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Even if you have been making designs since you were a minor, or you have made many prize-winning outfits for your school Halloween shows or been successfully selling your homemade custom t-shirts you’re your garage. Of even if you’re just a fresh entrepreneur who is obsessed with stylish clothing.
Regardless of what you are or what you want, knowing what one needs to do in order to start a clothing business is opposite to starting a clothing line.
Luckily, today we will take advises from many successful clothing entrepreneurs and learn about some useful success tips that they used before they were famous.
We have talked to many fashion business owners and put together some useful tips regarding how to start your clothing business, from funding your business with small funding loans or product idea generation as well as some words of motivation to help you on your journey.
A person doesn’t need to be an expert to know how to start a clothing business?
First of all, does not your limited experience regarding the fashion industry hinder your chances of starting your own clothing business? Unlike other professions, starting your clothing line can be achieved without a degree or special training. Majority of famous and successful designers in this industry started with little or no experiences.
With that being said, a person still needs to completely dedicate their time and efforts if they want their clothing line to be a success.
Founder of a famous clothing brand called BIDA, Bianca Dabney was an actress and a model before getting into the clothing business. Her love for the industry made her understand how garments are marketed and presented. But the most challenging part starting a new clothing line was to gaining enough confidence and generating the courage needed in order to leavea stable job and starting something new.
Just like most of us, she also knew since her early days what she wanted to do with her life. Said, “ I was born and raised with the concept that when ill grows up I’ll have to get a decent office job and find something stable, this mentality was one of the biggest reason why, at first, I was afraid to take this leap of faith”.
She was able to set up her own business without any prior training or experience. However, she did some research on how to start a clothing line and went with it. She said, “Starting my brand was challenging but extremely satisfying” she also said, ” Determination, self-motivation and my passion for style helped me to be an expert in this field.”
So, how to start a clothing business? Few steps mentioned below will help you:
Step one: Make a proper plan for your clothing business
It is always very helpful to first make a business plan and implement it at the start of your venture. Doing this will help you by acting as an outline or a road map towards your goal for the next few years.
It’s always better to have a proper layout before jumping into something new or something that you have no prior experience in. The main mistake with startups is when people start them without doing their homework as such businesses often end up failing.
Step two: Find your niche
Successful businesses identify an issue within their market and then create a product that will help them fix that issue. With that being said, a person doesn’t need to go into researching the market on this stage. It’s more likely that an idea of a stylish or unique clothing item will come to you itself during your daily life.
Step three: Understand the market you want to tackle
Once you had a business idea that you want to go with, it’s time to deeply learn about your customers that you’re designing for. Your unique designs, the fabric you want to use, producing a budget and the retail outlets all should cater to your customers and their spending behavior, their lifestyles, and their preference.
However, to succeed in the things mentioned above, you must first conduct deep research regarding the base of your product. Also, research about other companies that are into the same business as you. Look at their strategies and how they attract customers. Try to absorb as much info as possible and learn everything that your competitor is doing to make his/ her brand a success.
Step four: Design, produce and source your clothing business
Next, you need to get into the main meat of your clothing business: sourcing your material, designing your clothing and finding the manufacturer. Doing all of that can be kind of challenging for many entrepreneurs, especially the ones who are new in the fashion industry.
Step five: How to start a clothing business with proper marketing
Without having a proper plan to publicize your brand, all the work that you have done will go to waste. And if you’re not an experienced marketer, know that you need this skill as it will help you keep your clothing line’s door open either digitally or physically.
And last but not least, you don’t need a huge marketing budget or any prior marketing experience to effectively put your brand in the spotlight; in fact, a lot of entrepreneurs use their social media accounts (free) as their main marketing platform. Besides their low cost, other social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram allow more transparency and connection with your consumer base.
Step six: Work with an experienced individual
Even if your clothing business idea is unique and purely your own, you will still need to get others involved to properly launch that idea. Especially if your someone who doesn’t have any prior experience regarding fashion or clothing industry.
Tagging alongside an experienced expert or a community of fashion entrepreneurs will very-well be the difference maker between failure and success of your startup.
