5 steps for starting your own clothing line
For many a dream; starting their own clothing line! Read in this blog about the steps for starting your own clothing line.
Starting your own clothing line is a dream for many; expressing your own style. Just like any other business, this is a tough business that requires a lot of thought. Now that it is also becoming more and more important that the clothing industry is sustainable, this is an extra thought to consider while developing your clothing line. In this blog we take you through what it takes to start your own clothing line, but also how you can make it sustainable.
Starting your own clothing line in 5 steps!
Step 1: Create a business plan that suits you
Of course, this is important for every business. You need a plan before you start anything! Precisely because the clothing industry is a saturated market, it is important to distinguish yourself from the rest. Write in your business plan as clearly as possible what exactly your idea is, and don’t just say ‘I want to sell nice clothes’. Make a story of your clothing line, what is the idea behind your clothing line? Why do you want to start it?
Also describe in the plan what goals you want to achieve and very important: how are you going to achieve them? Probably your head is full of wild ideas. Write them all down and eventually turn them into one concrete story. Then take a critical look at your plan. Is your plan specific and realistic enough? Make sure your plan is also executable. Not that you later
Step 2: Make sure your domain name is fixed
During your business plan you probably also thought of your name. Don’t wait too long to register it! It is nowadays quite a challenge to register a domain name. Partly because a lot of domain names are held by people who want to sell them. Everyone’s business, hey. What can be a problem here is that your chosen name is already being held, and you will have to pay quite a bit of money for it.
In addition, it is also important that your name is distinctive enough from the competition. Do some research into what names already exist and make sure they are not the same or similar. This can cause confusion and problems in the future. So, as soon as you have decided on your distinctive name, register it as a domain name. Also create social media channels with this name! You don’t want to be disappointed when you can’t use your name on your social media.
Step 3: Create your marketing strategy
Before you start creating your clothing line, you are going to write out your marketing strategy based on your business plan. Describe in this plan who your ideal customer is and what the ‘pain points’ of this customer are. How do you make sure that your clothing line solves the problems of your target group? Or rather, what is the unique selling point of your clothing?
It is also important to know how to reach your ideal customer. You don’t want to work very hard on the perfect marketing, without anyone seeing it. Do research into which channels, online and offline, your target group is most active. This is different for each clothing line, also because each style is different. In short, do research on your ideal customer. Make sure you know everything about them, how and where you can reach them.
It is also important to look at the competition. How does your brand position itself in relation to the competition? See what your advantage is over the competition and use this to hone your marketing plan. Make sure you are distinctive! Also make a schedule of when you will communicate what and where. A tight schedule saves thinking about the moment and allows you to fully focus on selling your clothes!
Step 4: And then: the first item!
If all went well, you have described in your business plan how you envision your collection. Now it’s important to decide where you want to have it made, and how. You can choose, if you can do this yourself, to design it yourself. How nice is it to be able to say that you designed your own collection? It is not self-evident that you can design by yourself.
Now it is always possible to work with someone who can. Have a good conversation with them, explain your vision as well as possible and not unimportantly; make sure you find someone you like to work with! You will most likely be working together for a long time, so it is nice that you get along well. This way you will usually get more out of your collection than you expected.
A slightly more difficult option, but a very nice one. Of course you can also teach yourself to design. You will probably need some help with this, but it starts with a program such as Adobe Illustrator. Do you have someone in your area who already knows something about designing, this is already very nice. But YouTube is always full of tutorials on how to design with Illustrator.
Step 5: Looking for a manufacturer
After designing your first item, it’s important to start finding a manufacturer. But beware! First, only go for a sample. You don’t want to end up with 50 shirts that are not what you expected. Finding a reliable and good manufacturer is not easy. Decide in advance what is important to you. You can use Project Cece’s search engine to look for sustainable clothing.
For us, for example, it was important that our producer worked sustainably. After a lot of searching on Google, we came to our first producer to make a sample. This turned out not to be a good match, but after further searching we came to Neutral! And now we are completely satisfied with the quality and the way they work.
Google is one of the options to find a producer. You can also go to fairs for fabrics. Here you will also find a lot of producers and you can see/feel what kind of fabrics they work with. Don’t forget to contact your own network! You never know who knows a good producer, which makes it a lot more reliable.
One more thing: don’t forget to have fun, but also to handle the process wisely. We would love to tell you what it costs to produce a clothing line, but this depends on the size of your production and quality. Decide on a budget and keep this budget in mind during the process as well. Don’t hesitate to ask for feedback from your community before you go live with your clothing line. This way you can make your collection even better, but also, not unimportantly, you can carefully estimate how much you will sell and the costs thereof.
What to look out for to make it sustainable
There are many things to consider when making your clothing line sustainable. In any case, there are already three options you can consider when choosing your producer, for example. They are the following:
- Social / Ethical fashion
- Ecological / Eco fashion
- Economic / Fair fashion
Of course it is also possible that there is an overlap between these three options. Decide in advance what you think is important, and from here start looking for the best options for you. We explain them to you!
Ethical fashion
This involves, surprisingly, the ethical part of the industry focusing on people who work in it. Here, much thought is given to safe working conditions, fair wages and working hours, health care agreements and protecting children from child labor. In 2020, manufacturers are being more and more honest about it, and you can pay attention to this when looking at the website.
Eco fashion
As the name probably gives away a bit, this is all about the impact the industry has on the environment, nature and earth. Think about the fact that a lot of poison is needed to grow cotton. This is not good for the soil, organisms and people who have to work in the fields. Here it is also about recycling, water use and protection of animals and other ecological impacts.
Fair fashion
The purpose of this, is to make fair agreements and set conditions for all parties in the production chain. Think of the minimum selling price. Is this feasible for everyone in the chain? So from the farmer to the packaging factory? Or is the process of clothing production profitable for everyone, so that a normal standard of living is achieved.
Besides paying attention to these things when choosing a manufacturer, you yourself can also contribute a lot to making your clothing line sustainable. Think about how you want to send it to your customers. You can use (recyclable) cardboard boxes here! We use these. Starting your own clothing line involves a lot, especially if you want it to be sustainable too.
