What Is Garm?
GARM is a platform that connects African designers and customers in the world of streetwear fashion. The founders, passionate fashion enthusiasts themselves, recognized the challenges faced by many African brands due to limited business resources. – These brands often lacked websites, had slow response times, and faced trust issues.
The founders of GARM found a gap in the market and decided that they would be the resource to make the term “supporting local” more trustworthy and efficient. It was created to build Africa and its unique set of creativity that floods the continent.
The brand was born with a dual purpose: to provide customers with a convenient platform to purchase products created by African brands and to offer valuable resources to the brands themselves.
For customers, it provides an efficient website where they can explore and purchase a diverse range of products from African designers. For brands, it offers a comprehensive package that includes a fully functional e-commerce site integrated with payment, shipping, and inventory management systems. The brand also provides accounting services, in-house marketing strategies, customer support, return strategies, and much more.
The Meaning Of Garm
A great deal of thought went into selecting the name “GARM” for our platform – even if it does sound simple. A good business name sets the tone as to what customers can expect; it conveys the purpose of your business; and to some level what products they can expect to buy – Check out our range of products here.
”Garment” is the literal definition being an item of clothing. This word inspired the name behind the brand.
Garm is derived from “garment”. The name of the business came into effect in a lightbulb brainstorming moment. The word ‘Garm’ is a slang word pioneered by the founders Kamo & Ross. This is a popularly used word within their friendship circle to describe someone who is dressed well.
Challenges, Setbacks, and Triumphs Behind GARM’s Mission to Reshape The Landscape of Streetwear Fashion
As entrepreneurs, the founders encountered various challenges during their journey. Adding an additional business to their catalogue of companies was one of the many challenges they faced in their final year of university. While having learnt a little bit about what it takes to be a business owner from observing their parents, it was a completely different playing field starting your own business.
The founders knew that the best solution to help brands was by making it online – as an e-commerce platform. They started out using a website builder which proved to be quite challenging as it had many limitations. From there on, they changed platforms which required practical knowledge of coding and web development which was another obstacle they had to tackle.
A crucial part of going live as an e-commerce business is having items to sell before the actual launch of the business. We needed brands on board before the site went live. So convincing brands to be part of Garm before it existed online posed a significant challenge. Approaching brands with an idea that existed mostly on paper required conveying a vision built on faith and the belief that GARM could transform their concept into a reality. These brands would be coined as GARMembers.
Coming up with a logistic strategy that would allow Garm to sell items without having to own or keep any stock posed another obstacle. That is how their partnership with Pargo, a courier company came about. The founders learnt early on that the key to a multi-vendor e-commerce platform was the shipping strategy.
Building a Winning Team
A group of people who work well together have the capacity to build something great from the ground up. Building a successful team means taking advantage of each other’s strengths. Building a team can be likened to assembling a car engine. Just as an engine is comprised of various interconnected parts, a successful team is formed by individuals who rely on each other to achieve common goals. That is the same thought process it took to build the team at Garm from the work put in by the founders, head of design to the head of operations.
Each member of the team is like a component of the engine, with their unique skills, experiences, and perspectives contributing to the overall functioning of the team. Just as a single malfunctioning part can disrupt the entire engine’s performance, a lack of collaboration or ineffective communication among team members can hinder the team’s progress.
Just like the precision and synchronization required to build a well-functioning engine, a cohesive team thrives when each member understands their role, respects the abilities of others, and works in harmony towards shared objectives.
By recognizing the importance of interdependence and identifying the right team, GARM created a finely-tuned engine. A team with UNITY. This sprouted the term Garmunity. A word that represents a finely-tuned engine in all aspects of life. This would be the term dedicated to the community created by GARM. Along, with building the right team, GARM had to focus on showcasing the apparel from local brands – to do so, the team would need to create iconic content that suited global trends.
How GARM Keeps Up To Date With New Trends.
Constantly keeping our ears to the ground through doing continuous research on industry trends is how we keep up to date with anything happening in the market whether it’s tools, trends or marketing campaigns.
The goal is to compete within the global market and exclusively sell African brands. The brands on Garm all add to an ecosystem that aligns with the main business goals so brands are carefully selected based on creativity, quality, reliability and a strong brand essence.
Values We Uphold As GARM
The core value behind the brand is being customer focused – We understand the importance of customer satisfaction & experience. Being transparent with not just customers but all the brands on board. Transparency builds trust amongst anybody who interacts with our business as a customer or brand. GARM further focuses on embracing authenticity and the African spirit.
The brand perception we’re trying to build is a simple one. We want customers to view Garm as safe and convenient. We want the world to view Garm as a creative solution and a platform for expression. We want Garm customers to have high expectations that we can deliver on. We want to be the topic of conversation on anything innovative and iconic. Garm is a budding groundbreaking platform for creative expression through streetwear fashion.