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MARKET RESEARCH

This section traces the terrain around Echo Primitus —

its audiences, its parallels, and the shifting world it moves within.

It maps not just where Echo stands, but what it stands for in an evolving creative landscape.

BRAND PROFILE

Echo Primitus is a speculative fashion project rooted in post-anthropocentric thought. It explores how the human body might adapt—physically, visually, and symbolically—when no longer positioned at the center of nature. Inspired by animal anatomy, ecological collapse, and imagined futures, the collection merges sculptural garment design with AI-generated visual worldbuilding. Each piece acts as a material artefact from an alternate evolutionary timeline—one where humans evolve not through domination, but through symbiosis, shedding form to find a new way to belong.

BRAND VISION

The bigger purpose behind the brand and what it aims to challenge or shift.

To challenge human exceptionalism through fashion by envisioning futures where identity is shaped by adaptation, not control. Echo Primitus exists to blur the lines between human and animal, body and landscape, fashion and fiction—offering an alternative to trend-driven design through garments that hold memory, meaning, and myth.

DESIGN PHILOSPHY

How the brand approaches design and translates ideas into garments.

Echo Primitus is guided by the belief that fashion can serve as a medium of speculative storytelling. Each design is informed by biomimicry, emotional memory, and the dissolution of human-centric silhouettes. Garments are constructed not for traditional wearability, but as sculptural extensions of imagined bodies—emphasising ritual, hybridity, and bodily transformation. Gen-AI visual development and prompt writing are integral to the process, allowing the collection to inhabit digital futures as much as physical ones.

KEY AESTHETIC

The visual and material language that defines the brand’s look.

  • Sculptural, primal, and asymmetrical

  • Animalistic silhouettes referencing horns, scales, folds, and protective carapaces

  • Textural contrasts between rigid forms and fluid drape

  • Distressed black, muted greys, and raw neutrals

  • A visual language shaped by evolutionary adaptation and biomechanical softness

TARGET AUDIENCE

The people the brand is made for and who connect with its values.

  • Independent game developers, animators, and narrative worldbuilders

  • Artist-researchers and interdisciplinary creatives invested in ecological, speculative, and posthuman ideas

  • Stylists, curators, and collectors seeking garments that act as artefacts, not commodities

  • Slow-fashion advocates who favour meaning, texture, and conceptual alignment over seasonal cycles

MARKET PLACEMENT

Where the brand fits in the fashion or design industry landscape.

Echo Primitus occupies the space between conceptual fashion, speculative design, and digital culture. It is best positioned within curated fashion-art platforms, graduate exhibitions, experimental retail environments, and interdisciplinary design festivals. Rather than competing with mass retail or luxury fashion, it speaks to a niche but growing creative segment that values fashion as storytelling, philosophy, and transformation.

CUSTOMER PROFILE

PRIMARY

Demographics

  • Age: 26–35

  • Location: META

  • Occupation: Artist-designer hybrids, stylists, independent curators, creative researchers, MFA candidates

  • Income: SGD 2,000–3,500/month, often from mixed sources (freelance + grants + part-time jobs)

  • Education: BA or MA in Fine Art, Fashion, Critical Design, Cultural Studies

  • Engagement Channels: Instagram, Are.na, it.chio, artist newsletters, zines, thesis-sharing Discords, independent fashion exhibitions

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Psychographics

  • Deeply values craftsmanship and thematic storytelling in fashion—less interested in quantity, more in symbolic or conceptual weight

  • Purchases 1–2 meaningful pieces per year, often saving up or timing purchases around collaborations or limited releases

  • Sees fashion as a form of worldmaking, expression, and alignment with ideas (e.g., posthuman identity, ecological belonging, biomimicry)

  • Prefers clothing that can shift across performance, installation, or daily wear in layered, adaptable ways

  • Values digital experiences that expand fashion’s emotional or philosophical reach—Gen-AI, immersive worlds, and sound

SECONDARY

Demographics

  • Age: 28–38

  • Location: META

  • Occupation: Narrative game developers, 3D animators, visual development artists, or creative coders

  • Income: SGD 3,000–4,500/month —freelance or studio-employed, with variable income across projects

  • Education: Game design, digital arts, new media, or speculative design backgrounds (self-taught or institutional)

  • Digital Spaces: ArtStation, Discord (closed community servers), Behance, Steam, indie game festivals (e.g., A MAZE., BitSummit)

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Psychographics

  • Deeply invested in worldbuilding—sees clothing as a storytelling device or character design reference

  • Attracted to fashion that bridges real and imagined environments—garments that feel like artefacts of another ecosystem

  • More likely to interact with Echo Primitus through its digital dimension first: AI visuals, speculative environments, creature design logic, etc.

  • Not concerned with fashion industry trends—prefers designers who build immersive atmospheres or reflect philosophical and ecological nuance

  • Makes infrequent but intentional purchases, often collecting one-off pieces, pre-orders, or collaborative editions that can be tied to their personal or narrative work

Primary Persona: Nareh

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Nareh, 30, visual artist and researcher, based in Rotterdam
Nareh works part-time as a studio technician at a local art academy while developing a multidisciplinary practice exploring ecology, memory, and the body. Her performances are quiet, raw, and often grounded in textile and gesture—layered with movement, and remnants of the natural world. She co-organises a small independent journal centred on posthuman theory, where she curates content around interspecies intimacy and speculative care. Nareh approaches clothing as she does sculpture: slowly, intuitively, and with intention. She invests in just one or two garments each year—pieces that feel like extensions of her worldview. When she encountered a collection featuring layered anatomical silhouettes and primal textures, she referred to one piece as a “future fossil.” It now lives in her wardrobe and her work, worn for performances or hung like a soft relic beside her process table. For Nareh, fashion is not decorative—it’s devotional.

Secondary Persona: Ilon

 

Ilon, 34, narrative game developer and 3D concept artist, based in Montreal
Ilon works on a small independently published game rooted in non-linear storytelling and creature ecology. By day, they freelance as a concept artist and visual designer—developing environments, textures, and character anatomies that draw from speculative biology and digital folklore. They’re fascinated by artefacts that feel like they belong to a world that no longer exists or hasn’t been born yet. In the course of researching visual references, Ilon came across garments with sculptural forms that echoed horn structures, scaled surfaces, and environmental adaptation. They acquired one—not as fashion, but as a reference object. It’s been photographed, textured, and mapped onto characters, but also worn, softly and occasionally, when sketching or presenting new work. For Ilon, design exists across thresholds—digital and physical, creature and costume, function and fiction.

COMPETITORS

This competitor analysis positions the project within an emergent design landscape defined by ecological urgency, posthuman narratives, and digital hybridity. Through the practices of Victor Clavelly, Taskin Goec, and The Fabricant, we see a spectrum of responses to the evolving relationship between body, material, and world. Each designer opens new directions—through form distortion, biomorphic surface, or dematerialised fashion—while also revealing gaps in emotional depth, narrative coherence, or sensory integration. These tensions help identify where

Echo Primitus diverges, and where it can contribute something distinctly its own.

VICTOR CLAVELLY

Victor Clavelly is an experimental designer whose work interrogates the human form by rejecting anatomical conventions. Through sharp distortions and spatial asymmetries, his garments challenge the hierarchy of the body and explore abstraction as a mode of design.

SWOT ANALYSIS

STRENGTHS

WEAKNESSES

VICTOR CLAVELLY

TASKIN GOEC

THE FABRICANT

ECHO PRIMITUS

  • Brings deep expertise in form manipulation and non-human silhouette construction, aligning with a growing posthuman discourse.

  • Offers strong physical garment execution with unique visual identity—highly recognisable work within the art-fashion world.

  • Currently positioned in critical fashion networks and galleries with institutional backing.

  • USP: Material deconstruction as a challenge to the body’s normative structure.

  • Concept is primarily expressed through form, lacking multisensory or narrative layers that increasingly engage younger audiences.

  • Does not currently engage with digital storytelling, immersive tech, or speculative worldbuilding.

  • Limited accessibility and relatability to wider markets due to absence of emotional framing.

  • Brings intense material and textural innovation, visually mimicking nature’s adaptation processes.

  • Resonates with current interest in biodesign, ecology, and organismic aesthetics.

  • Positioning within the art-fashion-performance sphere allows for flexible presentation and critical engagement.

  • USP: Nature as origin—not inspiration—of fashion.

  • Primarily analog; lacks presence in digital design ecosystems or AI-integrated workflows.

  • Often described visually, but rarely articulated through language or philosophical frameworks, leaving gaps in interpretive engagement.

  • Emotional resonance is sensory rather than narrative—limiting accessibility for audiences seeking meaning beyond visuals.

  • Brings technical innovation in digital garment creation, NFT commerce, and virtual fashion platforms.

  • Well-positioned in Web3 and metaverse spaces, capturing early adopter interest in digital identity.

  • Offers scalability and low environmental impact compared to physical production.

  • USP: Fashion liberated from physicality—designed to exist entirely in digital ecosystems.

  • Emotionally neutral; lacks a strong philosophical or ecological narrative, relying heavily on user interpretation.

  • Garments are often contextless unless styled within editorialised platforms, resulting in a lack of personal resonance.

  • Prioritises interactivity and trend adaptability over critical depth or emotional anchoring.

  • Brings a clear philosophical and emotional narrative rooted in posthumanism, ecological adaptation, and speculative evolution.

  • Responds directly to emerging cultural discourse surrounding climate grief, species decentering, and non-technological future identities.

  • USP: Fashion as an ecosystem, not an object—clothing becomes memory, adaptation, and interface.

  • Fills a conceptual and emotional gap in both traditional and digital fashion markets.

  • Strong alignment with the slow futurism and meaning-driven consumption trends rising among younger consumers.

  • Niche in presentation; requires careful contextual framing to be understood outside academic or critical fashion spaces.

  • Limited production scalability due to sculptural complexity and abstract form.

  • Still emerging; lacks major visibility or collaborative exposure in high-exposure digital or gallery circuits.

  • No immediate utility in mass-market or streetwear contexts, making commercial expansion challenging without reframing.

OPPORTUNITIES

THREATS

VICTOR CLAVELLY

TASKIN GOEC

THE FABRICANT

ECHO PRIMITUS

  • Could evolve by incorporating narrative, sound, or digital overlays to enhance the philosophical depth of the work.

  • Positioned to benefit from fashion’s increasing movement toward installation-based exhibitions and performative presentations.

  • Without thematic expansion, may face perceptual stagnation in a market now shifting toward immersive, multi-dimensional experiences.

  • May lose relevance to digital-native designers offering more layered entry points.

  • Could benefit from deeper storytelling to anchor the visual language in speculative or post-anthropocentric frameworks.

  • Strong potential for AR, VR, or AI extensions of the biomorphic forms for museum and gaming environments.

  • Could fill a market desire for organic futurism with critical depth—if context is expanded.

  • Rising interest in nature-inspired digital design may diminish distinctiveness if not anchored by deeper conceptual frameworks.

  • Risk of being aestheticised without clear positioning—potentially flattened by media as “textural fashion” rather than philosophical work.

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  • May evolve through partnerships with narrative or posthuman thinkers/designers to embed more meaning into digital outputs.

  • Market for identity-driven, AI-enhanced virtual fashion is expanding—particularly for avatars, gaming, and XR.

  • Can fill the need for platform-based fashion systems where digital identity is fluid and wearable.​

  • Increasing saturation of AI-generated digital garments may reduce perceived value if not differentiated by narrative or craft.

  • Web3 volatility and ethical concerns (blockchain energy usage) may impact long-term trust and relevance.

  • Without strong storytelling, risks being outpaced by younger, more emotionally and ecologically grounded digital fashion creators.

  • Positioned to enter cross-disciplinary networks—collaborations with speculative fiction writers, game developers, and immersive theatre designers.

  • Market trend shift from “wearability” to “symbolism, embodiment, and worldbuilding” aligns with this project's strengths.

  • Can fill a major gap in digital fashion that lacks emotional or philosophical grounding—bringing depth where others bring only visuals.

  • Well-placed for curatorial interest in posthuman identity, AI and art, and non-anthropocentric fashion themes.

  • The rapid rise of AI-generated fashion may result in visual oversaturation—concept-driven projects may be wrongly grouped with aesthetic-only AI work.

  • Misinterpretation or reduction of post-anthropocentric themes could dilute the project’s intended impact.

  • Lack of strong sustainability rhetoric may challenge its positioning in ethical fashion markets unless clearly framed.

  • Dependent on maintaining relevance in a shifting Gen-AI landscape.

THE FABRICANT

Digital fashion only; geared toward product delivery rather than speculative discourse

TASKIN GOEC

Eco-conscious and clear; practical garments with light conceptual framing

VICTOR CLAVELLY

Artisanal and symbolic; engages abstraction, but still fashion-focused

BRAND POSITIONING MAP

ECHO PRIMITUS

Cross-disciplinary audience and narratively charged; designs operate as speculative artefacts

X-AXIS: GENRE ANCHORING            CROSS-POLLINATION
Y-AXIS: PRODUCT-FOCUSED            SPECULATIVE EXPRESSION

Axis Breakdown:

  • X-Axis: Genre Anchoring VS Cross-Pollination
    Reflects how each brand either stays rooted in traditional fashion language or extends into other creative disciplines.

  • Y-Axis: Product-focused VS Speculative Expression
    Captures whether garments serve as trend-driven products or as narrative, symbolic, and future-oriented artefacts.​

This positioning map visualizes how contemporary fashion brands operate across two critical axes: Cross-Pollination and Speculative Expression. The horizontal axis considers the degree to which a brand moves beyond traditional fashion structures—collaborating across disciplines like gaming, digital art, or performance—versus being anchored in fashion’s established codes. The vertical axis distinguishes between brands focused on product-making—where wearability and market function dominate—and those engaged in speculative expression, where garments serve as conceptual artefacts that propose new narratives or futures.

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Placement:

  • Echo Primitus
    → Highest in speculative expression and cross-disciplinary engagement.
    → Creates wearable artefacts that live within imagined futures and worldbuilding practices.

  • Victor Clavelly
    → Strong conceptual abstraction, though still anchored in fashion traditions.
    → Narrative through form, but not overtly speculative.

  • Taskin Goec
    → Practical sustainability focus with moderate engagement in ethical storytelling.
    → Light narrative, rooted in functionality.

  • The Fabricant
    → Digital fashion optimized for platform use, avatar wearables, and scalability.
    → Product-focused with minimal conceptual or speculative depth.

Echo Primitus is positioned in the upper-right quadrant, where speculative depth meets interdisciplinary reach. It does not merely produce garments, but rather creates narrative containers that speak to a shifting cultural landscape—bridging fashion with digital storytelling, ecological theory, and visual worldbuilding. In contrast, Victor Clavelly leans toward expressive form and abstraction, while still grounded in traditional craft. Taskin Goec offers accessible sustainability-driven pieces with light conceptual framing. The Fabricant, though highly innovative in its digital scalability, remains rooted in a product-first mindset, optimized for platform visibility over symbolic discourse.

By occupying this quadrant, Echo Primitus is framed not just as an outlier, but as a future-resilient model—offering value to industries and audiences that prioritize meaning-making, cross-sector creativity, and design as a tool for speculation. This map reflects a strategic differentiation that aligns with broader cultural shifts toward hybridity, narrative immersion, and design’s expanding role beyond fashion itself.

BUSINESS MODEL CANVAS

KEY PARTNERS

  • Ethical textile and deadstock material suppliers

  • Gen-AI platforms and visual rendering tools

  • Independent stylists, curators, and photographers (on a selective basis)

  • Conceptual fashion platforms (e.g., APOC Store, Basic.Space)

  • Digital art festivals, speculative design programs, and gaming/animation communities

CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS

  • Personalised engagement via pre-orders, digital storytelling, and process transparency

  • Emphasis on creative dialogue and ideological resonance over trend-driven interaction

  • Behind-the-scenes sharing of prompt development, research, and visual construction

  • Occasional commissions for stylists, curators, or speculative collaborators

CHANNELS

  • Instagram and Are.na for visual storytelling and documentation

  • Independent online retail and concept platforms

  • Exhibition showcases, fashion-art presentations, and digital launches

  • Direct email newsletter or preorder system for audience-specific releases

  • Digital zines, experimental journals, and creative tech crossover events

KEY ACTIVITIES

  • Design and construction of sculptural, biomimetic garments

  • Development of speculative narratives through AI-generated visual environments

  • Writing and refining creative generation prompts for consistent visual language and worldbuilding

  • Artistic direction and campaign development (digital + physical)

  • Limited production and made-to-order fulfilment

  • Curating digital content, archiving development, and engaging with niche creative networks

CUSTOMER SEGMENTS

  • Indie game developers, animators, and visual environment designers

  • Interdisciplinary artist-researchers and fashion-adjacent creatives

  • Stylists, curators, and conceptually motivated collectors

  • Creatives interested in speculative aesthetics, posthuman narratives, and alternative ecologies

COST STRUCTURE

  • Sourcing of ethical, durable materials (e.g., recycled synthetics, vegan leather)

  • Studio prototyping and construction tools

  • AI platform access and time spent developing visual prompts

  • Photography, editing, and documentation (project-based)

  • Website hosting, packaging, and distribution costs

VALUE PROPOSITIONS

  • Garments as speculative artefacts, designed to function within imagined futures

  • A post-anthropocentric design approach informed by evolution, ecology, and bodily transformation

  • Integration of physical fashion with AI-driven storytelling and visual worldbuilding

  • Offers visual, conceptual, and material references to creative professionals in digital storytelling fields

  • Slow-fashion ethos: low-volume, long-term relevance, emotionally and intellectually driven

KEY RESOURCES

  • Designer’s conceptual framework, garment construction skillset, and speculative design lens

  • Ongoing archive of refined AI generation prompts and visual iterations

  • Studio tools and digital infrastructure

  • Visual content library, creative documentation, and digital moodboards

  • Established tone of voice and narrative aesthetic

REVENUE STREAMS

  • Made-to-order and limited edition garment sales

  • Select archival piece releases through curated platforms

  • Commissioned concept garments or digital visual assets

  • Future potential for AI-generated visual assets as worldbuilding or concept development tools

  • Exhibition-based garment sales or artist grants

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