You don’t have to be a big-name designer in some haute couture fashion house to make money from your own fashion line these days. Thanks to the internet, anybody can come out with their own clothing line and be successful. It is easier than ever to start your own business online these days.
If you love fashion then you can start selling second-hand clothes, or design your own to make money. Whatever way you want to enter the business is totally up to you. There is the possibility of using print-on-demand services to design t-shirts and other clothes for casual streetwear. Or, you can partner up with a seamstress and make your own clothes. In this article, we will go over what it takes to start your own clothing line.
1 – Hire a professional photographer
Fashion is about as visual a business as there can be. It is essential to have professionally done photos of your products to make a great first impression. Hiring a professional photographer will pay for itself with the amount of business you would miss out on if you tried taking pictures yourself.
They have an eye for telling a story with a photograph that will help make for an engaging product page for your clothes. Not only that, but they will also understand the editing in a way that you could never manage.
It is a time-saving thing to have a photographer since they can breeze through a task that would take you a while. In the time it takes you to remove background from an image, they can do it ten times. It’s a worthy investment on a lot of levels.
2 – Have your branding on point
To make a name for yourself you have to essentially be a brand. A brand is something that should be easily recognizable so your ideal customer will be able to pick you out of the crowd.
This means that you have to have a consistent look for all of your marketing materials. Use the same logo and color schemes across your social media profiles and your website among others.
The branding should help tell your story and be something that your fans respond to. Make sure to have it all be relevant to who you are and make sure it fits your image. A whimsical branding strategy will work if you’re a playful person and want your business to have a particular irreverence. Or, you can go for something more professional and serious if that is your style.
3 – Test the idea
Before you go all-in on the idea, you should see if there is a market for what you want to do. Make a store on Etsy and see how sales go there. There are millions of people on the platform so you should be able to get some sales and feedback so you know if you are on the right track or not.
Take some time to set up your store and optimize it for SEO so you can get the top spots in the search results. Etsy also has the possibility of paid ads so you can compete for keywords much more effectively. This is going to be good practice for your own website as you will need to understand how to bring traffic to your product pages.
If you can manage to have some success with Etsy then it means that your product has viability and will certainly sell and that you understand how to optimize an e-commerce store to bring targeted traffic.
4 – Learn marketing
Marketing is as important as having a great product. It’s simply the way to make people aware of your brand and to get traffic to your store. One of the best marketing systems for an online business is inbound marketing.
This helps your ideal customers find you instead of you needing to spend a lot of resources to find them. It works by using engaging content on social media to build some brand awareness. Then you can use other platforms like Youtube and podcasts to increase awareness and authority. Finally, set up a way for people to give you their email address by offering something for free and building your email list to stay connected to your fans.
Images from DSCENE STYLE STORIES: Esther Molera by Luis Cruzado – See the full story here
