Manyika – eCommerce fashion brand
Bell The Label was an e-commerce business that was established by Paige Brett. Marylyn Sendah acquired the business and approached The Creative Collective to relaunch the brand with a new name, a new look, and a new product range because it was identified that there are brand issues with another eCommerce fashion brand and website having a similar name. Marylyn’s vision and ethos for the new brand was to build an Australian-based fashion brand that caters to all women and all sizes, to promote diversity and inclusivity.
Having completed a strategy session with Marylyn, we moved on to taking a brand brief and considered a wide range of aspects including the audience (women from the ages of 15 – 35yrs who are in Australia), the competitive fashion / eCommerce environment (with competitors such as White Fox, ShowPo, Beginning Boutique, Princess Polly & Boohoo noted), and later potential new names. Given Marylyn emigrated from Zimbabwe to Australia with her parents, we included the option of including her cultural heritage in the development of a new brand.
We then researched a wide range of potential brand names, all of which we also checked the availability of these potential business names in terms of domains, and ASIC. From the list provided, and with the client’s input we zoned in on ‘Manyika’ which in East Africa means to ‘be known’ and which is a regional clan from the Shona people (who form 80% of the Zimbabwe indigenous population). A submission from Zimbabwe also said the name Manyika means “child born from a foreign land” and is of African origin which seemed perfect!
We then explored fonts and colour palettes and decided to focus on black and white as the main palette combined with earthy / natural colours combined with a classic, elegant, serif style fonts with distinguishable elements to create interest and uniqueness.
The final result is this earthy and modern brand, with cultural significance to the client and a really cool meaning behind it.
