Fashion Blogs

Just like with every other business, starting a fashion line requires drive, creativity and knowledge of sound business practices. This last point is an important one, since having brilliant designs isn’t enough to succeed. Given the scale and cost involved in starting your own fashion line, it might be a wise investment to first get an MBA and some experience in the fashion industry. 

Before starting a fashion line, you should ask yourself a few questions. For instance, how well do you know the fashion industry and do you have any relevant experience? Taking a few fashion merchandising courses from inexpensive online universities and reading the best industry books such as Business Boutique can be helpful. So can working in a store that offers items that similar to what you have in mind.

What’s Your Target Market?

 Demographics are important, so you need to decide what your target market’s going to be. Just who are you trying to make clothes for? Is it going to be men, women, children or all three? How much do they care about brand strength? Will you sell to other retailers or have your own store? If the former, will it be casual clothing outlets like Walmart, or do you expect your fashions to end up in high-end retailers like Bloomingdale’s?

Create a Business Plan

Create a well thought out business plan for your new company. Some of the things that this plan should include are your general ideas, your logo, your specific target market, your marketing plan, financial information and future revenue forecasts. You should also create an exit strategy for the business in case things go badly.

Determine Your Financial Need?

Determining just how much money you need to start a new fashion line can be very difficult and involves many factors, such as whether you plan to sell directly to customers or are going to be selling through other retailers. In the latter case, you may have much smaller overhead costs. At the same time, selling through other retailers may require you to produce and sell much more clothing from the very beginning – since retailers like Target or Walmart don’t deal in small quantities. Either way, raising your initial capital is the stage where you are most likely to make a mistake. Don’t pitch to investors and certainly don’t borrow money to fund an unproven business! In the initial stages, the best way to grow is to grow slowly, bootstrapping business growth by reinvesting revenues.

Select a Location

 The location you choose for your new fashion line business can make a huge difference, whether you’re opening a retail store or a manufacturing facility. To begin with, it’s always best to be located near your suppliers. The materials you need for making your clothing should be readily accessible to you. For a retail location, it’s important to check foot traffic and the general economic vitality of the area you’re looking at. Is the community large enough to support your retail store? Is the rent for the building you’re looking at in line with your budget projections?

Hiring Employees

Again, there’s a tremendous difference between the employees you’ll need for a fashion line that sells through other retailers and a fashion line that sells through your own store. If you’re going to be selling your own items directly to the public, you’ll want employees who are experienced in the retail trade and in customer interaction. This is less important if you will be selling your clothing through other retailers, but chances are you will need a solid team at some stage of growth, regardless of the model. When you reach that stage, do some research into hiring best-practices so you don’t hire any turkeys.

Marketing

 After considering your market demographics and selecting your target, you should build your advertising plan based on this. Effectively marketing your business is far and away the most important facet of making it a success, since this is how you get and retain customers. Since marketing has become so complex in recent years, with the addition of Internet advertising and social media posting, it’s probably best to hire an experienced professional to do this part for you.

If the budget allows, magazine, newspaper and television ads can get news of your new fashion line out to potential customers. But you don’t want to use a shotgun approach in advertising. Instead, everything that you do when promoting your products needs to be targeted directly at your particular demographic. You don’t want to promote your new line of lingerie in Field & Stream.

Use your employees to promote your clothing line as well. You and your staff should wear your clothing whenever appropriate. For instance, if you are interacting with a retailer who is considering putting your line in their store, what better way to promote your clothing than to wear it yourself in the meeting?