The Internet knows Polina Nioly for her Instagram and TikTok accounts, social media marketing agency Nioly Media Group that offers services focused on the promotion and monetization of social media accounts, as well as her career in film industry. But little do people know that she is also working on a big project she has invested hundreds of her working hours and millions of dollars in. Wonder what brand took Polina Nioly almost three years to work out? Keep on reading to find out the story behind it.
Nioly Underwear Brand
The secret project she has been working on and only mentioned to her followers is Nioly Underwear. The core concept of the brand is based on Polina’s desire to create the product that will meet all the requirements she finds crucial. She explained the roots of her motivation to create her own brand on TikTok:
“3 years ago I realized that all underwear I own is:
1. Oversexualised
2. Uncomfortable
3. Being tarnished after 5 washes
4. Completely unsustainable”
Polina wants her brand’s underwear to be of a good quality, sexy and comfortable, as well as sustainable and making women have strong emotions of excitement on every stage of their customer experience. This concept clearly reflects her mindset and approach to life she talked about on her Instagram page:
“I am not a person who’ll compromise on something less than perfect. My brand is exactly like this as well. We aren’t searching for compromises, we are building perfection. We don’t choose between sexy and comfy, between sustainable and buying what we want.”
Interestingly, some of her greatest ideas come to Polina in her dreams, and Nioly Underwear was not an exception. Polina Nioly once shared that she had a dream of how the product packaging should look like. The visualization of the product included a box that turns into a flower shape when being opened owing to origami mechanisms. Strongly believing that Nioly Underwear should be an experience, starting from its purchase and finishing with its unpacking and wearing, Polina Nioly decided to try to make this dream come true and create a mind-blowing underwear brand with a cool packaging.
Sounds impressive, right? But how did it work in practice? We digged deeper into this topic to share the process of the Nioly lingerie brand development with you.
With a Brand Come Challenges
Polina clearly understood that Nioly Underwear would be her biggest project and took the risk in experimenting. 2021 was a learning experience to her. In that period, Polina faced some challenges and even failures, which she finds important to share along with her takeaways. So, what can you learn from the Nioly Underwear experience?
1. Do not rush and trust experts
In the beginning of her journey, not having expertise in building a clothing brand before, Polina hired a small team and decided to figure out how it works along the way. Once the sketches were approved and the first sample models were created, Polina was not happy with the result as it was far from what she wanted. Looking back, Polina Nioly understands that she was in a rush and did not have enough experts to support the brand development process and do the research needed.
“My speed is an advantage that helps me in life, but it can also be a disadvantage. If I learn to understand when to make a pause and analyze the situation before making the next step, I will be unstoppable.”
After a few unsuccessful attempts of creating the first underwear samples and some money wasted, Polina Nioly decided to start it all over again but with a better plan. She hired an international team of experts having experience in building brands and getting them to the market. With clear understanding that this project takes time, Polina became more patient.
2. Research and look for the best solutions possible
Seeing how fast fashion and consumerism harm the environment, Polina Nioly strongly believes that any clothing brand launched in the 2020s should be as environmentally friendly as possible. Otherwise, it should not be launched at all. But what does it take to create a sustainable brand?
Making a lingerie brand eco-friendly is not easy. The analysis run by experts has shown that you can hardly find material that would fall under the concept of being fully eco. For example, when looking for silk sleeping masks fillers, Polina found very few options.
To solve this issue and stick to the goal of creating an eco-friendly lingerie brand, Polina’s team did market research by visiting lingerie stores and checking out the competitors’ product quality as well as how sustainable the brand is. The findings became the starting point for sustainability in Nioly Underwear. The team is working on making the end product as sustainable as they can by using quality material, involving recycling and resource reduction in production and building the basis to make the incorporation of any future environment friendly innovations easier.
3. Be patient to see the result
With big and long-term projects, get ready to not see the final product right away. Compared to the online world, offline manufacturing production and marketing take more time and you need to go through a lot of stages before you can check what the result would look like. For example, in the underwear industry, you start with sketching, followed by making samples and approving collection sets. Once it is done, one can proceed with the manufacturing production.
According to the recent Nioly Underwear status update, the team is finalizing sketches and is working on the product’s packaging along with the financial matters. They have only seen a few visualizations so far but look forward to the samples being created based on the approved sketches. Being involved in every stage of the process, Polina also learned to be patient to see the result. The thought that the world will also be able to check Nioly Underwear out soon, keeps her going.
Polina Nioly likes new challenges, and the underwear brand had plenty of them waiting for her. However, she learned from this valuable experience, formed a bigger and more expert team, ran the research and adjusted the strategy, and transformed her speedy approach into a patient building of Nioly Underwear brand.
Now that you know more about Polina’s “secret” project, share what you find important when purchasing and wearing clothing. What does the underwear brand have to have for you to trust it and pick it among others?