How to Write a Brand Story That Is Not Generic
By The Velocity Wear Team
Cut every sentence that would still be true if you pasted a competitor's name into it, then replace the abstractions with actual events, quantities, places and mistakes. A brand story is only interesting where it is specific. The test is simple: if a rival could publish your about page unchanged, you have not written a story, you have written a template.
The Cliches, Named Out Loud
You have read these a hundred times. Frustrated by the lack of quality on the market. Born out of a passion for. Started in a bedroom with nothing but a dream. We believe everyone deserves. It began as a conversation between friends. Sustainability is at the heart of everything we do. On a mission to redefine. Not just clothing, a movement.
None of these are lies, exactly. That is the problem. They are so broadly true that they carry no information, and a reader's eye slides straight off them. A sentence that could appear on any about page in the country tells your customer nothing about whether to trust you.
Why Everyone Writes The Same Page
Because the generic version feels safe. Specificity means committing to something that might not appeal to everybody, and when you are three orders into a new brand that feels risky. So people reach for the language they have seen elsewhere, which by definition is the language everyone else already used.
There is a second reason. Real detail requires you to admit the beginning was scrappy, underfunded and partly accidental. The generic story lets you skip that. Unfortunately the scrappy part is the only bit anyone finds interesting.
What Specific Actually Looks Like
Take the most common opener: we were frustrated by the poor quality of clothing available. Now write what actually happened. The first run was a 280 GSM hoodie and you could see the print through it from the inside, so the second run went to 350 and the cost per unit rose more than you had planned for. Same claim, but now it is a fact rather than a feeling, and it tells the reader how you make decisions.
Or: we started small. Better: the first order was 20 pieces, the minimum, mixed across sizes because you had no idea what people wore, and you sold eleven of them at a market stall in the rain. A reader can picture that. They cannot picture we started small.
- Replace passion for quality with the specific decision quality cost you, in fabric weight, in method, or in money you did not have.
- Replace we listened to our customers with the one thing a customer said that made you change the product.
- Replace a small team of dedicated people with how many people there actually are and what they physically do.
- Replace ethically made with the concrete fact you can evidence, and read the CMA's guidance on green claims before you write anything about sustainability.
- Replace we are on a mission with what you refuse to do, because refusals are far more distinctive than aspirations.
Say The Thing You Are Slightly Reluctant To Say
The most memorable line on an about page is usually the one that made the founder wince slightly before publishing. The first run had the logo two centimetres too high and you sold it anyway. You started the brand because you were made redundant, not because of a lifelong dream. You do not do organic cotton yet because at your volume you cannot make the numbers work honestly.
Admitting a limit is the fastest way to be believed about everything else. A page with no trade-offs anywhere in it reads as marketing, and readers discount marketing automatically.
Constraints Beat Ambitions
Ambitions all sound the same because everyone wants roughly the same things. Constraints are unique to you and therefore actually distinguishing. We only print what we can pack ourselves. We never reprint a limited run, even when it sells out in a day. We work in three colours because we screen print and setup is charged per colour, so restraint keeps the price sane.
Each of those tells a customer how you behave, which is what they are really trying to work out when they read an about page.
“"If your brand story survives having your name swapped for a competitor's, it was never your story."”
Where The Story Belongs
Not only on the about page, which most visitors never open. The strongest version of a brand story is distributed: a line on the product page explaining why this garment is the weight it is, a note in the parcel, one paragraph in the welcome email, an honest caption about a run that came out wrong. Small consistent detail beats one long page nobody reads to the end.
Rewrite It When It Stops Being True
A story written in year one describes a business that no longer exists by year three. If you still describe yourself as a bedroom operation while running four-figure orders, readers notice the mismatch and it undermines everything else. Reread the page annually, strike out anything that has quietly become false, and add the newer specifics. The scrappy origin still belongs there. It just belongs in the past tense.