christine lights up when working with women who are building something meaningful for themselves and their families. As a mom of two, she understands the juggle—and the deep motivation behind legacy-building. She sees business as more than income. It’s about empowerment, freedom, and impact. Helping a mom go from idea to income, or showing her child what’s possible through entrepreneurship, is what Christine finds most rewarding. “You’re not just growing a brand,” she says. “You’re changing your family’s future.”
Chapters
00:00 Building Confidence in Fashion Entrepreneurship
02:41 The Journey of Fashion Angel Warrior
05:51 Holistic Coaching Approach
08:43 Signature Coaching and Marketing Framework
11:38 Common Mistakes of Fashion Entrepreneurs
14:46 The Importance of Community
17:23 Full Spectrum Solutions for Fashion Brands
20:25 Client Success Stories
23:20 Growth Metrics and Revenue Increases
26:30 Mindset and Habits of Successful Clients
29:19 Navigating Online Sales Growth
32:12 Adapting to Industry Changes
35:16 The Future of Fashion: Trends and Sustainability
38:16 Empowering Female Founders
41:07 Advice for Fashion Entrepreneurs
44:06 Upcoming Programs and Promotions
47:02 Final Thoughts and Contact Information
Transcript
Christine Daal
We've had a lot of different success stories. Even just aside from e-commerce, going back to the confidence side, again, because I'm so holistic and I like to look at your mental health and your mindset and confidence and all this different stuff, even on the confidence side, we had a brand that she finally felt the confidence to start hiring more seamstresses and expanding her team. And then that allowed her to now take on more orders because she was turning away business because she wasn't able to fulfill orders, but she didn't have the confidence to think that she could actually hire a good seamstress. So even just having a confidence increase, right, can affect the remainder of your business.
We had another client who was literally part of our Soar Mastermind program, she connected with another designer. She didn't feel confident in her own design capabilities, believe it or not. So she wasn't really a designer by heart, but just wanted to start this business for other reasons. And so she connected with another designer, hired that designer to be her designer and now she felt like, now I have actually really good designs, which then gave her the confidence to start reaching out to stores, which then she got her first wholesale order. So even just having that boost in confidence can really help your bottom line, which people don't think about or want to talk about maybe, but it does affect the bottom line of your business. So that's also been amazing to see, just people's confidence go up.
Glynis Tao
Welcome to Chase Your Dreams, a podcast for fashion entrepreneurs who want to build a purposeful and profitable clothing business so they can make a living doing what they love. I'm your host, Glynis Tao, an apparel business consultant and SEO specialist with 20 years apparel industry experience. I'm also a mom to a wonderfully energetic little boy named Chase.
Christine Daal is the CEO and founder of the fashion consulting and marketing agency, Fashion Angel Warrior. Her experience spans over 20 years in the industry, reaching the position of VP of design and merchandising by the age of 30, and then starting her own successful fashion line. For the past 10 years, she has coached fashion printers on how to leave their nine to five and have a profitable business. Through one-on-one coaching, group coaching masterminds, fractional CMO services, online courses, retreats, manufacturing tours, and digital marketing services, Fashion Angel Warrior has become a one-stop shop for e-commerce brands.
Welcome, Christine. It's so nice to have you here today. Thanks for joining me on the podcast.
Christine Daal
Hi, Glynis, it's so nice to be here. Thank you so much for having me.
Glynis Tao
You've had an incredible journey from fashion designer to coach and agency founder. What inspired you to start Fashion Angel Warrior? Was there a gap you noticed in the market?
Yeah, so I think that first of all, I felt called to do this probably because of two main things. I've always loved fashion and I've always loved helping people. And so I kind of just put them together, right? And that's how I started the coaching side of the business. But at the same time, I really saw a need and a gap in the market and I saw a lot of injustice happening. So when I had my successful fashion line, I experienced with one of my manufacturers, they actually tried to take advantage of me.
And this was, you know, at the time I had already 12 years of experience in the fashion industry. I wasn't a newbie. I kind of knew what I was doing. And so it just became really apparent to me right out of the gate that if these newbie designers don't have someone in their corner kind of fighting for them and helping them, who's going to help them navigate this, right? And avoid having these manufacturers take advantage of them. So I had a personal experience, right? That kind of shaped my desire to start the business.
And then just the industry itself, for those who have been in it, kind of know it's very secretive, it's very competitive. There's a lot of this whole devil wears Prada nonsense going on where people are really just pushing each other down to get ahead, right, to make themselves feel better. And I just don't agree with any of that. And so I wanted to do the opposite. I was like, can I be the angel who wears Prada? Can I be the one lifting people up because there's way too many people, you know, pushing people down.
And so when I started my business almost 10 years ago now, I was like, okay, we need to have the vision that people are serving one another and helping each other and collaborating instead of competing. That's like one of our core visions and values, right? And so I always say for the fashion industry to survive, it can't be survival of the fittest, right? We all need to really work together. That's really what drove me to start Fashion Angel Warrior.
Glynis Tao
Okay, that sounds great. Okay, and like, I was also curious about the name and it sounds like now it makes sense. You are the angel versus the devil who wears Prada.
Christine Daal
Yes, yes, yes, that was part of it, yes.
Glynis Tao
I love it. Your mission is to help fashion printers turn their passion into profit. What does that transformation usually look like for your clients?
Christina Daal
So the transformation can look like a lot of different things. I always tell people my coaching approach is really always two things, holistic and customized. So I believe in looking at the whole person, not just your business model, right? So what are your values? What are your interests? What are your goals? What are your strengths, your weaknesses, your budget? That really takes a huge factor, right? If you come to me and say, have a $5,000 budget versus a $200,000 budget, my advice is gonna be very different, right?
Even your lifestyle, if you're a working mom, if you just got divorced, you know, all of these different things, I like to incorporate into my coaching approach and strategy. So I like to say I go beyond the typical business strategies and I really like to incorporate your soul, body and spirit into everything that we do. Right? So I always say mental health and confidence are just as important as having a marketing plan, for instance.
And so I also like to take a very long-term approach. So yes, I can teach you what's popular right now on Instagram, right? But let's look down the road. Do you want to be doing Instagram in two years, in three years? Is this really sustainable for what you're doing, where you're at with your life, your lifestyle, your preferences, right? Or do you need something else that's more evergreen? That's not going to be, I have to post every single day and show up and that sort of thing. So, that's kind of my approach to coaching and the transformation can be anything. I mean, I've seen people go from a confidence level of two to a confidence level of seven. I've seen people go from zero to a million dollars in sales in their very first year, which is crazy, crazy success. And then everything in between, right? So the transformation really spans the gamut.
Glynis Tao
Okay, so we're going to go deeper into your coaching approach and some client success stories, but just want to ask you, how has your background in both corporate fashion and entrepreneurship shaped your coaching approach and how do your services differ from traditional marketing firms or generic business coaches?
Christine Daal
Yeah. So I think having a background in both corporate and entrepreneurship has really helped to make me a well-rounded coach. I have a very broad understanding of different levels, of different avenues, and things that brands can explore. And so it helps me to understand, for instance, common mistakes that a brand might make. For instance, typically if you've worked in corporate fashion, you are going to start your fashion line thinking, well, I can just do what the company that I just worked for did, which maybe they sold, you know, 10,000 unit dress orders, right, on a daily basis and so their margins were maybe only 11% versus you, you're now a startup business, you can't have an 11% margin. You're not selling 10,000 unit orders. You're maybe selling two or three or five or 10, right? And so you really need to have that minimum, what I always say, 65 to 70% margin, which sounds really high if you're used to coming from a corporate background, right?
That's, I think, kind of what helps to make me a little bit more well-rounded and trying to be able to look out for those typical mistakes, common mistakes that people might make coming maybe from a corporate background or something like that. I also like to make sure that everything that I do is customized, right? I don't want to give you advice that's cookie-cutter. We have an amazing program. It's our Soar Mastermind group coaching program where we have eight different brands and I work with them for six months straight.
During that program, I create a marketing plan for each member. And so it's crazy to me because each marketing plan will look very, very different. One brand, I might tell them, hey, I think you should be doing PR. And the other one, I might tell them, I don't think you should waste any money. Please do not do any PR, right? So it just kind of depends on what the brand is, again, what their goals are, and what they really want to achieve.
Glynis Tao
And what types of fashion brands do you typically work with?
Christina Daal
I work with all different types of products, even non-fashion products. Everyone is like, well, I'm doing a medical product or I had a lady that was creating covers for dentist chairs, right? So things that are not even a typical fashion product, if you're making any kind of sewn product or even a non-sewn product, I mean, we've had people that were just starting like a stationary business or candle business, right? It's not anything to do with fashion or apparel, but it's a product that they're making, right? And now they want to sell it primarily online, but also wholesale.
So the majority of our customers would say 99% of them all want to sell e-commerce. And then I would say at least 50% of them want to do wholesale business as well. And so we work with both startups, meaning you have nothing, maybe just an idea, all the way to brands that are already doing six and seven figures and helping them scale from there.
Glynis Tao
So we're going to move into your coaching approach and services. Can you walk us through your signature coaching or marketing framework and what does that client journey look like?
Christine Daal
Yes. So let's talk about the signature coaching method first. We have a method that we've developed, what I like to call the no product fashion line method. And so basically we'll teach you how to start building your audience before you even have a product. Everyone seems to want to do it the reverse. They focus on building the product and building the website and then they launch and they hear crickets and they wonder why. And I'm like, that's because you didn't focus on the marketing.
And so we'll teach you how to drive traffic to your website, build your email list, grow your social media following all before you even have a product. And literally we have clients that are launching their Shopify stores in the top 17 to 23% of all Shopify stores ranked for traffic the same week that they launch because they're following our system and they literally have no product. So they're launching without any product and they're still beating out the other 90% of stores on Shopify. So it's really amazing to see that it does work and I can see that you're laughing Glynis because you know this is how all these brands are right?
Glynis Tao
I know that's way most typically how most brands do it right? Yeah, and I just yeah, that's what I love about you and how you know you have no product launch process, right? Yeah, I've seen brands make that mistake all the time. They like invest in so much inventory before they've even validated their business idea
Christine Daal
Yeah. I cringe every time I see it happen. So I always tell people like, do it, give yourself at least six to nine months, if not a year, to really build up that traffic before you launch. And trust me, once you have customers dying to get what it is that you want, you're going to be in such a better position than if you didn't do it that way and you did it the reverse. And so if you want to learn more about our no product fashion line method, at the end, I'll tell everyone how to get a free video training that explains it in detail. So that's kind of our signature coaching method.
On the marketing agency side, again, our signature framework, I would say, is just being holistic, right? When it comes to digital marketing, I like to say that it all works together, right? Kind of like trying to lose weight. If you went to the gym, but then you ate pizza and chicken wings and hot dogs and all this horrible junk food all the time, right? You're probably not gonna lose as much weight just by going to the gym. But if you ate right, if you got good sleep, if you weren't so stressed out, right? All these other things, they all kind of work together for the whole, right?
So my approach to digital marketing is that same thing. I want to see everyone, if possible, do as many things as they can. Social media, email, SMS, blog writing, SEO, live shopping, paid ads, PR celebs, influencers, UGC. Let's do it all if we can, if we have the time and budget resources. If not, then we can at least pare down and see what's going to be the best strategies for your brand, at least in the beginning, until we can see what works. Because again, what works for one brand may not work for another brand for various different reasons. And so that's kind of my marketing approach when it comes on the marketing agency side.
Glynis Tao
That really makes sense to take that tailored approach because not all businesses are the same. What are some common mistakes that you see fashion entrepreneurs making when they first come to you?
Christine Daal
Yes. I have seen so many mistakes. I've seen people waste so much money, like tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars. And unfortunately, sometimes they come to me and it's too late because now they're out of money, right? So hopefully you haven't made a lot of those monetary mistakes and we can really help you. But I would say if I had to narrow down maybe the top three mistakes, I would say the first one is they waste a lot of time and money on the wrong coach or the wrong agency, right?
So I always say try to work with a coach who actually gets you results. Compliments are nice. We get compliments all the time. Christine, your webinar was so informative, or I really liked how you strategically laid it all out. Those are really nice things, but compliments don't make you money. Results make you money right at the end of the day. So make sure you're working with a coach that actually gets results. Make sure you're also working with a coach who has the experience of where you want to go. So did they have their own line?
Did they work in the industry? Different things like that, right? And then just watch out who you're taking advice from to make sure that they're not biased, right? There's a lot of people who maybe they started out as a manufacturer and now they offer coaching on the side. Well, their main business is manufacturing, right? So when you come to them and you say, have $50,000 to start a fashion line, they're going to easily tell you, well, great, spend $40,000 on manufacturing, right?
They know they can suck you into that versus spend $40,000 on coaching or something like that. So because we're a one-stop shop, I think it's really easy for me to not be biased. And that's one of the reasons primarily that we offer so many services because I want to make sure I can give you that unbiased opinion. I can tell people, hey, I don't think you really need one-on-one coaching. Maybe you need to put your money into influencer marketing, or maybe you need to put your money into social media, or whatever it is because we now offer all of these services. So that's, think, the first number one mistake.
Second one is, I think, undervaluing community. So yes, having a coach is great, but a coach is one person. If I have a community of other fashion brands that are all on the same level or even a greater level than I am, right, I now have multiple people's advice that I can now take in versus just one person's advice, right? Because I'm only one person. I only have one experience, one background, one set of perspectives, right? But now I have 10 people's perspectives. So it's so great to be in a community. Can bounce ideas off each other. You can get feedback on designs. You can see what marketing methods are working for one versus the other. You can do co-branded giveaways and shoutouts. It's literally a game changer. So see any way you can be part of a community. Everything that we do, all of our programs all have a community aspect and that's why.
And then the third mistake I would say is trying to do everything yourself. I think people in the beginning, they want to save money, maybe they don't have a huge budget and they're like, I'll just do everything myself. And I found after working with probably close to over a thousand brands at this point that sometimes it's better if we just handle some of the things for you, right? And so that's why we wanted to become a full service marketing agency because sure, I can teach you what to do on Instagram, but if you don't have the mindset for it, if you don't have the time for it, it's sometimes easier and faster for me to just do it for you, right? I have a team, they have our system in place, they know what to do. It's just 10 times easier for us to kind of handle some of that stuff and for you to focus on what you do best, which nine out 10 times is usually the creative side, right?
Definitely try not to do everything yourself.
Glynis Tao
I think that's really great advice. Just to recap the three things that you said, the three comments that you see are like, first one is they're spending way too much money, maybe on the wrong thing. Secondly, not having a community of supporters behind them. And then thirdly is that they're trying to do everything themselves.
Christine Daal
Yeah, definitely.
Glynis Tao
And so you also offer production and design services and marketing. Like, why do you choose to provide such a full spectrum solution? And you sort of had already talked about this, but just maybe if you want to elaborate.
Christina Daal
So again, we like to say that we're a one-stop shop, and it's so that we can remain unbiased. I want to make sure that when you come to me, you are spending your money in the right places, because as we just discussed, not having enough money, or I should say running out of money, is the number one thing that I see all the time that prevents brands from succeeding.
So I want to make sure, and that's why every client I work with, whether you're a one-on-one client or you take one of our online programs, the very first step is budget. Like we need to talk about what is a realistic budget for you. Look at your bank account, right? If you have someone helping you, your parents, your husband, this, that, whatever, right? How much are they really realistically looking to put in, right? You're taking money from your job. What on a monthly basis can you contribute, right? And where do you need to be to walk away from your job? Because nine out 10 times, most of the people do have a full-time job and their goal is to eventually walk away. And so people think, oh, well, you know, I make $100,000 in my job, so I just need to make $100,000 in my business. Well, that's actually not true because you need to make yourself a salary of $100,000. If your business made $100,000, you're not taking a salary of all that money, right? That's the gross, not the net. So we really need to see how much does the business really need to produce, right, in order to pay yourself that salary.
And so, yeah, it's just the number one reason is so that we can remain unbiased. And I've just found so many other marketing agencies and companies that just all they care about is their own bottom line. They don't really care about helping other people. And so they'll steer you in the wrong direction. They'll, you know, show stats that are a little bit tweaked, you know, to make it look like everything's going really great. Meanwhile, that's not really what's happening in the back end.
And I'll be clear that we don't do everything in-house. So we do partner with some other marketing agencies or service providers like yourself, Glynis, right? We partner with you for SEO because I know if I have a resource that's the best in the business, I'm just going to go to that person. Why would I start my own SEO service when I already know Glynis is the person for SEO? I'm going to send everybody to her.
Right? So we don't do everything in house. I would say probably 70% we do in house and then the other 30% we outsource to other agencies and other providers like yourself. But a lot of it we do in house because it's the control factor too. I like to make sure that my clients are well taken care of and they're treated well and everything is going to go smoothly.
Glynis Tao
Yeah, because at the end of the day, it's all your reputation that's on the line. Right? That comes back to your name, your brand, your business, and even it matters to which referral partners that you work with as well. Cause you want to make sure that they will deliver and stand behind, you know, your brand's name and quality. So that's what I really love about you. then
Christine Daal
Exactly.
Glynis Tao
Yeah, the fact that you have an unbiased view and you're really looking out for the best interests of the client and what's best for them.
Christina Daal
Yes, because at the end of the day, if they succeed, I succeed, right? If you do good, you only make me look better. If you don't do good, I'm not going to look so good, right? So it's kind of I'm shooting myself in the foot, if you don't succeed. So it is in my best interest to help you succeed as much as possible.
Glynis Tao
So let's talk about some of these clients' success stories. Let's dive into one of your client case studies. Can you share a case study that you're especially proud of? And can you tell us about a brand you helped, where they were before and what changed after working with you?
Christina Daal
Yes, absolutely. So one of my favorite case studies is a long-time client of mine. I started working with him back in 2019 and at the time he was making $500,000 in sales, so pretty good. But the problem was he had $600,000 in expenses. So he was in the red, right? He was not profitable. And so the first thing I wanted to do was we got to make you profitable like before we even tried to increase your sales. So we reduced a lot of his operating expenses literally by $100,000 working together. And then at the same time, we actually were able to double his online sales. So he was doing wholesale and online at the time. So we doubled his online sales. And then that essentially put him in the black, which was amazing. And he was profitable for the first time he ever was in his business.
Even better was one month after finishing working together, he had a six figure month, which was his highest earning month that he ever had, you know, after implementing all the strategies that we taught him. And so we've been working together off and on over the years back in like 2020, 2022, we did a lot of digital marketing services for him. We helped him really grow his IG. I think his IG is up to like 14,000 now.
And then in 2023, he hit seven figures, excuse me, and we started working together again because he had hired an outside marketing agency and he wasn't happy with them. So he came back to us. We started doing more digital marketing for him and literally his site conversion rate was at a 1.3. It went to 3.96, so almost four, which is incredible because average site conversions are really only one to 3%. His abandoned cart rate dropped. He was at 65%. It went to 47%.
His AOV increased, his repeat customer rate increased, and his sales were up by 127%. So again, more than double. And that literally was all within four months of just doing a little bit of coaching and some of our digital marketing services. So that was really, really amazing to see that transformation, right? Here was a customer, had a horrible experience with another marketing agency. We came in, we took over, right? And the numbers just drastically changed.
But I think the best part, the cherry on top, was that in the beginning of 2024, he had hired three coaches, so myself included plus two other coaches. And we were all kind of a little bit overlapped but a little bit different backgrounds and experiences, right? Don't ask me why he hired all three of us, but that's what he wanted to do. And by the end of 2024, I was the only coach left, meaning he had fired the other two. And I took that as a really big compliment.
Because for someone to say, you know, I had three and now Christine's the only one left, right? I was like, that has got to be the highest, you know, praise and testimony that I've ever received from anyone. So I was super, super proud of that and just awesome. I love working with him. I love seeing the transformation. We're still working together until this day, six years later, right? And it's just been amazing to see his business grow the way that it has.
Glynis Tao
Oh, that sounds amazing. I love that story. Do I know this client?
Christine Daal
Yes. You were part of that success.
Glynis Tao
I feel so good. Yeah, that client was great to work with.
Christine Daal
Yes, yes, he's amazing.
Glynis Tao
And he really takes the recommendations that you give seriously and you know, will do all the things.
Christine Daal
He's coachable. He's coachable and willing to learn.
Glynis Tao
He is coachable. And that's important, right? Yes. a coaching client as well, like they have to be coachable. Do you ever turn people down?
Christine Daal
Yes. If they just happen to be, if they're not the right thing. Absolutely. I will. I will tell people, you're not listening to what I'm telling you. I don't know why you're paying me. You should just let us do it, like either hire us to do the digital marketing stuff ourselves or, you know, we need to cut our ties and that's it because otherwise I'm just wasting your time. Like you're spending money but you're not even listening to what I'm telling you to do. So you're never going to succeed. And then again, you're going to make me look bad which defeats the whole purpose, right? Yeah, I have definitely turned clients down or stopped working with them because of that reason.
Glynis Tao
So you share a little bit of details in terms of growth metrics, sales, revenue, not exactly revenue numbers, but conversions and stuff. Can you, it's up to you if you want to share specific results such as sales growth, wholesale deals or e-commerce metrics that show the impact of your work.
Christine Daal
Yeah, definitely. I think the biggest one, obviously helping a brand go from zero to 1 million in one year was by far the biggest jump, right? That's obviously not normal. Everyone should not expect those types of results,
Glyinis Tao
Is that possible for everybody?
Christine Daal
No, it is not possible for everyone. She did have a huge budget to start out, right? I was also responsible for putting together the entire team of people, right, from the designer to the pattern maker to the sales rep, like everything I put together for her. And a large part of it was wholesale, so it wasn't just online sales. Now, I will say as far as online sales, we've definitely helped double people's revenue. We've helped triple people's revenue. In just like two months, I helped triple one customer's revenue.
We have brands that went from $100,000 to $300,000 in just a year. As far as other stats, I have a client that went from having a repeat customer rate of maybe 40%, which is already a really high repeat customer rate. Like I always tell people, if you can have a repeat customer rate around 20 to 25, you're doing pretty good. She already had 40, which was amazing. She ended up having 80,000 by the time we were done working together. I mean, 80%, excuse me.
So she doubled her repeat customer rate, which is the highest I've ever seen. I've never seen anyone get 80%. I think the highest conversion rate we helped a client get was 6%, which is also super high. What else can I share? We had one client that got a $30,000- $40,000 increase in revenue just from one pricing strategy that I gave her. Like one little tip, one little tip that I gave her and she was like, oh my gosh, we just increased our revenue in one month. $30,000 to $40,000. I was like, that's amazing.
Email sales. People don't talk a lot about email sales, but I always tell people, your email needs to be making you money. When you send an email out, an e-blast out to your list, it should bring in dollars, right? And so we had a brand that was averaging $2,500 per email that she would send out. She went from $2,500 to $10,000 per email. That was a huge, huge increase.
So yeah, we've seen a lot of different things. I talked about abandoned car rates dropping, site conversion rates going up. We've had a lot of different success stories. Even just aside from e-commerce, going back to the confidence side, again, because I'm so holistic and I like to look at your mental health and your mindset and confidence and all this different stuff, even on the confidence side, we had a brand that she finally felt the confidence to start hiring more seamstresses and expanding her team. And then that allowed her to now take on more orders because she was turning away business because she wasn't able to fulfill orders. But she didn't have the confidence to think that she could actually hire a good seamstress, right? So even just having a confidence increase, right, can affect the bottom line of your business.
We had another client who was literally part of our Soar Mastermind program, she connected with another designer. She didn't feel confident in her own design capabilities, believe it or not. So she wasn't really a designer by heart, but just wanted to start this business for other reasons. And so she connected with another designer, and hired that designer to be her designer. And now she felt like, now I have actually really good designs, which then gave her the confidence to start reaching out to stores, which then she got her first wholesale order, right? So even just having that boost in confidence can really help your bottom line, which people don't think about or want to talk about maybe, but it does affect the bottom line of your business. So that's also been amazing to see, just people's confidence go up.
Glynis Tao
Yeah, so besides just the numbers, sales, revenues, but also you get the benefit of, like you said, building the confidence as well, which really does affect your bottom line in terms of how much confidence you have with your business and brand.
I want to ask you, what do your most successful clients have in common in terms of mindset or business habits?
Christine Daal
That's a good one. So mindset wise, I always like to say my key phrase is do whatever it takes. And I would say my successful clients definitely have that attitude, right? They're willing to do whatever it takes. If they have a newborn baby, they're staying up till 3am, you know, after they put that baby down, right? And they're working on their business, right? Or they're breastfeeding while they're working on their laptop and watching a YouTube video or something, right? So they have that mindset that they're willing to do whatever it takes.
I think they also have the mindset that again, they know they can't do everything well, right? A good, successful business person knows their strengths and their weaknesses. And so if I know I'm really great at design but I'm not really good at numbers, well, then I better outsource all the number stuff, right? I better hire a bookkeeper and an accountant and somebody to look at my Google Analytics and all the nitty gritty back end of my ads and dashboards and all this stuff because that's not my strategy. That's not my strength, right? It's doing all of that kind of stuff. And so I think that they have the mindset that I do what I do well and the other things I outsource because yeah, sure, you can take the approach that you can strengthen your weaknesses, but the amount of time and effort it would take for you to get good at something that you're not good at, whereas you could just outsource it, you're gonna be far further ahead, right? So much faster if you just simply outsourced it. So I think they kind of have that kind of mindset for sure. And what was the second part of your question? What mindset and what?
Glynis Tao
Habits.
Christine Daal
Habits, yeah, kind of the same thing. Guess habits would be willing to wake up early, willing to go to bed late, taking care of yourself. I think again, having that holistic approach, most of them work out or do some type of exercise because they understand when you're getting the blood flowing, your brain's gonna work better and you're gonna be more effective at your job or your work, right? So I think they have a very holistic approach to how they take care of themselves and they prioritize self-care. right, knowing that, this is going to affect my business, right? They maybe, you know, have a very organized workspace or, you know, a home that's not super cluttered, right, because they understand that that clutter is not going to affect their mind, which now affects their work, etc., etc. So I would say, yeah, those are probably the things that a lot of my successful clients have in common.
Glynis Tao
And when a client says, I have no idea how to grow my online sales, where do you usually start?
Christine Daal
That's a good question. I would say I usually start by telling them and explaining to them that it's a numbers game, right? So everyone's seen the movie, you know, Jerry Maguire where he's like, show me the money, right? I feel like I'm Jerry Maguire, but I'm like, show me the numbers. And so I tell people like how much website traffic, how many people are visiting your website every day, how many people are on your email list, how many people on your social media following, right?
I just need those three stats, basic, right, to then be able to tell you how much revenue you're making. And of course, your average order value, four stats, right, is all I really need. And I can tell you how much revenue you're going to make, right? So it is a numbers game. And I think when people start to understand the more left side brain, analytical side of things, number side of things, versus being so right brain and criteria, then they really start to see like, this is actually kind of like a game.
Like we can have fun with this, right? Like let's see how high we can get our website traffic. Let's see how high we can get our social media. Let's see how high we can get our email, right? Can we increase our average order value? And all you have to do is just play around with the numbers a little bit, right? And you can see how drastic your revenue will change.
We've created this amazing spreadsheet. It's literally called the How to Leave Your 9 to 5 Spreadsheet. That's literally what I call it. All you have to do is plug in those three numbers. It's got all the stats and everything else, those four numbers with your AOV and it will tell you how much you need to make in order to leave your 9 to 5 job. And it's not 100% foolproof, of course, but it's interesting to just play around with it and see, you don't really want to be on social media? Great. Well, then let's focus on email and website rather than social media, right? And just tweaking a couple of things here and there can drastically increase your revenue at the end of the day.
Glynis Tao
It's really unique, I think, with what we do in terms of working with mostly creatives, designers, who I find a lot of them are scared of the numbers. Yeah. Don't really want to look at the numbers. Yes. A lot of the time I find they just go by gut feeling, which is not good, right? Like, how do you feel about that? So I think you and I are similar in that way in terms of what I call it.
I call myself a logical creative in which I have this balance of left brain or right brain. And that's how I'm able to do SEO because I can, you know, still have the creativity. Yeah, technical, but also requires some creativity at the same time. And this is the stuff that I love to do. And so you seem to be very numbers oriented as well, but you're also a designer. So do you find that to be challenging?
Christine Daal
Yes, yeah, it's simply challenging with clients because they are typically designers by heart, right? That's what motivated them to start their line. Yes, they probably want to make money too at the end of the day, right? But you can make money with anything. You could go make money with real estate. You could go invest in the stock market. You could do Bitcoin. You could do it, right? They chose this industry because it's their passion. It's what they love to do because they are creative people. But numbers can be creative. I agree with you on that side of it.
Glynis Tao
So yeah, we were just talking about balancing left brain, right brain, technical, with the creative side of things. Because I know with like my work, SEO, and a lot of times like when I talk to brand owners and designers, they know it's important, but they're afraid. And they're like, when I talk about the technical stuff, they kind of just freeze up and they don't know what to do about it. And they're kind of like, yeah, well, I'll just think about that later, which is necessarily a good idea for them. I'm like, yeah, you know, as a business owner, if you want to just strictly design and create products, you can go work for somebody else. That would be your sole job. But as a business owner, you do need to know both. Yeah, you have to be creative, but you also need to know the numbers.
Christine Daal
Exactly. And the business owners or most successful business owners, I will say, make decisions based on numbers, right? Not based on, I just have a gut feeling that everyone's going to want this bright pink fuchsia dress of mine. It's like, no, did they buy anything else from you in the past that looked like that? Did they buy anything bright pink before? Did they buy any bright colors before? we all, every decision that you make as a business owner should be based on some kind of stat or data. Otherwise, you're just throwing spaghetti at the wall hoping something sticks. I mean, how is that going to help you achieve your success, right?
Glynis Tao
Exactly. Yes, I agree with you. So the fashion industry is changing fast with AI, sustainability, DTC shifts. What do you think fashion founders should focus on right now to stay competitive?
Christine Daal
Yes, so there is a lot going on. We have a lot of disruption with the rising tariffs, labor shortage shortages, the sustainability, environmental pressures. And really, we also have a very, for people that aren't familiar with the fashion industry, we have an antiquated manufacturing model that literally hasn't changed in over 80 years. So there's a lot of disruption going on, but I always say disruption equals opportunity, right? If you're willing to adapt and pivot, you can take advantage of so many things during the disruption.
So I would say there's three things to focus on. The first thing a brand should focus on is personalization and not the kind of personalization that you're probably thinking of, but personalization through a community first type marketing. So rather than focusing on, just need to acquire customers, as many customers, keep them coming, more, more, more, more, more, right? Focus on building that community within your customer relationships, right? Focus on keeping that customer as a long-term customer and raising your lifetime value versus just getting a one-time transaction, right?
So I want ongoing relationships, not just that one-off transaction. And so helping them feel, you know, emotionally invested in your brand, whether that's through your identity, your story, your successes, turning those customers into co-creators, right? Can they help you create and design the next line? Of course, they're going to be fully invested. If they feel like, my gosh, I helped design their next t-shirt. I picked that color or I picked that print or I did this or whatever it is.
And so really helping them be part of the process and then using real-time feedback loops, right? So how can I get my customers telling me what they want, what they like, what they don't like before I have to go and invest in all this inventory and all this production and all this stuff, right? So almost having a live focus group, 20. And that can just be through like a private Facebook group. It can be through your SMS. It can be on IG. Like, you can do this very easily. It doesn't take a lot of, you know, time and effort. But it always stood out to me because we've done a lot of case studies. They're all on our YouTube channel where I've studied brands and what made them successful. And a lot of the times, 9 out of 10 times, I would say a lot of them listened to what their customers wanted and then they just gave it to them. So if your customers want blue, just give them blue. I don't care if your favorite color is pink. Your customers want blue. You better give them blue, right?
So that's gonna be your way to success. And I think that personalization, community first type marketing is only gonna increase, right? We've seen like live stream shopping and all this stuff take over in China. It's only a matter of time before it really, really becomes mainstream over here. And even utilizing AI and 3D design and CAD tools and all these different things, right? There's so many tools out there. You can predict trends. You can predict your customer shopping behavior. There's so many new AI things out there. We even have a whole online course on how to use AI. can tell everyone about how to get it at the end. But I think that connection with your customers is gonna be super, super important. So that's number one.
The second thing I would say is changing the way you manufacture. I think the number one thing everyone's coming to me right now, my gosh, is my manufacturer in China or my manufacturer's in this country and the tariffs are going up and I need to move, right? And so even with this whole manufacturing model that we have, it's just very antiquated. Like I said, it's been 80 years, we still do it the same way. Think about how fast your phone changes. And we still make, the way we make clothing hasn't really changed in 80 years, right? It's been a long time.
And so I think there's going to be a rise in new ways of manufacturing, whether that's on-demand manufacturing or some other type of new way. I don't necessarily think it's going to be robots, even though there are some snowbots out there already trying to do some stuff. Pre-orders are still going to continue, of course, but I also think it wouldn't be a bad idea if people started to learn how to sew because there's a shortage of laborers, especially sample makers.
No one right now is teaching their daughter. I'm not going to teach my four-year-old daughter. You know, you need to learn how to sew so you can grow up to be a seamstress, right? That's not like an aspiring job that anybody really wants. And unfortunately, because American manufacturers are not paying their people, you know, high wages, they're paying the minimum wage or slightly above, they're finding that they can go to other industries like the weed industry, right? They can pick weed on a weed farm for $30 an hour versus getting paid $20 an hour to sew. So we're losing all of our laborers.
And so great that you want to bring American manufacturing back to America, so do I. But if we don't have people to sow the stuff, how is it happening, right? So it's a problem. I used to tell people, you know, 10 years ago when I first started my business, you don't need to learn how to sew. You can just hire a sample maker, hire a manufacturer. But now, in 2025, I think it is going to be important that people learn how to sew. And I think it's going to be a much more valuable skill as a business owner in case anything happens with your factory. So I would say that number two is changing the way you manufacture.
And then the third thing I would say is really getting serious about sustainability. I think that it's going to start to move away from a trend. Now, sustainability has been very trendy. Oh, I'm a sustainable brand and who knows what sustainability even means. There's like a gazillion different, you know, ways to look at your brand being sustainable or not. But I think it's going to start to move away from a trendy thing to literally a mandate, especially when it comes to Europe. Europe has already been ahead of us as far as food regulations and things like that. And I think they're going to be ahead of us as far as the sustainability regulations.
And because we're so far behind on reaching all of our goals, the sustainable goals that were set for, I think, 2030 was the year they wanted to hit all these, you know, sustainable goals. We're so far behind reaching all those goals that I think at some point it's going to become like a mandate. Just like you can't I mean, I live in the New York City, you know, New Jersey area and I can't go to the grocery store and get a plastic bag anymore. You have to use a reusable bag. It is now forced. You are being forced to use reusable bags because they've realized plastic is bad for the environment, so on and so forth, right? So it's now become a mandate. And so I think that for fashion, it's going to eventually become a mandate.
So I think US brands, even though you're US-based and not Europe-based, need to start adopting this a little bit early on because then they're going to have an advantage and they're going to have an advantage globally. So I would say those are the three things that brands should really focus on right now.
Glynis Tao
That sounds great. So you've built a business that empowers so many female founders. What's been the most rewarding part of that journey?
Christine Daal
There's so many rewarding things. I always tell people I love what I do and I have to pinch myself sometimes that I get to do what I do because I really do truly love what I do and not many people can say that about what they do for a living. But I would say definitely helping brands feel confident and whether that's through helping them achieve success, helping them make money, helping them overcome negative mindsets, right? Seeing someone's confidence level go up is really, really rewarding because again, it's about their soul, right? It's about like, what really makes them who they are
I also really love working with moms. I think one, because I am a mom, but also two, because it's great to be able to show your children, hey, you can do something that you love too. You can start a business from scratch. You can take a risk. You can do something that's not ordinary, right, and achieve something great. And now, not only are you doing it for yourself, but you're leaving a legacy for your kids, for your grandkids, like if your business takes off, they can now take over eventually when you pass on, right, and continue your legacy for you. And so you're changing your family generation to come. Like, you're literally leaving a legacy, which is, I think, one of the most amazing things.
And then I would say it's also really rewarding just, I think, as a Christian to be able to weave my own faith into my business and to be able to share about Jesus and just what he's been able to do in my life and different things. It's been amazing to be able to work with other Christians. I think a lot of people are drawn to me who are Christian. They want to work with a Christian coach. So I do get a lot of Christians working with me. And so that's kind of a blessing as well, to be able to just weave my faith into what it is that I do.
Glynis Tao
What's next for Fashion Angel Warrior? Do any upcoming programs, events, or new service launches?
Christine Daal
So we have, I don't know, we always have a lot of stuff going on. I feel like I can barely keep track. But we definitely have some amazing promotions that I wanna share. I don't know if you want me to share them now or I can share them at the end. So that's up to you, Glynis.
Glynis Tao
Yeah, you can share them at the end because I know you had mentioned a few different things and maybe some offers, but I guess maybe sort of what if you want to just kind of tell us about what's coming up for you, anything exciting on the horizon.
Christine Daal
So I think our business, Fashion Angel Warrior, has also gone through its own transition and pivot over the last couple of years. I'm now a mom of two small children, which is a lot to juggle. And they're ages four and six, although my son will be seven soon. And it's a really great time period in their life that I don't want to miss. And so I didn't really fully enjoy the baby years. It was a little difficult and challenging for me. And so now that they're not really babies and toddlers anymore, they're actually a lot of fun to hang out with. And so I've kind of been taking a lot of time off, honestly, from Fashion Angel Warrior because I do want to spend it with my family. I do want to really focus on them.
And so the great thing is I do have a small team in place that can handle a lot of stuff. It's not like if you email us, you won't get a response or something, right? We're still here. We're still active. We're still going. But if you've noticed on our Instagram, we are not posting on Instagram anymore these days. I have taken a very slow media approach and I really, I think value the information and just we've had so much client successes that I feel like I've kind of reached the status that I don't need to give away free information.
There's over 150 blogs on our website. There's over 100 different YouTube videos. We've done over 100 Facebook lives that are all recorded and available for people to watch. We have free webinars. We have free cheat sheets. We have so many free things out in the interwebs that I've kind of reached the point that I don't really care about producing more free stuff. I know that that's what content creators are telling you you have to do. And to be a thought leader, you know, you have to constantly pump out more information.
To be honest, it doesn't fit my lifestyle anymore. And so we've kind of taken the approach that what we have to offer is really valuable. If you see the value, you'll see the results, you'll see the value, and you'll want to hire us and pay us. And that's kind of been our approach. And so we've kind of scaled back on a lot of our digital marketing. We've scaled back a ton on social media. I'm not even traveling as much to do trade shows or really that much anymore.
And thankfully, you know, we have a steady stream of clients and income coming in that I don't really need to do all that stuff anymore. So I'm kind of, you know, I'm kind of enjoying my kids and kind of taking a little bit of a break and, you know, just focusing on myself and my family and that sort of thing.
Glynis Tao
And you be. You did a lot of work in those early years building up your business and now it's time to reap those rewards. You deserve it. Yeah. Finally, what's one powerful piece of advice you'd leave with our audience of fashion entrepreneurs today?
Christine Daal
Yes, one piece of advice, this is always tricky, right? Because there's so many areas I would love to tell you about. But I think for right now with everything going on and just the fact that the future of fashion is changing, I would say you've got to change, otherwise you're going to be left behind. The best brands, the most successful brands, always learn how to pivot or adapt or change when there's any kind of disruption, recession, right? Whatever is going on, the pandemic. And so just keep growing, keep changing, and never stop learning.
Learning is so, so important. I am a lover of all things learning. I loved school. I love taking online courses. I love learning from other people. Even you, Glynis, I watch your videos and your podcasts, right? There's so much to learn out there. Never think that you know it all and you're done learning because there is just so much to learn out there and it's exciting. So yeah, that would be.
Glynis Tao
Yeah, never stop learning. I'm a lifelong learner myself. And I learned so much from you today, Christine. I mean, we've known each other for years now. I can't even remember.
Christine Daal
Been a while, yes.
Glynis Tao
It's been a while. And I just feel like I've learned so much about you today by talking to you. Yeah. Yeah, this is. Yeah, it really is. It's just nice to connect with another business owner and fashion professional. So where can people find you if they want to get in touch with you?
Christine Daal
Yes, so the best thing, you can always email us. That's the best method. I don't check DMs very much.
Just for all of you podcast listeners, we have a bunch of different things. I mentioned some of them briefly. You can grab our free six-part video training series that explains in detail our no-product fashion line method.
You can grab our online course, How to Use AI for Fashion Ecom Brands. Literally, it's going to save you like 10 to 20 hours per week learning all of these different AI tricks. It's normally $129, but just for the listeners, I'm going to give you $50 off, so you pay only $79. And then if you are a startup, meaning you have not yet reached $100,000 in sales in your very first year, we have our all course bundle, which you can learn more about. That's an amazing hybrid group coaching program.
Normally $2,495, but I'm giving everyone $1,000 off. And I'm going to throw in four bonuses, including two private one-on-one sessions with me valued at $1,000. So I typically charge $500 an hour for coaching, as you can see, based on the results. So that's why I charge that much. And I'm going to give two private one-on-one sessions included with that and $1,000 off. So you're basically getting $2,000 for free by signing up for the all-course bundle.
And then if you're an established business, you can always sign up for our group coaching program. The Soar Mastermind, it's literally the only intimate group coaching program specific to fashion brands that exists. And so all that information is right there, fashionangelwarrior.com/glynis
Glynis Tao
Okay, awesome. And we'll put that link in the show notes as well as your contact information on your website and email address. So thank you, Christine, for sharing your knowledge, wisdom, and behind the scenes of what it really takes to grow a successful fashion brand with us today.
Christine Daal
Thank you, Glynis, so much for having you. It was so fun chatting.
In this episode, Glynis Tao discusses the importance of blogging for fashion e-commerce brands, emphasizing how high-quality content can enhance brand visibility and customer engagement. She outlines the key elements of effective blogging, including the need for SEO optimization and the creation of valuable, engaging content that resonates with the target audience. Glynis also shares real-life examples of successful blogging strategies and encourages brands to invest in a solid blogging approach to drive traffic and conversions.
Today we’re covering why blogging matters, what makes a good blog, and how you can use SEO to increase your visibility and boost conversions
Takeaways
Blogging is marketing—it’s not just about writing.
High-quality blogs can enhance brand visibility.
Every blog post should address a customer problem or question.
Start with your ideal customer’s pain points, then create content from there.
Most blogs fail to provide valuable content.
A good blog should educate, entertain or both.
High-quality blogs can rank in AI Overviews and traditional Google results.
Themes
What’s wrong with most fashion brand blogs today?
Many fashion e-commerce blogs are missing the mark—they’re bland, unhelpful, and offer little value to readers. This not only wastes time, but can actively erode trust in your brand. Instead of writing generic, keyword-stuffed posts, fashion brands need to create blogs that educate, entertain, and reflect their brand voice—just like a great product, your blog should feel satisfying and on-brand.
Why is blogging still one of the best marketing tools?
Blogging isn’t just content—it’s connection. Every blog post is a touchpoint that can build trust, drive traffic, and convert visitors into customers. With 56% of consumers making a purchase after reading a blog (according to Hubspot), fashion brands that skip this strategy are leaving money on the table.
How to brainstorm blog content that builds trust
Start with your customer’s pain points. What do they want to know? What problems can you help them solve? Use those answers to create content ideas that feel personal and useful. Think behind-the-scenes posts, styling tips, FAQs, and expert how-tos that align with your audience’s needs.
What makes a blog “AI-ready” and SEO optimized?
Good written content needs to be structured for search. For SEO success, focus on: one main keyword, 3–5 related keywords, strong title tags and meta descriptions, optimized images, internal links, and clean formatting. With tools like Google’s AI Overviews now surfacing top blog content, high-quality, search engine optimized posts have more visibility than ever.
A real-life example of a high-performing blog
In a real-life example, Nomi Designs’ blog post “Can You Wear Linen in Winter?” now ranks for 700+ keywords and appears in Google’s AI Overview. In just three months, it brought over 22,000 impressions and 500 clicks—all from one well-optimized, helpful post.
What should fashion brands do before publishing?
Don’t just write—strategize. Check that your blog content is helpful, original, and aligned with your brand. Ask: Is this solving a real problem for my customer? Does it reflect my voice and values? Does it help Google understand what my brand stands for?
Chapters
00:00 The Power of Blogging in E-commerce
00:48 Creating High-Quality Blog Content
05:38 Blogging as a Connection Tool
Transcript
Glynis Tao
Today we're diving into a powerful tool that many fashion ecommerce brands are underutilizing, that's blogging. If you've ever wondered whether blogging is really worth your time or how to make your blog posts work harder for your brand, then you want to stick around for this.
Welcome to Chase Your Dreams, a podcast for fashion entrepreneurs who want to build a purposeful and profitable clothing business so they can make a living doing what they love. I'm your host, Glynis Tao, an apparel business consultant and SEO specialist with 20 years apparel industry experience. I'm also a mom to a wonderfully energetic little boy named Chase.
Hi, I'm Glynis. I'm the founder and CEO of Chase Your Dreams Consulting, which is an apparel business consulting and online marketing agency that specializes in SEO and AI search optimization for e-commerce companies. I help fashion, beauty, and lifestyle e-commerce brands create optimized content and attract potential customers through organic search results.
Today, we're covering why blogging matters, what makes a good blog, and how you can use SEO to increase your visibility and boost conversions. So let's get into it.
Why are so many blogs missing the mark? Let's be real here. Most blogs out there are bland, forgettable, and do little to support the business behind them. They may have catchy titles, but once you click through, there's nothing valuable on the page. That's not just a wasted opportunity. It's damaging. Poor quality blogs can erode trust in your brand and waste your readers time. And in a space as competitive as fashion e-commerce, your blog can't afford to be stale.
Now imagine a blog that feels like a delicious meal, satisfying, informative, and totally on brand. That's what we're aiming for. A good blog should educate or entertain your audience, offer clear, actionable insights, reflect your brand voice, and leave the reader wanting more. These high-quality blogs become long-term assets in your sales funnel. They nurture your existing customers and attract new ones, all without being overtly salesy.
So how do you use blogging as a tool for business? Well, blogging isn't just about writing, it's marketing. Every post is a touch point. According to HubSpot, 56% of consumers have made a purchase after reading a blog post. That's real revenue potential. Your blog should address your customer's needs, offer genuine value, and reflect your expertise.
So start with your customer persona and dig deeper. What are their pain points? What do they care about? What solutions can you offer? Then use those answers to brainstorm content that builds trust and engagement.
To stand out, your blogs need flavor. And that means creative formats like interviews, behind the scenes features, and how-tos. Use engaging hooks such as stats, humor, or imagery. Also, thoughtful insights that add depth to your message. Blogging is more than just a writing task. It's storytelling, strategy, and relationship building rolled into one.
So how do you use SEO to track the right traffic? Once your content is optimized for people first, then it's time to optimize for search engines. So remember, always focus on your target audience, your ideal customer, and because you want to write high quality content that establishes your expertise, experience, and trustworthiness. So then you want to optimize for search engines.
You want to focus on one main keyword and five related ones. Have a strong keyword rich title tag and meta description. Include clear structures with headings, H1, H2 tags, bullet points, readable formatting. Make sure your images are optimized, and have some internal linking. Internal link your pages within each other, because search engines like Google reward high quality, helpful content. And with AI tools like Google's AI Overviews now pulling top blog content into search summaries, visibility potential is huge.
So just think about it, right? With AI Overviews, and AI mode, you have the opportunity to have your blog show up in those areas in AI overviews, as well as in the search engine results pages as well. There's multiple opportunities for your page, your blog, and your content to show up in all these areas within search, both in AI search and traditional search engines.
To give you a real life example, one of my clients, Nomi Design, had written a blog post titled, Can You Wear Linen in Winter? This blog ranks for over 700 keywords and appears in Google's AI overview. In just three months, it brought over 22,000 impressions and 500 clicks. That's the power of helpful, optimized content.
When you create helpful content that is written by people, for people, establishes your expertise, experience, authoritativeness and trust, then you have the ability to appeal to both AI search and traditional search engines. So think about, you know, the type of content that you produce. Is it helpful content? Is it original? Is it good quality? Does it solve a problem for your ideal customer? So in this example of Nomi Designs, they had written this blog article and seen an increase in the traffic to their website with the blog showing up both in AI overviews and in search engines and Google search.
So let's just wrap this up. Blogging isn't just about content, it's about connection. And if you want to increase traffic, build trust, drive more conversion, then it's time to invest in a solid blog strategy.
If you're ready to start creating content that actually brings traffic and converts, I invite you to visit the blog section of my website and you can read the full blog article on the benefits of blogging for business, which I will put the link to in the description.
As well, you can also sign up for my newsletter to get fresh tips, resources, and real world examples delivered straight to your inbox. And the link is also provided in the description. So I really hope that you found this information helpful. If you need help with putting together a content strategy, content creation, or a professional copywriter to help with producing high quality, high converting blogs, then I encourage you to book a call with me to get started on creating consistent website content today.
That's it for today's episode and thank you for tuning in to Chase Your Dreams. Keep creating, keep growing, and keep showing up for your business. Until next time.
In this episode, we chat with Nikki Dindo, founder of Spring Media Co., a boutique agency specializing in social media management, influencer marketing, and media relations. Nikki shares her journey through the fashion and PR industry, emphasizing the importance of authenticity, storytelling, and strategic branding. She discusses her experiences working with notable figures in PR and her approach to launching Spring Media Co. The conversation covers common mistakes in social media and PR, the process of developing a social media strategy, and actionable advice for fashion entrepreneurs.
About Nikki Dindo
With over a decade of experience leading digital strategy in both Vancouver and New York City, Nikki Dindo is a powerhouse in the world of PR, social media, influencer marketing, and event production. As the founder of Spring Media Co., she and her team helps brands show up with confidence, clarity, and creative impact online and off. From managing influencer campaigns for global brands to producing shows at New York Fashion Week, Nikki brings big picture thinking and hands-on experience to everything she does. She's also worked with luxury clients like Park Hyatt and built authentic connections that go far beyond algorithms. When she's not supporting founders and creators through her agency work, Nikki shares her expertise as a social media instructor at Blanche MacDonald, mentoring the next generation of digital talent.
Whether she's consulting from her hometown in Vancouver or creating content from a coffee shop in New York City, Nikki's all about empowering people to tell their stories well and build a brand that actually feels like them.
Don’t chase trends that don’t align with your brand values.
Select influencers based on audience alignment, not just reach.
Long-term partnerships perform better than one-off posts.
Track engagement that signals real connection—not just likes.
Short-form video is a powerful, low-cost way to grow.
Showing your face and sharing your story creates a deeper impact.
Interview themes
What are the biggest mistakes fashion brands make with social media?
Fashion brands often fall into the trap of doing more instead of doing better. Nikki Dindo highlights that many are spreading themselves too thin—trying to be on every platform, chasing trends that don’t fit, and outsourcing content before they've clarified their brand voice.
One of the most common mistakes is posting without a clear plan or strategy, which leads to inconsistent messaging and off-brand visuals. Others focus too much on vanity metrics like likes and follower counts, rather than measuring deeper engagement like shares, saves, DMs, and click-throughs. Influencer marketing is also often mishandled—brands choose influencers based on follower count instead of audience alignment or values fit, and rely on one-off posts instead of building meaningful, long-term partnerships. Most critically, many brands are afraid to show their human side. In a space where authenticity matters, hiding behind curated grids and avoiding founder-led storytelling makes it harder to build connection and trust.
What first steps should fashion brands take before posting to multiple platforms?
Many founders think they need to post more or be on every platform to succeed—but Nikki says that’s backwards. Before you start creating content or hiring help, you need to get clear on your brand’s voice, values, and audience. Without that foundation, nothing you post will stick. She advises fashion entrepreneurs to define their core messaging and brand visuals first, then build a system around it that allows for consistency without burnout.
How can agencies work with brands to create sustainable social strategies that actually work?
Nikki’s approach to social media strategy starts with listening—not posting. She begins every client relationship by doing a deep dive into the brand’s goals, challenges, and audience, followed by a full audit of current performance. From there, she builds a plan around strategic content pillars, brand voice alignment, and a calendar system the founder can actually keep up with. It’s not about posting more—it’s about posting with intention.
What are fashion entrepreneurs getting wrong about influencer marketing?
Too many brands chase vanity metrics or send out products without a clear plan. Nikki emphasizes the importance of selecting influencers whose audience actually matches your target market—and creating partnerships that feel long-term and values-aligned. She stresses the need for clear contracts, expectations, and approval processes so both the brand and the creator are set up for success. One post won’t cut it. Connection and consistency matter more.
How can a brand measure campaign success beyond likes and reach?
In 2025, Nikki encourages brands to track “resonance metrics” like saves, shares, DMs, and time on site. These indicators show that your content is making people pause, reflect, and act—not just scroll. She also looks for qualitative wins: customer feedback, press mentions, and partnership inquiries sparked by visibility. For Nikki, the best outcome is when a founder says: “I finally feel proud of how we’re showing up online.”
Where should fashion brands focus on when they have small marketing budgets?
If you’re in the early stages and resources are tight, Nikki’s advice is clear: invest in brand story and visuals first. Once you have that solid foundation, prioritize organic content—especially short-form video like reels or stories. It’s still one of the most effective free ways to build trust and get discovered. Then, consider partnerships with micro-influencers, like-minded brands, or a freelance strategist to help you stay consistent.
Why is showing your face oftentimes more powerful than paid ads?
Nikki sees it time and time again: one authentic, founder-led video outperforms a dozen polished posts. Her biggest advice? Stop hiding behind your grid. Fashion is personal—and people want to know why you started, how you design, and what you believe. When brands lead with heart and personality, they create emotional connections that build loyal communities—not just one-time customers.
Chapters
00:00 The Heart of Branding and Creativity
01:47 Nikki Dindo: A Journey Through Fashion and PR
05:56 Launching Spring Media Co.: A New Approach to PR
09:36 Lessons from Kelly Cutrone: Intensity and Clarity
13:36 Common Mistakes in Social Media and PR
17:30 Developing a Social Media Strategy: The Process
21:27 The Importance of Authenticity in Influencer Marketing
25:27 Case Study: Skip Hop Campaign Success
29:15 Finding the Right Influencers for Your Brand
33:03 Actionable Advice for Fashion Entrepreneurs
37:10 The Creative Influence of New York and Broadway
Transcript
Nikki Dindo
I get really lit up by brands and creatives with a strong point of view. Even if it's still messy or evolving, I just love it when there's heart and intention behind what someone is building and they just need a little bit of help bringing it to life in like a more refined and strategic way. So whether that's like fashion founders creating pieces with real meaning or a wellness brand that's actually grounded in science and care or a travel company that's telling stories that most people overlook or, you know, sharing destinations that are off the grid and more people need to know about.
But I'm especially drawn to people who have just really cared deeply about what they do, but maybe they just don't always know how to communicate that in a way that resonates online. And at the end of the day, I love working with good people, you know, cool people who's mission and values I stand behind and I just want to kind of help amplify that. And I also love working with founders and creatives who are just willing to be a little bit brave.
Glynis Tao
Welcome to Chase Your Dreams, a podcast for fashion entrepreneurs who want to build a purposeful and profitable clothing business so they can make a living doing what they love. I'm your host, Glynnis Tao, an apparel business consultant and SEO specialist with 20 years apparel industry experience. I'm also a mom to a wonderfully energetic little boy named Chase.
With over a decade of experience leading digital strategy in both Vancouver and New York City, Nikki Dindo is a powerhouse in the world of PR, social media, influencer marketing, and event production. She's the founder of Spring Media Co., a boutique agency that helps brands show up with confidence, clarity, and creative impact online and off. From managing influencer campaigns for global brands to producing shows at New York Fashion Week, Nikki brings big picture thinking and hands-on experience to everything she does. She's also worked with luxury clients like Park Hyatt and built authentic connections that go far beyond algorithms. When she's not supporting founders and creators through her agency work, Nikki shares her expertise as a social media instructor at Blanche McDonald, mentoring the next generation of digital talent.
Whether she's consulting from her hometown in Vancouver or creating content from a coffee shop in New York City, Nikki's all about empowering people to tell their stories well and build a brand that actually feels like them.
Welcome, Nikki. It's so nice to have you here today. Thanks for joining me on the podcast.
Nikki Dindo
Thank so much. So good to be here.
Glynis Tao
So you've built an amazing career in both Vancouver and New York City, leading digital strategy for brands across various industries. Can you take us back to the moment when you realized this was the path you wanted to pursue?
Nikki Dindo
My goodness, it was actually a complete accident. I worked in marketing. I went to university for marketing and I was a business major and thought I was going to go to law school though. And instead of doing that, went and worked on board a cruise ship for five years and came back and was a little bit lost and not entirely sure of where I wanted to go and what I want to do next.
And after kind of experimenting with a few different career options, I wound up going back to school for fashion marketing. And I actually intended to be a buyer. I thought maybe I wanted to have my own store. At the time I was seeing a lot of gaps in the retail strategy and the retail market in Vancouver and thought that that's what I wanted to do. But within my first month of being back in school, I got coached by our career counselor and executive team there. And they said, hey, we think you'd be a really good fit in the PR industry and they kind of placed me in a few different work opportunities and got my feet wet and I realized very quickly that they were right. And so I started my career in fashion PR and then very quickly pivoted over to social media marketing.
Glynis Tao
Do you specialize in any particular industry or niche? What drew you to fashion and lifestyle brands specifically?
Nikki Dindo
Yeah, so I specialize in consumer facing brands in the lifestyle space. So everything from fashion and beauty to baby and kids, travel and tourism, kind of anything that fits within that lifestyle space. I've also done lots of celeb brands, film and TV. So all over the map, but I did get my career start in fashion.
Glynis Tao
Okay, because you said you went to school for fashion marketing. Is that sort of the reason why you decided to also stay with fashion and working with fashion brands?
Nikki Dindo
And so immediately after I finished school, I moved to New York City and got an internship working for Kelly Cutrone. And I was producing runway shows for New York Fashion Week, which like as a girl who grew up on magazine culture, like my goodness, I think I have had been subscribed to InStyle magazine since I was 10 or 11 and was constantly saving all my fashion magazines and making cutouts and collages. It was an absolute dream come true to have gone from seeing runway shows in my magazines and then being behind the scenes and producing them all those years later.
Glynis Tao
Okay, so I know you mentioned that you had worked with the legendary Kelly Cutrone and I really want to get the meat behind that. Like what really happened? What was it like?
But before we get to that, sort of like what inspired you to launch Spring Media Co. and how does your agency's approach differ from traditional PR or digital firms?
Nikki Dindo
Yeah, honestly, spring was kind of born out of a mix of instinct and necessity. I'd been doing social media and brand work for others long before I officially launched anything. I had close to a decade of agency experience. I'd help friends with their businesses, jump in on passion projects, and I found myself kind of constantly drawn to that intersection of storytelling strategy and design.
And the actual spark came while I was on vacation in Bali and was talking to all these amazing women around me. I just realized how many brilliant founders and creatives and brands had so much heart behind what they were doing, but their online presence just didn't really reflect that. And, you know, I just kind of kept thinking that there's a real opportunity here to help be able to work with female founders and amplify their voices. And, you know, I saw how much more impactful their stories could be if their online presence kind of matched the soul of their business.
So it was a little bit of a slow build after I kind of had that first aha moment. But then I reached a point where, you know, I just wanted to stop treating something that I did on the side and start treating it like the creative business it deserved to be. So eventually I took that leap and that's how Spring Media Co came to life.
Yeah. And then how is my approach different? I think that was the second part of that. One of the biggest things that as a company that we prioritize, especially when working with fashion founders, is clarity, sustainability, and support. So we know that founders and brands and startups are juggling absolutely everything. And our goal isn't to add more to anyone's plate. We want to take things off of it. So we truly pride ourselves on being an extension of your team. I always tell people when I first meet them that I want them to think of us as being one of them.
Nikki Dindo
You know, I want to be on their weekly calls. I want to know what is happening and feel like I am one of them rather than an external agency partner that they send things to. I want to preemptively know what they're working on so that instead of me going to them to ask for more details, I already know what they need and I've already given them ideas and brought them options for how to execute it. So, you know, we're not really here to just help you post and land a few press hits. We're really here to help you think bigger, show up more consistently and feel like your brand is telling the story that you actually want to tell.
Glynis Tao
Amazing. So I'm going to go more into your process a little bit later, but let's just go back to the topic of working with Kelly Cutrone. So she's legendary and definitely a name that needs no introduction in the PR and fashion world. What was your experience like and what did you learn from her that still guides your work today?
Nikki Dindo
Man, working for Kelly was one of those wild, formative experiences that will probably stick with me forever. As you can guess, she is extremely intense, but I would say that her intensity is in the kind of way that really pushes you to rise to the occasion. It was very much a sink or swim work environment, but if you swam you were given so much responsibility and such an incredible opportunity to learn. I was pretty young when I started working with her and it was truly like being thrown into the deep end, but that's where I learned the most. You know, she's a force and being in her orbit, especially during fashion week was like bootcamp for the fashion and PR world. While I was there, she was also creating a brand and filming two television shows. So I also got to see the back end of so much of the industry with her.
In my responsibilities, I was largely in charge of coordinating backstage access for the runway shows at Fashion Week. So that meant working with press, talent, stylists, makeup artists, and all internal and external teams to make sure that everything ran smoothly behind the scenes. It was very fast paced. It was high pressure and full of last minute changes, but I absolutely loved it. That experience really taught me how to stay calm under pressure. It taught me how to be a problem solver and how to trust my instincts and communicate very clearly even when everything was moving a mile a minute and falling apart around me.
Another thing I learned while I was working with Kelly is I mean something that she's absolutely brilliant at is cutting through the noise. She knows exactly what a brand stands for and never tries to be everything to everyone. And that's something that really helped me shape how I think about storytelling today especially in a world where people are constantly scrolling. It's more so that I've learned the importance of having to be clear, bold, and unapologetic about your message because she was not, she was sometimes controversial, but she made news and she knew how to get a message out there.
Glynis Tao
Wow, that sounds like a really amazing experience. How long were you with her?
Nikki Dindo
Yeah, just about a year and I ran two seasons of runway shows for her.
Glynis Tao
And so how long were you in New York for?
Nikki Dindo
I stayed in New York after working with Kelly and I was there for just under five years, then came back to Vancouver and spent another kind of five years in Vancouver and then had an opportunity to go back to New York again and was working as head of digital for a PR agency in New York right up until the pandemic actually.
Glynis Tao
Okay, so that's really recent.
Nikki Dindo
Quite recent. And then, you know, as kind of pandemic things happen. And I loved, loved, loved going back there. I loved the team I was working with, the brands we were working with, but I kind of started freelancing just a tiny bit before and knew that that's kind of where my calling was. And then as the pandemic happened, it almost forced my hand a little bit. You know, we had so much indecision and didn't really know what was going to happen in the industry. And I was back in Vancouver, just kind of waiting it out. And, you know, all of a sudden a lot of brands needed to be online and amplify their online presence very quickly. And so I just kind of kept taking on more work and then needing to bring people onto the team. That's how Spring Media kind of really came to be. It was ultimately a pandemic baby that had been in my head for quite some time, but that really brought it to life in a new way that surpassed even what I had been expecting to do.
Glynis Tao
Wow, that's a great story.
Nikki Dindo
I love New York. It still feels like home and I'm always happy to hop on a plane for a quick work trip or even a photo shoot.
Glynis Tao
Yeah I lived there briefly, not as long as you did, but it's definitely very different, I guess, the pace there compared to Vancouver.
Many founders are overwhelmed with doing all the things and struggle with getting media attention. What's one mistake you often see fashion entrepreneurs make when it comes to social media or PR and how can they fix it?
Nikki Dindo
Yes. One of the kinds of mistakes that I see the most is that people are trying to do everything and be everywhere all at once. And I get it. There are so many platforms and we're constantly being told that we need to be posting five times a day on this platform, but also be on this platform. And don't forget this new emerging one. You want to be, you know, at the start of it. And I don't think that's necessary. I think what is most important is to really listen to your audience, know who they are, know where they are, and just really focus on a couple of platforms. Otherwise, you're going to spread yourself too thin.
Even if you have a team, trying to be successful and keep up with every single platform is going to be exhausting. You're going to get burnt out. Other parts of your business will suffer if you are spending your entire day, especially as a fledgling brand, you're just starting out. You don't have time to be filming TikToks all day long. Is it fun? Sometimes for some people. So I think it's better to kind of really understand where your audience is and focus on strategically growing a couple of platforms, meet your audience where they are and go from there.
Glynis Tao
For early stage clothing brands, what are the must-haves before they're PR ready?
Nikki Dindo
I would say that you need to have a very solid understanding of your audience. So make sure that you've kind of gone through and done the research. I think you need strong branding. You need to know your messaging. You need to know what it's going to look like to show up as a successful brand online. So I think strong messaging and branding is super important.
Having a website, definitely you need to have that up and running so that you have somewhere to guide all that amazing traffic that's going to go flooding there. But I think that kind of having that beginning point of making sure that you have strong branding and a strong direction of where you want to go and who you want to reach is the most important. From there, you know, we can work on shaping out what that looks like, what the core pillars are going to be.
But you want to know what your foundation is and how your current visuals and messaging stack up against the competitors, because that's information that we'll use to help you stand out. Those will become our anchor points and we'll build the actual strategy around those pillars, really kind of balancing storytelling with conversation.
Glynis Tao
Can you share your process when you're developing a social media strategy for a new fashion client? And what do you look for in terms of the branding or visuals or storytelling? What is it that you look for?
Nikki Dindo
For sure. So whenever I start working with any new client, the first thing that we do is listen. We want to understand their vision, their values, what makes them different, where they want to go, not just what they sell. So we'll sit back and listen first and just learn as much as we possibly can about the brand. Social media isn't just about posting outfits. It's also about telling the deeper story behind the brand in a way that really resonates and builds trust over time. Now more so than ever.
So once we've kind of gotten that foundation, we'll dive in and do a full audit. We'll look at what's working, what's not, what's engaging. You know, as I mentioned before, kind of how we're stacking up against your competitors and really use that data to kind of help build out a full strategy. So once we have done the audit, we'll build out the strategy, look at core messaging and content pillars and really kind of use that as our North Star when it comes to developing content.
So we'll go through creating that strategic guide, make sure that everyone is aligned on it. We'll take our ideas, we'll do mocks, we'll put together sample posts, sample feeds, some kind of trial reels just so they can get an idea of our vision. We'll bring it to them. Then they'll also go through and it's a conversation. They'll tell us what they like, what they don't like, what doesn't feel aligned. And from there, we'll kind of get to work on creating the actual content.
So whether that is doing creative direction for shoots, whether that's leading with our own brand photography and videography, turning all of that into engaging content. We'll also kind of make sure that all of our ideas are doable for the team behind the scenes. We understand that not everyone can do everything. So we want to make sure that our plan is balanced and doable.
And so to help with things like that will also often create systems, templates, content calendars, approval workflows, just to kind of help make everything feel seamless. And again, make sure that we're really taking as much off of their plate as possible. As I kind of said, the biggest piece is like we approach everything like we're part of their team. We don't, you know, just deliver a strategy and disappear. We're there in the day to day helping refine, adapt as the brand grows or shifts. Also, you know, if there's an option, an opportunity to jump on a trend, but maybe we need to lean on someone. I'll kind of put together an email and say, hey, I think this would be such a good fit to tap into this. Can you spend 10 minutes? Do you know, film me like this, like that, like that. And just want to make sure that we always accommodate for anything, any opportunity to help their brand be part of that larger conversation. You know, especially in fashion where things are moving fast, that kind of flexibility and partnership truly makes all the difference.
Glynis Tao
Yeah, it sounds very collaborative too, the way that you work with your clients. Yeah, I guess taking that time upfront, to do the audit, to really understand their business and coming up with the strategy before you even do any posting and stuff like that. Cause I find a lot of times they just go and start posting. I don't know. I find it very frustrating because what they post doesn't necessarily really align with who I am as a business and my brand. I don't think they really understand it yet. So I think that's really important and it's great that you do that.
Nikki Dindo
I think it's so important to have those conversations upfront. That way it's just kind of crystal clear and also just constantly checking in on that because things change, focuses change. And I would rather always kind of have that conversation and that open communication as we go along just to make sure that we're always aligned.
Glynis Tao
Yeah, and also, guess doing those check-ins and having checkpoints in place with your clients and making sure that you are aligned in what you're doing so that there are no surprises and someone going, this is not really like they're not happy with it in the end and just like what, you know, like, but it was never really communicated.
Nikki Dindo
So many times. And so I'm all for monthly check-ins, even weekly check-ins and like cross department. That way there's just full visibility, open communication and no surprises because I think everyone has kind of been in that situation where one person maybe said yes or you got used to saying yes and then you just throw something up on social and then you get an email, you know, I didn't authorize this or like this is an old product. How did this go up there?
So it can sometimes feel tedious, especially in the beginning to kind of go through that approval process. But it's so important down the line, especially when it comes to messaging and just making sure that brand voice sounds like them. Because there's nothing more jarring than coming across a post that just feels off brand as a consumer.
Glynis Tao
Yeah, and it's hard to find an agency or somebody who actually gets it and this is kind of the thing that I hear often a lot from my clients is that they have to end up doing the social media themselves because they're just kind of like, no one's able to do it as well. I'm kind of feeling like, yeah, that's maybe a challenge for you to kind of be able to find that in between, I guess, between you and them, but really to be able to make it sound like, what you're saying is really sounding like them coming as if it's from them.
Nikki Dindo
Yeah, that's a big one. And it's I, and I get it. And especially if it comes to like a personal brand or a founder or something, because that's you, that's your voice. And sometimes people have a hard time articulating it too. You know, this doesn't sound like me, but I don't know how to say why. I think I like to pride our team on being able to capture brand and also personal brand voices very well and I tell them from the beginning I said please please please give me as much feedback give me as many notes edit this you're not going to hurt my feelings I would wrap the more information you give me the quicker I'll be able to learn and adapt and truly it usually just takes one max two rounds of feedback and edits and then we're pretty easy to nail it down and be able to just kind of absorb that voice and switch into it moving forward which, it seems odd. I think it's because I was a double major between English and business. I was always a huge reader, a huge writer. So I think it might have been that from before that it never felt too difficult for me to switch into voices and copywriting was actually always my favorite aspect of social. But thankfully being able to kind of translate that and help teach my team and share that skillset with them has been I think very valuable for everyone on the team that we've been able to kind of learn and adapt to different brand voices relatively with ease.
Glynis Tao
Brands or creatives light you up the most to work with.
Nikki Dindo
I get really lit up by brands and creatives with a strong point of view. Even if it's still messy or evolving, I just love it when there's heart and intention behind what someone is building and they just need a little bit of help bringing it to life in a more refined and strategic way. So whether that's fashion founders creating pieces with real meaning, or a wellness brand that's actually grounded in science and care, or a travel company that's telling stories that most people overlook or, you know, sharing destinations that are off the grid and more people need to know about. But I'm especially drawn to people who have just really cared deeply about what they do, but maybe they just don't always know how to communicate that in a way that resonates online. And at the end of the day, I love working with good people, you know, cool people who's mission and values I stand behind and I just want to kind of help amplify that. And I also love working with founders and creatives who are just willing to be a little bit brave. You know, the internet moves fast, but the brands that stick are the ones that know who they are and are willing to show up with honesty and creativity. And that kind of energy is just magnetic. And I gravitate towards those kinds of people. And I think that that's where as an agency, we do our best work as well.
Glynis Tao
Let's talk a little bit about influencer marketing. Influencer marketing changes fast. What makes a campaign successful in 2025 and how do you measure success beyond likes and reach?
Nikki Dindo
For sure, okay, so I think at the end of the day for influencer marketing or for campaigns in general, but especially for influencer marketing, it's really about authenticity. And I know that we hear that all the time, but it's true. Consumers now, especially with influencers, know and understand that influencers are getting paid for a lot of their partnerships. People know that, but I think that the most authentic influencers are still only going to take those partnerships that is from a brand that they would already buy from or a company that they would already use. And therefore it doesn't feel salesy. It feels authentic and it should kind of meld seamlessly into any non-sponsored content as well. And people will kind of still know that it's an affiliate link and they'll make some money off of it. But as long as it still feels true to the brand and that the influencers are still providing value, then I think that they know and are willing to help support them with something like that. So I think authenticity is extremely important, especially in the influencer space.
And then kind of social media in general in 2025, a successful campaign, I think goes way beyond likes and reach. Now those kind of used to be the prime metrics before. Nowadays, we kind of look at measuring things that are indicators of resonance and relationship. So the question that I'm kind of always asking is like, did this campaign actually move the needle? Did it create a moment? Did it have a deeper connection with the audience? So this could mean stronger brand loyalty, an increase in DMs, more website traffic, or even just people spending more time engaging with your content in more meaningful ways. So metrics that we look at now, and also the algorithm looks at, are kind of more in line with shares and saves because
Anybody can like something without putting much thought into it, but a share and a save is a better indicator that this is meaningful content that somebody wants to send to somebody else or wants to save to come back to for themselves. So, you know, it's a better indicator of like a cute comment or emojis, but knowing how many people saved your content really kind of is an indicator of whether a piece of content has any stickiness or whether something hit.
We also look at the backend data. So click through rates, email signups, time on site. And we take that to the clients. Sometimes too success looks like a product selling out and knowing that it came from social first push. Sometimes it's a new partnership or a press opportunity that came out of visibility. I'm working with a personality right now, let's say, and amplifying their personal brand online. And we are getting podcast requests and press requests all the time sent to us via DMs as a request of somebody seeing their content on Instagram first. So that's also kind of an indicator of success in a campaign that their visibility is kind of moving outside of Instagram and into the real world in other ways.
So other times it's opportunities coming out of visibility. And sometimes it's just, you know, a founder saying, we finally feel proud of how we're showing up online. So I think at the end of the day, looking at success for campaigns these days is a blend of data and instinct. If something feels sticky and it's getting shared, sparking conversations, that's a win.
Glynis Tao
Certainly is. Love it. You've worked on social campaigns with brands like Skip Hop. Could you share what went into building that campaign and the kind of results it delivered?
Nikki Dindo
Yes, absolutely. My gosh, working with Skip Hop was such a fun and rewarding project. I did this on the social side in conjunction with a PR agency that I was working with and was brought on as their social partner. So at the time, Skip Hop, when we first started Skip Hop was toying with the idea of an acquisition and they are wanting to improve their brand online kind of in advance of that. And in addition, they also wanted to reach modern parents in a way that felt both relatable and stylish because that was kind of new within the parenting space at the time. They didn't really want to be overly salesy or traditional. So we started by getting super, super clear on their audience, millennial parents, mainly millennial women who value design functionality and a bit of humor and amongst the chaos of parenting. So from there, we built a content strategy that leaned into an aspirational but attainable lifestyle. So think really elevated visuals, quick tips and like real parent moments that felt authentic.
In addition to this, we had a very, very, very strong influencer seeding program. And we are partnering with some of the combination of top parenting influencers, but also micro influencers before that became a huge thing who had an awesome aesthetic and were able to kind of provide on-brand content. And so kind of having this multi-pronged approach, we were able to have really, really, really strong results, engagement rates practically triple during our first campaign window. saw a notable lift in website traffic directly from social and we started to see if we were launching a new product and we would lead with social posts two days before any other advertising. We are starting to see almost sellouts from social first. And even better, the brand got great feedback from customers who said the content made them actually want to interact with the brand, which is what we were going for. And as this kind of continued through specific campaigns and through an acquisition, we wound up staying with the brand for about three years until it ultimately got brought in-house by the parent company. But it was such a joy to work with them and one of the most fun projects I've ever been a part of.
Glynis Tao
I can imagine as a parent myself, I use the products. I almost had everything from their diaper bags, change pads, play mats.
Nikki Dindo
Those diaper bags are the best and they were so cheap. I was using those to travel with.
Glynis Tao
I know, it can be used beyond just a diaper bag. It's got all the great compartments and pockets and zip and everything. It's a great design.
Nikki Dindo
They're so smart. They're the greatest products and the best, best people to work with. I truly loved working with them and they gave us so much creative flexibility and freedom and they trusted our instinct and the copy was so much fun to work on. It was just a joy.
Glynis Tao
Sounds wonderful. Let's see, what advice would you give fashion founders trying to find the right influences to represent the brand?
Nikki Dindo
I would say it's really hard. You're going to get approached as a fashion brand by so many influencers. I think the most important thing is to do your research and be selective with who you choose to partner with. Make sure that you're aligned with that there's audience alignment, of course, first and foremost, because while an influencer may have a ton of followers, if they're not aligned with who your audience is, it's going to make no difference what's up if you don't share that same audience.
So check for alignment. Make sure that their target demographic is aligned with yours because you want it to feel like a partnership. So I'd say to do your research and also make sure that you're doing something that feels comfy for you. There are so many different ways of working with influencers now, whether it's a paid partnership, whether it's an affiliate partnership, whether it's just an in-kind donation.
Find something that works for you and be clear about what that looks like. Make sure that you get everything in writing. Make sure that you get timelines in writing. Make sure that if you have any guidelines for how you want your influencer partner to shoot or any messaging, that that's provided to them in advance. If you want to see the content before it goes live, make sure that you have approval windows in there and that that process is laid out just to get crystal clear on what you're looking for. That will help make sure that you have the most successful partnership with an influencer.
Just because there's so many different ways it can go and so many different, you know, if someone says one post, it's like, okay, is that a reel? Is that a story set? Am I going to have access to the photos? There's just so much to think about. So make sure that you know exactly what it is that you're looking for and that you give them as much information as possible to help make sure it will be successful at the end of the day for you.
Glynis Tao
And is one post even enough for an influencer to...
Nikki Dindo
I’d say no and I think that also kind of goes back to that authenticity of people seeing more than one post if they see kind of a longer term partnership over you know like maybe four posts over six months or something like that. It will also kind of help build the trust in the consumer from the influencer side that hey this is a brand that they truly love that they truly do like working with and that repetition helps build brand trust. So you know to expect content from them you'll truly trust their opinion on it. So I would say to focus more on a longer term partnership rather than here's a thousand bucks. I just want one post and three story sets with one link. At the end of the day, you're going to see a better ROI from a longer term partnership with people who truly also care about your brand and want to continue that partnership as well.
Glynis Tao
Yeah, amazing. That's great advice. For fashion entrepreneurs listening today, what's one thing they could stop doing on social or PR and one thing they could start doing right now?
Nikki Dindo
Okay, so one thing to stop doing, I think I already touched on like stop trying to be everywhere all at once. But I think that the other thing to stop doing is stop trying to mimic what everyone else is doing. You don't need to follow every trend, you know, just because something is popping off. If it doesn't make sense for you, don't do it. Create your own trend. Especially if it's going to pull away from your core story or if feeling like keeping up with every trend is going to make you burn out. You don't want to do that.
So showing up consistently in one or two places with clarity will always be being scattered and stretched thin. So stop trying to be able to all at once and stop trying to do what everyone else is doing.
One thing to start doing is get comfy showing your face and telling your story behind the brand. At the end of the day, people connect with people, people buy from people, and especially in fashion where there are so many options, your unique perspective, why you started, how you design, what you believe. That's what's going to turn a follower into a fan and a fan into a customer. So even one good piece of founder led content can do more than, you know, have more impact than a dozen polished posts. So I know it feels scary sometimes to put your face out there and tell your story, but at the end of the day, your messaging will stick with people too. So stop hiding behind the grid and start trying to lead with your voice a little bit.
Glynis Tao
I love it. If a brand only has a small marketing budget, where should they focus their time and money first?
Nikki Dindo
Mm hmm. Yeah. If your budget is tight, which is totally normal, especially in those early stages, focus first on nailing your brand story and your visuals. So investing in clear messaging, a strong visual identity. And if you have really solid pieces of content that you can repurpose across platforms, as we talked about before, like if your foundation isn't clear, no amount of paid ads or PR will really help you show up or like will really land the way you want it to.
And then from there, I'd focus on prioritizing organic content. So ideally short form videos. So whether that's reels, TikTok or stories, it's still the most powerful and free way to connect, build trust and get discovered. So you don't need a huge team, just a phone, a solid plan and like a willingness to show up. And then if you do have a little bit of budget to play with once you've kind of gone through and nailed the basics, I would consider putting it towards community building. Whether that's partnering with a micro influencer and leaning into that space, doing a small giveaway, doing a partnership with like minded brands, or even hiring somebody to help you stay consistent. The goal is connection over perfection. So a few small things that can help take that off your plate and just help you stand out.
Glynis Tao
Hmm, that's amazing. So I'm hearing some of this, uh, the themes that have been repeated throughout the conversation of what you, from what you've been saying about like making sure that you have a plan, right? Be consistent. And then just kind of taking those steps, you know, little small steps will add up.
Nikki Dindo
Little small steps add up and I promise that once you have a plan and it takes the guesswork out of what you're doing, it makes it feel so much more attainable because just kind of sitting there scrolling being like, okay, I guess I should post something today that I don't know where to start makes it feel insurmountable. And that's what's going to hold you back. That's what's going to suck your time and suck your energy and then leave you feeling frustrated and overwhelmed. But if you have a solid plan, if you have six or seven kind of
core content pillars that you know you can fall back on. Or if you even just have a content calendar with ideas laid out and say, ok, I know that today I should be posting my European summer outfit suggestions. There you go. If you already have the idea. You already have content ready to go for it. And it's a matter of sitting there putting the copy together and getting a couple of images together for it. So taking that time to put together a plan will really, really help save time and help you lead with direction and clarity down the line.
Glynis Tao
Thank you. I think I could even use that advice for myself because I just find the whole task of managing social media is so overwhelming and I never know what to post.
Nikki Dindo
Even sometimes just sitting down and spending an hour or two and looking at, you know, your upcoming quarter and being like, and just testing against what you have coming up, you know, and just kind of jotting down on this day, I want to do this on that day, I want to do that and slot what launches you have against your content pillars. It'll take the guesswork out of it and make it so easy.
Glynis Tao
Yeah, cause I often second guess myself as to if I'm posting the right thing, then I don't end up posting yet.
Nikki Dindo
Yep, I actually relate to that on a deep personal level because I can do this for brands and clients non-stop. Personally, I sit there and I'm like about five years behind on posting something from my last trip, but it's because I don't have a plan and I don't have it laid out. I sit down and I get stressed. Like, I don't want to do this.
Glynis Tao
See people as even professionals struggle with this.
Nikki Dindo
Yeah, I usually sit down and kind of look at all my folders, then map out a little grid and an app and then I'm like, okay, perfect. I go into posting overdrive and we'll start doing three a day.
Glynis Tao
Let's talk about you personally because you split your time between Vancouver and New York. So how do those cities influence your creative perspective?
Nikki Dindo
Well, it's impossible to not kind of tie in the energy of New York City into anything creative. Like that city is just so vibrant and filled with so much life and so much culture, so much music. whether it's, you know, I feel like I'm always drawn to things in the arts when I'm there. So whether it's going to a jazz bar or a concert in the park, there is just so much life in that city so much movement, it creates for a dynamic environment. And so I always leave there feeling so energized and invigorated and refreshed. I also grew up in the arts. I was a singer and a dancer and pursued that for a little bit when I was on cruise ships specifically.
And so a huge thing, and when I lived in New York, or when I lived in New York, my apartment was in Hell's Kitchen, right smack in the heart of the theater district. And it's where I tend to always kind of go back to, but it was so cool to, now, wake up on a Sunday and be like, I don't have any plans today. Let me just go for a wander and see if I can rush a show and get tickets. And being able to kind of be surrounded by that creativity and that artistry. I love going and seeing all the new shows every season and am just so inspired by the artists and the artistry and the movement and the creativity.
Glynis Tao
Yeah, I can feel your passion and I mean, okay, now we have to talk about this because I heard that you are a lifelong Broadway musical theater fan. How has that passion influenced the way you show up creatively in your work?
Nikki Dindo
I think that they had to kind of ask what they know of me as a person. They'd probably say she's a traveler and she's obsessed with Hamilton.
Glynis Tao
I was gonna ask you what’s your favorite Broadway musical?
Nikki Dindo
Yeah, Hamilton hands down and it's wild to me that they are hitting their 10 year anniversary and I watched their performance a couple weeks ago at the Tony's and I was like, how is this still so good? And leave it to me to find a way to weave Hamilton into just about any client call. I've put secret nods in content sometimes. It's just like a little giggle to me if it's something super innocuous and I'm just kind of a couple of just a series of words or something like that, but it shows up in their favorite Broadway show is Hamilton by far. Lin-Manuel Miranda is our generation's William Shakespeare. He is incredibly talented. And I followed his work for years and other things, but Hamilton is just such a brilliant, brilliant, brilliant piece of theater.
Glynis Tao
Where can people find you if they want to get in touch with you?
Nikki Dindo
The best way to reach me is send me a DM on my Instagram. I'm on Instagram. My handle is at @nikkidindo. You can shoot me an email. My contact info is on my website, www.springmediaco.com. And any questions you have, if you just want to say hi, shoot me a note. I'm around.
Glynis Tao
Thank you so much, Nikki, for sharing your journey, insights, and inspiration with us today.
Nikki Dindo
Thank you so much for having me. It's been a pleasure.
