Building a Business Without Losing Its Identity

As a child, I was taught that good work means doing things properly. Not to cut corners. To be meticulous and strive for perfection in everything you do. My mother taught me to sew my own clothes, and when a whole pig arrived from my grandparents’ farm, she taught me how to cut and prepare it, preaching all the while about family traditions and the value of work. I still remember how to make the right cut. I remember just as clearly the smell that filled our kitchen, and I must admit I was never a great admirer of that part of rural self-sufficiency.

I ended up about as far from that kitchen as one can get, in the fast-moving worlds of fashion and photography. Yet the lesson followed me, and it returns whenever a company starts talking about growth. Expansion has a way of testing whether a business still knows which parts of its work must be done properly, and which it can afford to hurry.

What does growth actually mean?

A bigger business, more products, new markets, higher turnover: these are the measures most readily available to us, and they matter. Revenue keeps the lights on, and scale can open doors that a smaller organisation could never afford.

Growth for its own sake, however, is no strategy at all, and getting bigger is not the right ambition for every business.

A company might also grow by becoming more profitable, by deepening its relationship with customers, by improving the product, or by building an organisation that no longer depends on a handful of people for every decision. Sometimes, declining a new market is part of that progress.

The question I would put to any growth plan is a simple one: what, precisely, are we trying to make better?

The brand and the business model

Hermès has been a favourite example of mine for years. Its scale and exclusivity are hardly a model for most companies, yet the way its creative identity and commercial model hold each other up is instructive for anyone. In its published strategy, craftsmanship, creation and distribution are treated as interdependent, and store managers are given latitude to choose collections for their local customers.

I find that more revealing than any beautifully worded brand manifesto. The company’s point of view shapes how its products are made, sold and experienced – the same insistence on doing things properly, carried from the workshop all the way to the shop floor.

For smaller brands, the lesson has little to do with owning hundreds of stores. Distribution, pricing, assortment and service are themselves expressions of brand identity. A wholesale deal may open a promising market while placing the product in a setting that weakens its appeal. Direct-to-consumer may bring a closer customer relationship, yet it also demands investment in marketing, logistics and service. Neither model is inherently superior.

A distinct visual universe is a good start. A strong brand also needs business decisions that make its identity credible.

Knowing what to keep — and what to change

Of all the confusions I have encountered in fashion and lifestyle businesses, the most common may be the one between identity and habit.

A company’s reason for existing may well be worth defending. Its approval process, reporting structure or ageing sales routine may not be. Protecting them all with equal devotion can make a business fragile, when the intention was to keep it faithful to itself.

This is where leadership has to be specific. What do customers genuinely value? What makes the product recognisable? Which standards are essential, even when maintaining them costs money – and which ways of working have simply escaped scrutiny?

The answers cannot live only in the founder or in the designer’s head. They need to be translated into decisions that others can understand and make for themselves.

Choosing the right kind of growth

Imagine a fashion business invited into a new international market. The prospect is exciting: more visibility, a substantial opening order, perhaps a respected local partner. Yet the decision is not complete until someone asks what it will require.

Someone has to check whether the margins will withstand freight, support and returns, whether the team can maintain quality and delivery times, whether the collection will have to bend to the distributor’s demands, and how much working capital will be tied up before a single invoice is paid.

Asking those questions is how ambition becomes a viable plan, and in my experience the people who ask them are rarely the least ambitious in the room.

A healthy growth strategy makes trade-offs visible. It distinguishes demand from profitable demand, and opportunity from organisational readiness. At times it will call for bold investment ahead of revenue; at others, a smaller test or a carefully chosen partner will be worth more than a headline-making expansion.

The real measure is what an expansion contributes – financially, creatively and organisationally – beyond the additional revenue.

The organisation must grow, too

There is another kind of growth that rarely makes the press release: the moment a founder stops being the only person who can make the right call.

Fashion and creative organisations often begin with strong individual instincts. That can be an extraordinary advantage. It becomes a constraint when every product, image, hire and commercial decision must still pass across one person’s desk.

Professionalisation done well keeps what is unusual about a company and gives people the context, standards and authority to exercise good judgment themselves.

The incentives have to align as well. Asking a sales team to maximise turnover, a creative team to protect scarcity and an operations team to reduce stock, without explaining the priorities, is an invitation to internal conflict.

Better forecasting, clearer accountability and an honest understanding of channel profitability may sound unromantic. Yet they are what give creativity the space and stability to flourish.

A more useful definition of success

I would still look at revenue. Alongside it, I would look at profitability by channel, repeat customers, full-price sales, inventory commitments and the organisation’s capacity to deliver on its promises – and at whether the business is making better products and attracting people who strengthen it.

No single metric captures all of that, nor will every company want the same balance. An emerging brand investing in awareness faces different choices from an established house protecting a hard-won position.

This is why I hesitate to prescribe growth as a universal good, or restraint as a universal virtue. Both can be wise, and both can be excuses.

I think of my mother’s kitchen more often than one might expect in a boardroom. The lesson I take from it now is about care: some parts of the work cannot be rushed, and knowing which parts those are is a skill in its own right.

Growing deliberately asks the same of a company. It means knowing what deserves investment, what can evolve and what gives the business its particular value, and then protecting that last part properly, however fast everything else is moving.