Sustainable Fashion: Get Your First 100 London Customers

Launching a sustainable fashion brand, especially in a competitive market like London, is a tough game. You've poured your heart into creating beautiful, ethical products, your website looks the part, but the sales just aren't coming. It's a common story. Founders often get told to chase influencers, run pop-ups, and spray their message everywhere. I'm here to tell you that's mostly terrible advice when you're starting out with a small budget. Your first 100 customers won't come from scattered, unmeasurable efforts. The challenge isn't a lack of visibilty; it's a lack of trust and a message that doesn't cut through the noise. Forget everything you think you know about brand awareness. For now, your only goal is to get the *right* people to pull out their credit card, and the only way to do that cost-effectively is with a brutally efficient, data-driven paid advertising strategy.

So, why are my ads likely to fail?

Before you even think about spending a single pound on an ad, you need to be brutally honest about your foundations. So many brands come to us after burning through thousands on ads that "didn't work". In 99% of cases, the ads weren't the real problem. The problem was the destination they were sending people to. Your website is your digital storefront, and right now, it's probably not converting.

For a new fashion brand, trust is your most valuable currency. People are being asked to hand over money to a company they've never heard of for a product they can't touch or feel. Every single element of your website must be geared towards overcoming that hesitation. I see so many new stores that are slow to load, cluttered with confusing pop-ups, and have product photos that look like they were taken on a phone in a dimly lit bedroom. That just wont cut it.

Your photography is non-negotiable. This is fashion. People buy with their eyes. You need professional shots, ideally on a model, so customers can see how the garment fits, moves, and drapes. Show the clothes in context—a video of someone walking through a London park wearing your coat is a million times more persuasive than a flat lay on a white background. It's an investment, but without it, you're hamstringing any advertising effort from the start.

Then there are the trust signals. Where are they?
-> Do you have customer reviews or testimonials? Even if you only have a handful of sales, get those reviews and display them prominantly.
-> Is your contact information and returns policy easy to find? A hidden email address and no physical address feels dodgy.
-> Have you been featured anywhere? Even a small mention on a local London style blog is something. Put that "As seen in..." logo on your homepage.

But even with a perfect website, your ads will fail if your message is weak. "Eco-friendly materials and ethical production" isn't a compelling offer; it's a feature. It's the price of entry in the sustainable space. You need to sell the transformation, not the product specs. Your ads need to speak to a deeper pain point. Think about it using a simple framework:

Before: Your wardrobe is full of fast fashion from Zara and H&M. The pieces feel cheap, they fall apart after a few washes, and you feel a pang of guilt every time you buy something new, knowing the human and environmental cost. You feel uninspired by the same high street looks everyone else is wearing.
After: You open your wardrobe and see a few, beautifuly made pieces you truly love. You feel confident and stylish, knowing your clothes tell a story of craftsmanship and positive impact. You get compliments from friends asking, "Where did you get that?".
Bridge: Your brand is the bridge that gets them from that "Before" state of guilt and dissatisfaction to the "After" state of pride and confidence.

Your ad copy should reflect this. Stop selling "sustainable dresses". Start selling "The confidence of wearing a dress that was made to last, not to be thrown away." That's a message that resonates on an emotional level, and it's what will make someone stop scrolling.

Where do I even find my first 100 customers in London?

This brings us to the biggest myth in advertising for small businesses: brand awareness. So many founders are told to run "Reach" or "Brand Awareness" campaigns on Facebook and Instagram. Here's the uncomfortable truth: when you select that objective, you are giving Meta's algorithm a very specific command: "Find me the largest number of people for the lowest possible price."

The algorithm does exactly that. It finds the users inside your target audience who are least likely to click, least likely to engage, and absolutely, positively least likely to ever buy anything. Why? Because their attention is cheap. No other advertiser wants them. You are actively paying the world's most powerful advertising machine to find you the worst possible audience. For a startup with a tiny budget, this is suicide. Awareness is a byproduct of having a great product that solves a real problem, not a prerequisite for making a sale. One happy customer telling their friends in a London pub about your brand is worth more than 10,000 passive impressions.

So, we forget awareness. Your campaign objective from day one must be Conversions, optimised for Purchase. You are telling the algorithm, "I don't care about likes or views. Go and find me people in my audience who are most likely to actually buy something today." This costs more per impression, but you're paying for quality, not quantity.

For a visual product like fashion, Meta (Facebook and Instagram) is your best bet. We’ve seen huge success for apparel brands on these platforms; I remember one women's apparel client achieving a 691% return using a mix of Meta and Pinterest ads. Pinterest can be a great secondary chanel, but start with Meta.

The real magic is in the targeting, especially within a specific city like London. Don't just type "London" into the location box. Get specific.
-> Postcode Targeting: Think about where your ideal customer lives or works. You can target affluent and style-conscious postcodes like SW3 (Chelsea), W8 (Kensington), W11 (Notting Hill), or trendier areas like N1 (Islington) or E8 (Hackney).
-> Interest Layering: This is where you build a picture of your ideal customer. Don't just use one broad interest like "Sustainable Fashion". You need to layer them. Create an audience of people who live in your target London postcodes AND are interested in "Sustainable Fashion" AND follow publications like Vogue UK or Elle UK AND also show interest in high-end retailers like Liberty London or Selfridges. Or maybe they follow smaller, curated ethical fashion accounts.
-> Competitor Audiences: Target people who follow similar, perhaps more established, sustainable brands. If someone already likes and follows a brand like People Tree or Reformation, they've already shown they are willing to pay for ethical fashion.

This is how you move from shouting into the void to whispering in the ear of your perfect customer. Your ad spend is concentrated only on the people most likely to resonate with your message and actually make a purchase.

How much is this actually going to cost me?

This is the question every founder asks, and the answer is always "it depends". But we can make some educated estimates based on real-world data. Let's look at the maths for an eCommerce brand targeting a developed country like the UK, specifically a competitive city like London.

Your Cost Per Click (CPC) will likely be somewhere between £0.50 and £1.50. London will be at the higher end of that. A decent eCommerce conversion rate is between 2-5%. A brand new, unknown store will be at the lower end of that. Let's be realistic.

So, the calculation for your Cost Per Purchase (CPA) looks like this:
Best Case Scenario: £0.50 CPC / 5% Conversion Rate = £10 per sale.
Worst Case (and more realistic for a start): £1.50 CPC / 2% Conversion Rate = £75 per sale.

Seeing a £75 cost to acquire one customer can be terrifying. Many founders see this, panic, and turn the ads off, declaring "it doesn't work". This is a massive mistake. Your first few sales are the most expensive because you are paying for data, not just the sale. You are teaching Meta's algorithm who your customer is. As you gather more purchase data, the algorithm gets smarter, your targeting gets refined, and that CPA will come down. I've seen it time and time again. We worked with a medical recruitment SaaS, for example, and took their CPA from £100 all the way down to £7 by relentlessly optimising.

The real question isn't how low your CPA is, but how high a CPA you can afford. This is where you need to understand your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV). Let's say your average order value is £100. A loyal customer might buy from you three times over the next two years. Their LTV is £300. Suddenly, paying £75, or even £50, to acquire that customer looks like a fantastic investment. You've spent £50 to make £300. That's the maths that builds sustainable businesses.

What should my ads and funnel actually look like?

You dont need a complex, multi-stage funnel to get your first 100 customers. You need a simple, ruthlessly efficient two-part structure: one campaign for finding new customers (prospecting) and one for bringing back people who showed interest but didn't buy (retargeting).

Campaign 1: Prospecting (Cold Traffic)
-> Objective: Conversions (optimised for Purchase).
-> Audience: This is where you use your London-specific layered interest and postcode audiences. Test a few different ones against each other in separate ad sets to see what works. For instance, Ad Set 1 could be "Chelsea postcodes + Vogue + Sustainable Fashion interest". Ad Set 2 could be "Hackney postcodes + Dazed Magazine + Ethical Fashion interest".
-> Creative: This is your first impression, so make it count. Video is king on Meta. A short, engaging video showing your product being worn is ideal. A high-quality carousel ad showcasing several pieces from your collection can also work really well. Your copy must be direct, using that Before-After-Bridge framework we talked about. No fluff.

Campaign 2: Retargeting (Warm Traffic)
-> Objective: Conversions (optimised for Purchase).
-> Audience: Because your budget and traffic will be small to start, combine your retargeting audiences into one ad set. This should include anyone who has visited your website in the last 30 days, anyone who has added a product to their cart in the last 14 days, and anyone who has watched 50% or more of your video ads. Crucially, you must exclude people who have already purchased.
-> Creative: Don't just show them the same ad again. They've seen it. You need a different angle. This is where you can introduce a small incentive, like "Still thinking it over? Here's 10% off your first London order." Or you could use Dynamic Product Ads, which automatically show people the exact product they looked at on your site. A simple graphic with a customer testimonial can also be incredibly powerful here. "I'm obsessed with my new jumper, the quality is amazing!" - Sarah from Islington. This builds social proof and pushes them over the edge.

Most of your sales will come from this retargeting campaign. It's incredibly rare for someone to see an ad from a new brand and buy immediatly. They need to see you a few times. They visit your site, they leave, they see your ad again a day later, and then they buy. This is where the profit is made.

How do I know if it's working and what to do next?

Running ads on a small budget isn't a "set it and forget it" activity. You need to be in your Ads Manager, checking the key metrics and making decisions based on data, not gut feeling. For a new eCommerce brand, these are the only numbers that matter:

-> Click-Through Rate (CTR): Are people actually clicking on your ad? If your CTR is below 1%, your creative (the image/video) or your copy isn't good enough. It's not stopping the scroll. Test new visuals and headlines.
-> Cost Per Click (CPC): How much are you paying for a click? If this is very high, your audience might be too narrow or too competitive. Try broadening your interests slightly.
-> Add to Carts: You're getting clicks, but are people adding products to their basket? If not, the problem is on your product page. Is the price a shock? Are the photos not as good as the ad? Is sizing or material information unclear?
-> Cost Per Purchase & Return on Ad Spend (ROAS): This is the bottom line. How much are you spending to get a sale, and how much revenue are you getting back for every pound you spend? If you're getting lots of Add to Carts but no purchases, the problem is likely at your checkout. Are your shipping costs a nasty surprise? Is the checkout process clunky and complicated? Is there a final lack of trust that's stopping them from entering their card details?

This process of analysis is iterative. You launch your first ads. You watch the data for 3-5 days. You identify the bottleneck (e.g., low CTR). You pause the failing ads and launch a new test with different creative. You repeat this process, constantly refining and optimising. Your goal in the first few weeks isn't necessarily to be profitable, but to learn as quickly as possible and systematically improve your metrics until you are.

A Simple Strategy for Your First 100 London Customers

This might seem like a lot to take in, so I've detailed my main recommendations for you in a simple, actionable plan. This is the exact process you should follow to get those first crucial sales and build a foundation for growth.

This is a simplified roadmap, but it's a powerful one. Executing it perfectly—picking the exact right interest combinations, writing copy that truly converts, managing the budget day-to-day, and knowing precisely when to kill an ad or scale it—is where the real work and expertise lie. Honestly, it's a full-time job.

Getting it slightly wrong can mean burning through your entire starting budget with little to show for it. Getting it right, however, can build the foundation for a brand that lasts and thrives. It’s the difference between being another failed startup and becoming the next beloved London fashion brand.

If you're serious about growing your brand and want an expert to review your current setup and show you exactly where the opportunities are, we offer a free, no-obligation strategy session. We can walk you through how we've helped other eCommerce brands achieve results, like generating $71k revenue at an 8x return for a maps & navigation client or achieving a 1000% return for a subscription box client, and see if we can do the same for you.