LCF Grad Futures: Understand your Consumer and Craft your Value Proposition

This session is only for London College of Fashion students and graduates. It is aligned to your Graduate Futures start-up and freelancer journey.

Do you have an idea but don’t know if it can be turned into reality? Or have started it but aren’t sure about your next steps? This virtual bootcamp series will help you refine your concept, identify your target audience, build your value proposition and business model, and build a confident launch strategy.

Session 1: From Idea to Opportunity – Ideation and Design Thinking (Monday 27 October at 1pm)

• Through hands-on activities, you’ll learn how to generate, refine, and test ideas in a way that aligns with real-world needs. We’ll explore how to identify problems worth solving, develop user-centred solutions, and move from concept to opportunity.

Session 2: Understanding your Consumer and Crafting your Value Proposition (Tuesday 28 October at 1pm )

• How to position your brand effectively and connect with your ideal customers? This session will cover how to research your market, identify your target audience, and define what makes your business idea unique.

Session 3: Your Business Model and Go-to-Market Strategy (Wednesday 29 October at 1pm)

• It's time to put your idea into action. We’ll use the Business Model Canvas to map out your concept, develop your Minimum Viable Product (MVP), and design a customer acquisition strategy to launch with confidence.

Session 4: Building an implementation plan (Thursday 30 October at 1pm)

• In our final session, we’ll cover the essential steps to move forward: setting up operations, refining your offer, testing pricing, and planning your first sales or launch. You’ll leave with a clear, actionable roadmap to bring your idea to life.

Book your ticket for each session, to receive a link to join the session.

If you can’t attend them all, don’t worry, we will share the resources and continue supporting you.

Speakers

• Mirela Barbosa, Graduate Futures Enterprise consultant: Mirela Barbosa is a mentor and consultant with over 20 years’ experience in the fashion and beauty industries. Her work combines research, strategy, and cultural aspects to help develop meaningful brands. She is also the founder of Project M, an emotional branding consultancy aimed at startups and mid-sized companies, launched after completing her MA in Fashion Entrepreneurship and Innovation at LCF.
• Carla Frith, Graduate Futures Enterprise consultant: Carla Frith is a Buying and Product development specialist with 17 years of industry experience. Carla has worked with some of the fashion industry’s leading brands; H&M, COS, and Topshop. In her role as Buying Manager at COS, she directed and managed a team of buyers, designers and merchandisers to create forward-thinking collections. Carla now works as a consultant for fashion start-up businesses helping them to take product visions into reality. Her work includes supporting founders with trend research, responsible supply chain sourcing, funding through to range development and production.

Useful resources

In this webinar, you will develop the key skills of proactivity, enterprise, curiosity, and self-efficacy as defined by the UAL Creative Attributes Framework (My_CAF). Before attending this activity, we suggest you:

• Check out our Startup Bootcamp Padlet

If there are any barriers to your participation in this event or you have access requirements you wish to discuss, please contact graduate.futures@fashion.arts.ac.uk in advance, we'd be happy to talk with you. If you can't sign-up as the tickets have run out or expired, please email and see if you are still able to attend.

Image credit: Venture Crawl 2025. Photography by © Graduate Futures