Start A Clothing Line: The Business of Starting and Running Your Own Clothing Company
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About this ebook
This book is about the business of starting and running your own fashion business. It does not teach you how to sow, design or make patterns, but instead gives you the invaluable knowledge of how to take those skills and create a viable business in the fashion industry. No matter how talented you are as a clothing designer, if you do not understand how the business of fashion works and the process taken working alongside the industry, then you will be doomed to fail before you even begin.
Don’t worry though, by picking up this book and beginning to read, you have taken the first step in building your own fashion brand and selling your clothing to retail stores. This book will arm you with the knowledge that you need to be successful and create something truly amazing. I will take you through the process step by step, also giving you insight and advice from my own experiences of building a brand and starting a clothing line.
This is your crash course, a no nonsense straight to the point guide which can be read from beginning to end or used as a reference. It is your manual to success in the clothing industry, giving you foresight to common pitfalls and mistakes made by designers stumbling into the world of fashion.
The book is separated into six section which are the major steps you will take in order to take your ideas from conception to production and retail.
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Start A Clothing Line - Nina Mandelson
START
A
CLOTHING
LINE
The Business of Starting and Running Your Own Clothing Company
Nina Mandelson
With so much to cover on starting a business, if you‘ve ever had the intention of taking your hobby a step further, but lacked the business knowledge to go beyond sewing, or screen printing for yourself, then look no further than this book.
- Alt Fashion magazine
Author: Nina Mandelson
Producer: Tim Clarke
Project Team: Evie Clarke
ISBN no: 9781311569950
Version: 2.3
Published by: Cultmedia,
86-90 Paul Street, London, EC2A 4NE, UK
Second Edition: First published 2009
Copyright: © 2015 CULTIMEDIA All Rights Reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise without either the prior written permission of the publisher.
The author and the publisher have taken care in the preparation of this book, but make no expressed or implied warranty of any kind and assume no responsibility for errors or omissions. No liability is assumed for incidental or consequential damages in connection with or arising out of the use of the information published.
Table Of Contents
Before You Get Started
How much does it cost?
The business plan
Why you need a business plan
Define your business
Understand the market
Defining your products
Develop a going to market strategy
Create an operating plan
Are you going to make money?
The SWOT analysis
Writing the business plan
The structure of a business plan
Your workspace
Studio space versus working from home
Incubation units
Setting up your business
Doing it alone
Partnerships
Your brand incorporated
A little bit on finance
Getting your Cash flow in order
Loans and investments
Researching and Planning
Your target market
Who is going to wear your clothing?
Identifying the market area
Price point definitions
Knowing your customers inside out
Gathering information on your customers
Undertaking a customer analysis
Building a customer profile
Customer questions you should answer
Your Competitors
Who are your competitors
Identifying your direct competitors
Important competitor questions you should answer
Analyze your direct competitors
Measure how you compare
Planning the year ahead
Working in season
The design calendar
Creating your calendar
Product Development
Creating your brand
What is branding
The elements of a brand
Analyzing brands
Developing your own brand
Key areas to consider in a brand
How you want your brand to be viewed
Choosing a brand name
Creating a logo
Creating an overall theme
Creating your identity
Working with a designer
Protecting your brand
Identifying your brands space in the market
What is a USP
Positioning yourself
The positioning statement
The Design Process
Future trend predictions
Design planning
How are ranges planned by designers
The product mix
Product mix strategy
Outsourcing for design
Design in-house or outsource
Finding a designer
Creating a style guide
Sampling your products
What is a sample
Why you need samples
Where to get samples made
Design protection and copyright
Understanding intellectual property
Design rights
Registered design
How to register your designs
Unregistered intellectual property
Protecting yourself with unregistered design
Self copyright
Trademarks
Non-disclosure agreements
Non-disclosure example
Promoting Yourself
Marketing
What is marketing
Why you need marketing
The three elements of marketing promotion
The marketing mix
Types of promotion
Above the line and below the line
Creating a company profile
What is a company profile
The key contents in your profile
Writing your company profile
Advertising
What is advertising
Types of advertising
Brand awareness versus direct response advertising
Do you need to advertise?
Creating your advertisement
Eliminating noise
Understanding where to place your advertising
Testing and measuring response
Public Relations
Press release
What your press release should say
Writing a press release
Sending out your press release
Your Online Presence
Why you need a website
Selling online
Leveraging social media
Email marketing
Digital brochures
Trade shows
What is a trade show
Choosing a show
Setting your goals
What to consider before booking a show
Budgeting for your trade show
Planning your stand
What to do at the trade show
What to do after the trade show
Selling Your Product
Distribution Channels
What is a distribution channel?
Types of distribution channels
Levels of distribution channels
Choosing distribution channels
The retail hit list
Where to sell your clothing
How to find stores
Creating your retail hit list
The store analysis
Which stores are suitable for your products
Undertaking a store analysis
Creating a look book
What is a look book?
How you should present your look book
Preparing to approach the buyer
pre-sales promotion
Pre-approaching the buyer
What you need to know about your company
What you need to know about the buyer
What to do before approaching the buyer
Understand how a buyer works
Understand the buyer
Why a buyer might choose your product
Making the call
Approaching the buyer
How to deliver your pitch
What to do after the call
The Meeting
Meeting the buyer
What to do before the meeting
What to do in the meeting
Closing the deal
Why must you close the deal?
Ways to close the deal
Why people might say yes
When you should close
Handling objection
Why people might say no
The 'I want to think about it' excuse
After you have the order
The order form
Creating an order form
Using an agent
How sales agents work
Advantages of using an agent
Disadvantages of using an agent
How to find an agent
Working with agents
Production Management
Sourcing materials
Planning your production
How are materials sourced
The supply chain
Lead times
Minimum orders
Working around minimum orders
Ethical supply chains
Production routes
What is a production route?
In-house production
Outworkers
Specialist CMT units
Screen printers
Contract manufacturing
Mass producing your clothing
Choosing a factory
Key questions to ask a CMT unit
Key questions to ask a screen printers
Key questions to ask a factory
Basic factory evaluation checklist
Writing a manufacturing agreement
Production and management techniques
The critical path analysis
Managing a critical path
Quality Control
Quality control checklist
Creating specifications
The spec sheet
Details to give a factory
Details to give a screen printers
Common delivery terms and what they mean
Preparing goods for retail
Pricing garments
Care labels
Care label exemptions
Swing Tags
Packing and packaging
What’s next?
What to do next
Tips for starting a clothing line
About this book
This book is about the business of starting and running your own fashion business. It does not teach you how to sow, design or make patterns, but instead gives you the invaluable knowledge of how to take those skills and create a viable business in the fashion industry. No matter how talented you are as a clothing designer, if you do not understand how the business of fashion works and the process taken working alongside the industry, then you will be doomed to fail before you even begin.
Don’t worry though, by picking up this book and beginning to read, you have taken the first step in building your own fashion brand and selling your clothing to retail stores. This book will arm you with the knowledge that you need to be successful and create something truly amazing. I will take you through the process step by step, also giving you insight and advice from my own experiences of building a brand and starting a clothing line.
This is your crash course, a no nonsense straight to the point guide which can be read from beginning to end or used as a reference. It is your manual to success in the clothing industry, giving you foresight to common pitfalls and mistakes made by designers stumbling into the world of fashion.
The book is separated into six section which are the major steps you will take in order to take your ideas from conception to production and retail.
The first section of the book titled ‘before you get started’ outlines a number of items to understand and consider before you dive into the nitty gritty of building your business. It is areas of your business to think about before you begin getting into the real planning of your clothing label, thinking ahead of what you will need to consider and have in place. I talk about the costs involved in starting a business as well as giving an overview of the process. This section also weighs up the options that you have for your workplace and runs through what you will need to understand before you can create your business plan.
Section two titled ‘Researching and planning’ focuses on the planning stage of your business where you will understand your market and know your customers, as well as discovering your competitors and analyzing them. In this section we also take a look at the design calendar, planning the year ahead to work alongside the industry.
Section three, ‘Product Development’ takes you through the process of creating your product lines, from creating a brand through the product design process to sampling your garments. We discuss trend predictions and designing ranges, taking a look at design planning and the product mix. This section also looks at outsourcing for designs, positioning yourself within the market and how to protect your intellectual property.
Section four of the book titled ‘Promoting yourself’, discusses your marketing strategies and methods of promoting your brand. We look at different forms of advertising, as well as creating press releases and attending trade shows. This section also takes you through creating your own company profile that will form the basis of your promotional material.
Section five ‘Selling Your Product’ focuses on researching and analyzing the stores that you will sell to, as well as taking you step by step through the sales process. This section teaches you how to create your ‘retail hit list’ and approach the buyer with your designs. In this section we also discuss the pros and cons of using a sales agent as well as looking at distribution channels and discussing which are right for your business.
Section six of the book, titled ‘production management’, takes you through the process of producing your clothing and outlines the necessary steps that must be taken. It takes a look at sourcing materials and explains lead times and the supply chain. We take a look at production routs and discuss which rout is best for your business model. Also in this section we look at working with factories and preparing your clothing for retail. This section also goes into production management techniques to enable you to run your production as smoothly and efficiently as possible.
I hope that you enjoy reading this book as much as I enjoyed writing it, and that you get everything you need from it to start and build a successful clothing brand. Before you dive into the book, I want to wish all the best on your new venture. It is both frightening and exciting, but by following the guidelines in this book you can minimize the concerns and enjoy the excitement of starting and running your own clothing line.
Before You Get Started
Before we dive right into starting a clothing business, let us first take a look at areas that you may need to put into consideration or act upon before you can get it all started. In this section we are going to take a look at the financial side of starting your business, where you are going to work from and getting your business plan in order.
How much does it cost?
The most common questions asked by people who dream of running their own clothing line is what it will cost them financially to do so. The answer is that it depends. Unfortunately there is no simple and easy answer, and the truth is that it could cost you a minimal amount through to thousands or even millions of dollars. Everyone’s idea of what they want to do is different and the scale of different clothing designer’s plans can range from a small simple market stall to chain store branded clothing. Let us run through the different variables which will affect the initial capital and running costs that you will need to invest into your new venture.
Overhead costs
Your overhead costs are your fixed costs such as the bills that you pay to keep your business running. If you are planning on working on your clothing label full time, then this could also be living expenses and any wages that you pay to your staff. It could also be the costs in hiring freelancers, accountants and lawyers. If you plan on running your label from a studio then this could be rent and electricity. Your overhead cost will need to be factored into the cost of producing your garments. Divide the total overhead costs by the time taken, which would usually be over a season, with the amount of clothing produced which will be added to your production cost per unit.
If you are working out projections then you my need to anticipate the costs and figures, estimating the amount of garments you feel you will sell over the next few seasons and estimate the likely overhead costs involved. You may need to produce more than one set of projections, altering the variables to see which feels the most realistic. Start by creating a list of your potential overhead costs. If you don’t feel as though you can do this at this moment, come back to it after reading this book in its entirety.
Distribution channel
A distribution channel is by what means you are going to sell your clothing and how your customers will get access your products. The three main distribution channels are wholesale, retail or through an agent.
Wholesale is when you sell your garments to another business who in turn sell the garments to customers or another business. If you are selling your clothing in bulk to stores you will take the orders first before producing the clothing. In this scenario you will need to fund the orders first and so a balance must be managed between the quantity of orders and what your budget can afford. Often, ambitious startups can run into trouble early on by taking too many orders initially or growing too fast. On the opposite end of the spectrum, you will also need enough orders to cover costs and make a profit, and so a healthy balance is the key.
Retail is when you sell your clothing directly to the end users, which could be through a market stall, an online store, a catalogue, your own physical store or a mix of each. When creating products for direct sales, you must decide on the quantities and options of garments that you believe that you can sell, or which you can afford, and produce them first before selling. In this scenario, as you are not selling in bulk, your financial return will come slowly over time as you sell the garments, as opposed to receiving a bulk payment from another business. A major risk in retailing your own clothing is that your assets can be tied up in stock if you are too slow to sell your clothing, which can cause problems with cash flow.
It should also be noted that the size of orders from manufactures will greatly affect the initial and running costs of your business. The larger the order, the less cost per unit they are to produce and the more profit gained long term, but the more finance that must be invested initially on production, sales and marketing.
Agents are a middle man between your business to business sales, such as selling your clothing to stores. The benefits of using agents in addition to their sales skills is the network and trusting relationships that they have already built with retailers. However, the downside is the commission taken by agents which must be factored into your financials.
Production routes
A production route is how you are going to get your clothing manufactured, which is dependent entirely on your own business model and the types of clothing or accessories that you are producing. There are a number of options available to you with varying cost, suitability and risk factors involved which can range from manufacturing your clothing in-house to mass factory production of garments internationally.
In general, producing locally will cost more per unit but will have less minimums and less risk associated with it. Producing abroad will be much cheaper per unit but with a much higher minimum order, which means you will need to sell more and invest more initially but get a greater return.