It sounds odd, we know. But hear us out...
“What is your specialisation?”
If you’ve worked within an agency anything like TechTee, you would’ve likely heard this question once or twice or a lot of times. Since TechTee grew from just a couple of developers and designers to full teams, our leadership has often been encouraged to choose one niche. After all, luxury & fashion and banking & finance are completely different worlds, right?
Not for us.
As a software house and digital agency, we often speak of our core values; creativity, purpose, and efficiency. They are a set of essential attributes required for all of the industries we provide services to. But the biggest link between them, that makes those values relevant, is their target market: consumers who have a lot of money (and disposable income) who like to be treated well.
Influence plays an important role in the fashion and finance world than people think.
We find that fashion consumers, especially luxury fashion consumers, enjoy feeling as if their purchasing decisions arise from original and unique ideas. When in actuality, manner trends and patterns arise from very intentional decisions made by veterans within luxury fashion. For those that know about the cult favourite film, Devil Wears Prada, think of the famous Miranda Priestly’s ‘cerulean’ monologue.
The world of banking works in the same way, and we see parallels with our banking clients all the time. A great example is when we began working with a private banking client a few years ago. We started with user experience research to see how best we can utilise digital systems to make on-the-go corporate banking easier for multiple business stakeholders. The result provided a plethora of valuable information that we then used to develop a couple of new platforms and improve on some existing software infrastructure.
A couple of years later, we found ourselves working with a high street bank on something very similar. They asked us to develop some software features that improved small business banking, comparable to what we had done several years prior. And when we asked why they requested these methods, they spoke of how well they saw features like these perform in the private banking sector — that we originally developed 😏
Technology helps fashion and finance thrive.
As a society, we have always looked forward to what the future of technological fashion holds. The science-fiction films we have grown up on made us believe we’d have self-lacing shoes and much more by now.
Whilst we don’t all own high-tech shoes, technology helps fashion move into the future. As a collective, there is now more demand for sustainable fashion. We now have clothes made to grow with the children who wear them.
We are also seeing the growth of digital transformation within the banking and finance worlds — from complete digital lending procedures to international money management completed on your mobile phone to how will AI and CryptoCurrency impact the banks of the future? (We can talk about this for hours!)
Fashion and banking in the pandemic era.
Companies have always had to rise to the occasion to meet the needs of their consumers. But the events of the last year have been pivotal in the types of obstacles brands now face. We experienced the first-ever remote fashion shows. Luxury fashion brands increased digital experiences in many ways. During this strange era, we worked with La Perla and Gucci on digital projects to showcase their brand and products. Their needs were all different, but all were created during a time where creativity, purpose, and efficiency were more important than ever.
The finance world also adapted to different strategies during this time. Banks providing digital resources for lending and managing money, whilst also ramping up their use of social media ads. We even saw the prominent private bank, Coutts, run Instagram ads for the first time — which was a shockingly (kind of cool) moment.
Furthermore, we saw these industries relate and learn from each other throughout the pandemic. From the luxury sector reassessing the importance of finance as a key asset to conversations on what banking can learn from luxury fashion.
We will continue to digitally transform the fashion and finance world.
The intersections between luxury & fashion, banking & finance are endless. Our specialisations help us to understand the needs of their target markets and how best to address them with creative technical solutions. Empowering our clients to showcase their products and exceed the personalised expectations of their customers.
If you are reading this as a business owner yourself, who has frustrations surrounding choosing a niche, we see you. We hope this piece has helped you feel validated in your decisions.
Whilst we don’t doubt that the question will continue to be asked, when advised to choose one specialism, we believe the work that TechTee has done over the years speaks for itself. As a team, we thrive not only by our range of clients but by our specialist services too. Digital strategy, UX research, design, and software development are all expert services that our team of creative technologists provide.
If you would like to work with us on a creative digital project, or simply want to learn more, please get in touch.
