Four Ways to Be Innovative As Wedding Trends Change

Wedding Professionals:

It is so important to stay on top of your game in this ever-changing wedding industry. New wedding trends arise because brides have new wishes, desires and dreams. If you can stay on top of those new wedding trends and evolve your business appropriately, you’ll give brides more of a reason to say ‘yes’ to you. The bottom-line is that you need to be innovative.

Since 1939, Dessy Group, has been a great example of a wedding business that has been at the forefront of innovation. Dessy is a leading manufacturer of bridesmaid dresses, flower girl dresses and destination wedding gowns. The manufacturer sells its wedding apparel in 1,500 stores in the US, Canada and the UK. Dessy’s most recent innovation has come with the launch of their Cynthia Rowely Bridesmaids Collection. The beautiful line includes Rowely’s modern silhouettes and fabrics taken from her ready-to-wear collection.

This new collection encompasses elegance, and the dresses can be worn long past the wedding day – making both brides and bridesmaids happy.

To really push the envelope on innovation, Dessy also teamed up with Foursquare, one of the hottest new mobile communities, to promote their New York City launch event on June 3. Foursquare users who checked in between 6-8pm on June 3rd at the Cynthia Rowley store received a free gift. These festivities will continue in Charleston, South Carolina on June 8th and in Chicago, Illinois on June 15th. What a great way to drive bridal excitement and traffic to this pioneering event.

“Our target audience is a young audience, and we're finding they're more and more on social networks,” according to Alan Dessy, CEO of Dessy Group. “Foursquare has become a larger audience for young brides. As people check into [our] stores, we'll be ready to market to them.” And of course, Dessy has done a great job of promoting this news on Twitter, Facebook, within their own blog and on BridalTweet.

We can all learn a lot from Dessy and how they’ve evolved their business throughout the years. So how can you evolve your business to stay current and meet the changing needs of brides? Here are four tips, which I recommend you try:

1. Always be forward-thinking. It is critical that you consider how you can meet the demands of existing and future wedding clients profitably and still remain competitive.
2. Consider areas of your business that could be improved. This could be anything from how you market your service or how your service is delivered.
3. Speak to and survey brides. It is crucial to offer opportunities for brides to provide feedback to you. What do they like (or dislike) about your services or products, customer service, store display, etc. This information is key particularly as these clients are most likely to refer (or not refer) you to their friends.
4. Brainstorm about solutions with experts and/or other wedding professionals. It’s easy to get caught up in your day-to-day activities, so it is important to take a step back with others who are not as close to your business. This will help you generate new and fresh ideas. As you’re brainstorming, refer back to the comments that you collected from your wedding clients. Use this as a baseline for the solutions and recommendations that you will develop. As seen above in the Dessy example, these solutions might involve partnerships with other businesses.
   

How do you drive innovation for your wedding business? Please share your thoughts below.

About This Blog: Christine Dyer is the Creator and Founder of BridalTweet. Christine has an MBA in marketing and shares over ten years of marketing expertise with the wedding community. In this weekly wedding business blog, you'll find advice on an array of wedding business topics such as how to market to brides, social networking, wedding PR, wedding sales, vendor networking, branding, pricing and much more. Please pass this news along to your own professional wedding network. To receive this advice in your email inbox each week, Sign Up for a Free BridalTweet Membership.