Services
1:1 Brand Mentoring
Personalised one-to-one mentoring for fashion founders, independent brands, and creatives building a product business. Bhavna Rishi brings 20+ years of hands-on production and brand-building experience, across the V&A Museum, Iconic Images, Fenwick, and 50+ independent brands, into sessions that are specific to your business, your challenges, and your next move.
What this is
Production knowledge applied to your specific situation.
Business coaching covers mindset, goal-setting, and direction. What this adds is the production layer: which manufacturer to approach for your specific product, how to write a tech pack that a factory can work from, how to read a sample and know whether it's right, and whether your pricing will work at Fenwick.
Mentoring with Bhavna Rishi London draws on direct experience producing merchandise for the V&A Museum, building bestselling products at Fenwick, working with Iconic Images on licensed merchandise, and guiding 50+ founders from sketch to shelf. The answers come from practice, grounded in what has been built and delivered over twenty years.
Production support
Sample needs refining. Manufacturer relationship needs structure. Tech pack needs clarity. You need someone with direct production experience to work through it with you.
Pricing and margins
You want to be confident your pricing is viable and your margins work at wholesale. Mentoring gives you a clear picture of your cost structure and where to position your product.
Sourcing and manufacturing
You are ready to find the right manufacturing partner. Mentoring gives you a framework for approaching, vetting, and working with factories for your specific product.
Brand strategy and range planning
Your range is growing and you want to build it with intention. Mentoring helps you shape a collection that works as a coherent, sellable system.
Who this is for
Mentoring works best at specific stages
Pre-launch founders
You have a product concept and need a clear path from idea to first sample without making expensive mistakes. Mentoring gives you a structured sequence and the ability to ask specific questions before spending money.
Brands ready for their next stage
You have launched and you know something needs to shift, your product, your pricing, or your production. Mentoring helps you identify what to change and gives you a clear plan to move forward with confidence.
Artists building a product business
You have original artwork and want to turn it into merchandise and build a business around it, but the production and commercial side is unfamiliar territory. Mentoring provides the expertise you are missing.
Brands facing a pivot
You are changing direction, a new product category, a new market, a new price point. You need someone who can assess what that pivot actually requires in production terms before you commit.
Founders making their first wholesale approach
You are ready to approach wholesale and want to make sure your margins, your packaging, and your presentation are as strong as they can be. Mentoring prepares you fully for those conversations.
Independent brands scaling production
Your business has grown and your current production setup is not keeping up. You need to find reliable manufacturing partners who can handle increased volume without losing quality.
How it works
Structure without rigidity
Every mentoring engagement starts with a strategy call. From there, the structure is built around what you actually need.
Strategy call
A one-hour conversation to establish where you are, where you need to get to, and what the specific obstacles are. No vague goal-setting, a concrete assessment of your situation and what mentoring would focus on.
Session planning
Based on the strategy call, a structured plan for your sessions is agreed. Each session has a specific focus: production challenge, pricing review, sourcing strategy, range plan, or whatever the business needs.
Sessions
Regular one-to-one sessions, typically fortnightly or monthly depending on the pace of your project. Between sessions, you implement. The next session reviews progress, addresses blockers, and moves the plan forward.
Between-session support
Access to Bhavna for specific questions between sessions, reviewing a sample photo, checking a tech pack, advising on a supplier response. The kind of support that removes the blockers that would otherwise stall progress.
Review and next steps
At the end of each block of sessions, the progress is reviewed and the next block is planned. Many clients continue through multiple stages as their business grows; others achieve their goal and step back.
Outcomes
What founders have built
Houldsworth of Cheltenham
“After an initial chat with Bhavna six months ago, she helped to restore our hope and focus and promised to deliver, which she did. We had our first samples within one month and finished products two months ago. Bhavna is a delight to work with, she’s trustworthy and carries great integrity.”
, Matthew & Elisha Wright, Houldsworth of Cheltenham
Carmen Rowe
Carmen Rowe came to Bhavna Rishi London as a photographer wanting to turn her images into a commercial merchandise range. The result was a full product line, printed scarves, tote bags, and accessories, now sold through her own channels and stocked by stockists.
Read the case studyDLK
“I’m very impressed with the design of my DLK Do It Your Way golf top. The designer captured the vision perfectly with great attention to detail and creativity. Professional, efficient, and a pleasure to work with.”
, Sammy, DLK
Questions
Frequently Asked Questions
How is this different from a general business coach?
A general business coach can help with mindset, goal-setting, and accountability. What they cannot do is tell you whether your tech pack will produce the sample you need, whether your pricing works at wholesale, or how to find a manufacturer for your specific product. This mentoring is grounded in 20+ years of hands-on production and brand-building experience.
Do I need to have a product already to start?
No. Some clients come with a fully developed product and a specific production problem. Others come with an idea and no product yet. The starting point is wherever you are; the sessions are structured from there.
How many sessions will I need?
This depends entirely on what you are building and what you need. A founder with a specific sourcing problem might need three sessions. A founder building a brand from scratch might work with Bhavna over twelve months. The strategy call gives a clear picture of what is realistic.
Can I combine mentoring with the BTDB Course?
Yes, and many clients do. The course gives you the complete system; mentoring applies it to your specific situation. The combination is particularly effective for founders who learn best through both structured material and personalised guidance.
Is mentoring suitable for artists who want to build a merchandise business?
Yes. Artists turning original work into merchandise and building a business around it is one of the most common mentoring contexts. The production knowledge, fabric selection, colour matching, small-minimum manufacturing, pricing, is directly applicable and not easily found elsewhere.
What does the strategy call cost?
The initial strategy call is free. It exists to assess whether mentoring is the right fit for your situation, and to ensure that if it is, the sessions are structured around what you actually need.
The first call is free.
Book a strategy call to discuss where your brand is, where you want to take it, and how mentoring can support your next step.
Book a Strategy Call