Starting your clothing line is fun but it can be rather daunting at the same time. The best thing you can do to create a successful clothing line is PLANNING. By planning and undertaking market research beforehand, you will likely be able to create a successful and well-known fashion brand.
In this article, we have listed some key things you can avoid when starting your clothing line;
1. Making a Massive Order: It is unlikely that a start-up fashion brand will have enough budget to request a big order, however if this is the case- don’t! You want to order only a small amount of your designs to ‘test the waters’. By doing so, you are seeing how well your products sell and identifying what are the worst sellers and best sellers. This will save you time and money in the long run and will be good for market research for your brand.
2. Not Planning a Budget: This will impact pretty much everything for your fashion business. Everything comes down to money! By not having a budget for your garment manufacturers/ suppliers/ assistants, you have the risk off over-spending and not actually making any profit when you start selling your items. This is something that can be avoided if you plan well beforehand. Using software such as Excel to document your spending and limits is a good starting point.
Having strong negotiation skills will also come useful when communicating with manufacturers- you can find out more about this in our article; ‘8 Key Steps on How to Become a Successful Fashion Designer.’
3. Not Following the Rules and Regulations of Garment Labels: This is easily forgotten about. Ensuring that all of your products have garment labels with aftercare information is important. This will help you avoid getting refunds from customers due to poor after-care if you have the correct information on the label and it will also avoid you getting in trouble by not following the rules and regulations. You can find out more about these in our article; ‘Garment Label Requirements When Starting a Fashion Business
4. Not Having a Marketing Plan / Conducting Market Research: It is impossible to have a successful clothing line if you have not conducted any market research and made a marketing plan. Conducting market research on your brands demographic can help you master your fashion design ideas so that it is suitable to your target consumer. Having a pre-planned marketing plan will ensure that the promotion of your brand is executed at its best online and offline. If the marketing plan completed correctly and thoroughly, the chances of an increase of sales are very good.
5. Having a Poor Domain: Using a domain that has no relevance to your brand will only make your overall fashion brand look poor and unplanned; this will likely result into no-one investing into your products as they might not trust the website. Have a professional paid domain is easy and you can get them for as cheap as £3.99 on GoDaddy.com
6, Not Getting Your Tech Pack made: It is important to have a Tech Pack for each item that you sample as this will save you time and money. The price of creating a Tech Pack is much cheaper than the money that may be wasted if you do not have one, as you will waste money on production costs if you have to re-sample a couple of times. A Tech Pack will provide your factory and pattern maker with specific instruction and guidelines, so make sure you make it as thorough as you can to save you costs in the long run!
By avoiding these little things and pre-planning as much as you can, you are very much likely to start your clothing line on the right foot and become a successful fashion designer!
