miki miette

I founded Miki Miette in 2011 After receiving the news i would soon be a mother. having spending 12 years designing, developing and branding other people’s brands, i was inspired to plant a see to create a beautiful little brand for my little dude that would grow and evolve organically as he did.

But I didn’t approach it the normal way. after carefully observing where other brands were going wrong, I decided to embark on my brand working backwards. meaning, before I even started with the fun part of design and branding, I set up an informational meeting with the best wholesale kids apparel sales showroom in Los angeles. i asked what they were missing in the market that they could sell the cr*p out of - what types of silhouettes, fabrication and price points. armed with that information, i got to work + returned 6 months later with my first collection.

miki miette quickly gained traction and become a successful line of trendsetting children’s fashion carried in 150+ boutiques across the US, barneys ny and nordstrom, reaching 1.4m in annual sales with a robust dtc ecommerce business and social media community and following.

the moral of the story: utilize both sides of the brain. it can’t all be creative, and it can’t all be analytical. It’s a calculated synergy of both.

Glimpse into my process

It all begins with a pop of inspiration - a Japanese candy wrapper, an 80’s movie, a vintage french poster, an art deco building in spain.

sometimes I start w hand-sketching on the ipad, sometimes I don’t. I eventually render all styles into adobe illustrator cads along with the print / embroidery / embellishment designs in ai. In recent years, I have been using all-over-prints pretty heavily, in response to business going more and more online-first. Since the customer is unable to touch a product on the screen, you need to add more appeal visually to make them convert. Changing with the times is imperative to keep up!

then we have our detailed tech packs in microsoft excel for the factories to get things going… and off we go!

then sampling, fitting, tweaking, cursing, pricing, merchandising + smiling… until it’s right and ready for the fun part - lifestyle photoshoots, product shoots and taking the collection to market.

my 20+ years of experience doing this in various markets, season after season, means I’ve streamlined my workflow process, have decades of market insights and am damn good at what I do.

brand voice

the identity of your brand is just as important as the product itself. it’s crucial to remain consistent in not only your messaging, but also in the frequency of your outreach.

Here are some ways we achieved that with mm through email campaigns, robust email flows and SMs campaigns.

with our consistent messaging, we were able to achieve a 20% increase in aov within one year of launching our full-fledged email flows and campaign strategy, boasting a 40% return customer rate, creating year-over-year growth in our e-commerce channel for the last 8 years in a row.

Segmenting your lists are a great way to hone in on customers’ specific needs while a/b testing to see what hits.