Member Article

Fashion entrepreneur Amber Atherton talks strategy, social media and the school curriculum

From a young age, Amber Atherton had an entrepreneurial eye. The fashion icon admits she started several small business ventures before she launched My Flash Trash, an online jewellery store, she explained: “When I was 16, I started sourcing jewellery in Asia and selling it at school at break time. I then started a blog writing about jewellery and fashion trends and took photos of the jewellery on there and sold it to my friends.”

The 24-year old attributes her company’s success to her ability to adapt to the changing climate of the fashion world, “One designer then approached me to sell on the site and from there we turned into one of the UK’s leading online marketplaces with over 100 up and coming designers and opened a wholesale and PR division, “ she continued, “When we raised angel capital last year we pivoted to focus on our branded range of charm jewellery.”

As well as being a fashion entrepreneur, Amber starred in Channel 4’s Made in Chelsea. She said the exposure the company gained from this endeavour was invaluable as it allowed her to pinpoint her target market: “We were a very niche fashion brand in the beginning,” she said, “We often appeared in high fashion titles with an average selling price of over £500. MIC drove thousands and thousands of teenagers to the site, and we knew we had to cater to new demand so we adjusted the product and pricing and it was a huge success.”

Photo Credit: Alastair Guy

Earlier this month, Amber was appointed Youth Enterprise Ambassador for the National Enterprise Challenge, joining the mission to expose 500,000 school children to entrepreneurial skills by 2020. She is a strong believer in the adaptation of the curriculum to teach basic entrepreneurial skills.

“More than three-quarters of 11 to 18-year-olds (77 per cent) say they would like to start their own business in the future, yet there is no formal enterprise education as part of the national curriculum,” Amber explained, “Schemes like TNEC give young people the opportunity to gain the foundations of a business skill set they can apply to realise their entrepreneurial ambitions.

“This combined with interacting with inspirational entrepreneurs, both young and old, creates a huge impact on the development of young people and helps disintegrate the boundaries they might currently have up about what is possible.”

Just like Bloom & Wild’s co-founder Aron Gelbard, Amber has gained firsthand experience of the power held by online influencers, such as bloggers and ‘vloggers,’ in the ecommerce world. “Online influencers are a key part of our content distribution and product promotion strategy.” Amber said, “In 2012-2013 we were very mainstream celebrity focused and used magazines to document the endorsement but last year, when a One Direction boy band member bought some jewellery from us for his girlfriend, I witnessed the power of the fan girl community and that is ultimately more authentic than a paid endorsement.

“Our #charmgang on Instagram is hugely popular and our answer to word of mouth marketing in the millennial age.”

MyFlashTrash is continuing to evolve as Amber is more than aware of the challenges facing the ecommerce industry. “We need to provide a completely frictionless checkout experience for the modern fashion customer that desires 24-hour, on-demand convenience.” Amber stated, “In addition to this, it’s a challenge to stay consistent to your brand values and authentic, we don’t want to be posting the same meme on our Instagram as everyone else nor do we want to be 100% product focused when social is about community and escapism.

“We need to understand that consumers tend to prefer brands that are compatible with the way they see themselves; in other words, they look for personalities, which correspond closely to their own self image in the brands that they buy. This has impacted our content strategy massively. “

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ellen Forster .