Franco Pagliotto Y Alexander Hard They are the founders of a men’s clothing brand with a different style that is committed to creating a digital community around its customers.
Next, Franco shares his career as a fashion entrepreneur, how —together with his partner— they incorporated online sales into the showroom for entrepreneurs they already had, the challenges that the business had to go through and their next steps. We hope you will be inspired by his story!
What is your name, how old are you and what do you do?
I am Franco Pagliotto, I am 25 years old, I am fashion entrepreneur and Co-founder of Wild Citya brand of men’s clothing.
How did you train to become a fashion entrepreneur?
Mine started the other way around what a conventional profession would be: one usually gets training first and then starts working. We, with my partner, started as a hobby: we wanted to do something that would amuse us And luckily it turned out really well!
So first we had “the job” and then, personally, I began to train myself: I realized that the information I had at my fingertips was not enough, that needed technical concepts and wanted to know how other entrepreneurs had solved certain situations.
What is Wild City?
Wild City is fashion for young men, or as we like to call it: men-llennials. Are a young brandfull of good vibes and energy, and I think that is transmitted both in the clothes and in the attention to our clients and in our social networks.
What distinguishes your brand from other menswear brands?
What distinguishes us above all things is brand personality. We leave behind the old paradigm that brands are distant companies that only sell products: now we make brands by people and that is what people want to see.
Beyond having a cover letter as a company, many of our followers/clients know that we are two people who took over a hobby and who, with a lot of effort, transformed it into a small company.
That is precisely what distinguishes us, that we show ourselves as people, that we speak one on one with the client and that just as a person likes certain music or certain series, the same thing happens to Salvaje.
How did the idea of creating your own clothing brand come about?
With Ale, my partner, we have known each other since we were 12 years old. In high school we always had an urge to make our own clothes. Since I was a kid I used to print my t-shirts with The Black Eyed Peas (he was a big fan at the time!), and he would go to his grandmother’s and sew bags to use on the weekends.
There was a time in our lives when we felt stuck, we had jobs we didn’t like and a lot of energy to do something else. So we decided to start a stamping course. Stamp goes, stamp comes, we realized that we were very good, and that in the course we stood out, a little for creativity and a little for the claw we put into it.
We were thinking about the idea of making our own t-shirts and starting to sell them to our friends. Every day we woke up with different ideas: one day we were going to sell by order, another day to sell to our friends and, finally, we set up a fair in the apartment where we lived.
How was the step by step from the beginning of the business?
After a few months of having the fair in our department, things grew. It was no longer just friends who came, nor were they friends of friends, it was people who were totally alien to us, which was very good but at the same time it made us reflect.
So with a little money that we had managed to save plus a loan from Ale’s brother, we decided to formalize the situation: we put our first official showroomwhere only our brand was going to work and to which we were going to put all the claw to be able to pay for it.
What was your main motivation? And your main fear?
Our main motivation was that we didn’t want to fail. It sounds silly, but we honestly didn’t want to feel like we had failed. So we did everything we had in our power to move the venture forward.
Regarding fear, it remains the same as now. At that time it was to set up our own showroom and not be able to afford it. Today, now more stable, we are still afraid of taking a big step and not being able to solve it financially or logistically.
Who was the person who helped you the most in the process? Why?
My partner was always my pillar, and I was his. Today we are both bigger and more “cancheros” regarding entrepreneurship, but in 2015 when we started this, we were one the support of the other. There were days that I didn’t want to go on any longer and he gave me the strength to continue betting on Wild City and vice versa.
What came first: the online store or the show room? Why?
The showroom came first, at that time we were not fond of buying online, but technology has advanced a lot in 3 years and today we cannot imagine having a business that does not sell online.
The online store arrived almost a year after the showroom: we noticed that sales were down and that we had many inquiries from people who wanted us to send them the clothes. We had tried sending manually several times, but it was no use, it was a lot of work! That’s how I started to investigate, I found Tiendanube and I made our first online store.
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What is your dissemination strategy to make your brand better known?
We were and are a fan of social networks. As millennials that we are, we look more at a cell phone screen than at a shop window on the street. , Facebook and any other social network to which we migrate in the future, are our dissemination strategy.
Whether it’s making paid ads, relevant content or , having our networks with continuous arrival of followers is what keeps the business active.
How do you take care of customer service? Is there any differential?
Yes, without a doubt la is our workhorse. We always have comments from the #SalvajeBoys thanking them for the good treatment, the advice or for having worried about their package when they did not receive it in a timely manner.
We differentiate ourselves by responding super fast and effective to inquiries. Also we have multiple means of communication: You can contact us by phone, email, WhatsApp, and social networks. There is something for everyone!
What are the next steps of Wild City?
The next step and challenge of Wild City is to order ourselves internally. As one grows, new needs arise.
We want to start and grow a lot in online salesbut that entails order and logistics that we are currently trying to acquire, so that would be the next step: start organizing ourselves to export!
If you had to give one piece of advice to another fashion entrepreneur, what would it be?
I would tell another fashion entrepreneur to know what his strength is. There are many business models in the world of fashion and they all focus on different things.
Sometimes you have a very successful business making haute couture and custom clothing, like Dior in its early days, and other times success comes from reselling vintage clothes that you buy at fairs, like the case of Sophia Amoruso’s Nasty Gal.
You don’t have to try to do everything right, I know what my skills are and that’s where I put the focus… “no one is you, and that’s your strength.”
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