Fashion and clothing manufacturing can be a fun, energizing way to turn your creative juices into practical revenue. That’s why it’s important to consider all of what it takes to start a successful clothing business before you get started, from having the perfect T-Shirt designs to knowing where to get the ideal plastic cord lock for your jacket design.
Vision
This is the fun part. Getting a handle on your clothing line’s vision, style and market are all a foundational part of the brainstorming session. Market research is incredibly helpful in cultivating a vision, understanding the audience that you’re creating for, and ensuring that your designs are properly targeting your ideal market. Work out your vision before anything else, and this will help shape everything else that you do.
Money
Financial backing is a requirement before anything can get started on your project. How you secure those finances can vary. If a smaller scale launch is what you’re looking for, you can begin with your own savings and some good faith. If, however, you want to launch at a higher level with a wider range of products than just printed T-shirts, then financial investment through either fundraising, shareholders, or a bank are all options to consider in raising the money to get started. Pre-sales are also a money-savvy option for some, depending on your following base and your market.
Production
Creating a product, and well, ensure that your clothing launch isn’t just a one-day wonder. Creating product that’s consistently of a higher quality can help ensure that first-time buyers stick around as long-term customers. You’ll also need to strike the right balance between what you pay for materials and creating your clothing, and what you charge for it. You may be hesitant to charge too high, but have to make sure that what you’re spending in production and distribution balances out so that you’re still making at least some profit.
Distribution
How are you going to store and distribute your clothing? Will you use warehousing, or the spare room in your house? Are you going to use a professional shipping company, or stick to US mail service? Will you package products yourself? This also pulls into question whether or not you’ll have strictly an online shop, or if you’ll sell your wares through a local boutique setting. From your shirt sizes to the plastic cord lock you choose for your jacket, the details of your planning process all add up to what kind of shopping and clothing wearing experience your customers have.