The
First Step
Knowing Your Market
How
to Enter the Market
The Question of Production
Financing the Business
Resources
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How
To Enter The Market
Before you begin creating a sample product, you must first identify your
potential clients and how are you going to sell to them.
There are several ways of meeting potential buyers for your new clothing
line. Seek out sales agents and buyers of retailers, major department stores or
boutiques. Talk to them, ask what kinds of clothes they are looking for, and
determine if there is a fit between your product and their design philosophy.
You can also travel to market weeks in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and
Atlanta to meet buyers, get ideas, and check out your competition.
Once you have surveyed the market landscape, decide on how best are you are
going to distribute your products. Your distribution channel can dictate the
quality, quantity and costing structure of your clothing line.
You can start small, and sell the clothes you’ve created in flea markets,
community and church fairs during weekends. Once people starts to notice your
products and demand begins to grow, you can slowly expand your business until
you have enough capital to go full-time into the venture.
If you want a larger scale approach, the easiest method of entry is to find a
specific retailer who agrees to buy the designs you intend to produce. This
approach allows you to cautiously start with comparatively low risk. With your
sales assured, you can begin to think of the production aspects of your business
to make sure that you are able to meet your client’s delivery schedule.
A variation of this approach is to sell through consignment. You bring your
clothes to a retailer or shop owner, and the shop owner gets a percentage from
the sale of your items. Make sure, though, that the terms of agreement with the
shop owner is well-laid out and written, if possible.
You may also wish to go about it alone and sell your products in your own
store. This however requires more capitalization as you would need a small
retail space to display your items. You must be able to get a location that is
accessible to customers, as well as convenient to buyers, textile suppliers or
their sales agents. You must also be near the fashion district of your area to
enable you to see the trends that are shaping. Should you choose this route, you
need to develop a solid merchandising plan that includes creating the right look
and feel for your store.
The
Question of Production
How much you think you can sell will drive the quantity with which to order
your raw materials and negotiate with the contractors who will produce your
designs (if you will subcontract it). This requires a balancing act: ordering
too many raw materials is an unwanted cost that you should avoid at this point.
The decision to outsource or do production in-house will depend on several
factors: the kind of clothing you are doing, the quantity of items, the
equipment you need, cost, and your expertise. For example, hand-painted shirts
are easier to produce and require lesser equipment than evening gowns.
If you are going to do in-house production, the basic equipment you will need
include a cutting table, a cutting machine, sewing machines, pressing equipment,
and facilities for inventory storage and shipping. You must also have the space
and equipment to store the finished products.
Financing
the Business
There are stories of entrepreneurs who started their clothing business with
nothing and then earn a million in their first year of business. However,
success stories like these are more the exemption than the norm.
How much you need to start a clothing line depends on many factors whether
you will buy or rent your equipment, subcontract production, hire a designer,
rent a retail store, and hire a salesman to push your products.
The creation of your first set of samples alone can cost as much as $10,000
from design to finished product, depending on the clothes that you are creating.
Restored vintage clothing can cost less to produce. Printed shirts may also
require minimal start-up capital. But a line of an upscale career outfits for
women may cost more.
If you are creating a pre-teens wear line and one sample alone costs $30 to
produce and you need 50 items for each of the four seasons, your production cost
for your first year will be $6,000. But if your sample costs $100 per item, your
production costs will significantly increase to $20,000 for your first year.
While you may be able to start your business with less, keep in mind that you
still need resources to keep the business going and growing. Unless you hire a
savvy PR company to market your business and put your brand on every magazine,
expect a couple of years at least to acquire a reputation for fit, delivery and
customer acceptance. The apparel industry is a tricky business you will never
know what will sell from one season to the next.
Having your own clothing business is not an easy task. You need to have the
management know-how of running a business and a thorough understanding of the
industry. You must be able to juggle well three basic functions: design,
production and sales. To top it all, you must keep abreast with the introduction
of new fabrics. You need to be savvy that in a lot of things to successful in
the garment industry, from finding salespeople to sourcing fabric, hiring
contractors, and managing your receivables.
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