The idea of starting your own clothing line and working for yourself sounds like a dream come true to lots of people but entrepreneurship is not easy. For lots of entrepreneurs, success comes in the form of late nights and early mornings, missed soccer games, and depleted savings accounts. But despite the personal and financial risks involved in entrepreneurship, there is the reward of success, if executed right.
Sure, you need to have great clothes and a creative mind in the world of fashion but from a business point of view, there is much more to fashion than creating clothes that look good… you need to create a brand that will stand the tests of time even after you’re gone… Just look at the legendary fashion designer Karl Lagerfield… His collections for big-name labels will forever be cherished in the fashion industry.
So who’s to say that your clothing line won’t have that same impact in the world of fashion? Only time will tell… But it also depends on what your idea of success looks like to you. Maybe your idea of success isn’t necessarily to have your clothes flying down the runway during fashion week. Maybe your idea of success is to have your line of clothes sold in major department stores like Macy’s or Dillards…
Nonetheless, success in the fashion industry can play in your favor with the right mindset and dedication to succeed by any means necessary.
On your journey to starting your clothing line, it’s perfectly fine to research and take advice on everything you need to do to achieve success with your line. However, you also need to pay just as much attention to the mistakes to avoid because avoiding those mistakes will also help you achieve success.
Take a look at some of the biggest startup clothing line faux pas to avoid on your journey to entrepreneurship.
Biggest Mistakes to Avoid When Starting Your Own Fashion Line
Not Clearly Defining Who Your Target Customers Are
Your target customers are who will be buying your clothes, therefore, you need to make sure your clothes are targeted at the right group of people.
Are your clothes for women? If so, are they for a specific body type and size? What do these women do for a living? This may sound a tad bit tedious, but these are the questions you have to ask yourself when designing your clothes.
Your target customers are not only going to help you design your clothes but they’re also going to give you a better idea of how to market your brand and where to connect with your customers. When you have your target or ideal customer, they should be able to see themselves in your clothes once you start marketing your brand.
Investing in Cheap Materials
Cheaper isn’t always better just as more expensive doesn’t necessarily mean higher quality. You’ll quickly find that out once you start looking at various vendors and suppliers for your clothing materials.
The materials you use for your clothes are partly going to build your business’s reputation. As a fashion designer, would you rather be known for good quality clothes that might be a little more expensive than usual? Or would you rather be known as the clothing line that has affordable clothes but they fall apart or fade after a few runs through the wash?
This is something that many fashion designers have had to go back and forth in their minds about. Everything from clothing labels that don’t unravel to the craftsmanship in the stitching, your customers are going to look at every aspect of your garments to ensure quality is what they’re receiving.
One way to ensure your customers know where they purchased their quality clothes is through the clothing label. Wunderlabel woven labels are not only a great supplier of labels for your clothing line but they also make custom labels, allowing you to put your company name for customers to remember your brand.
Not Investing in an Effective Marketing Strategy
You can have all these beautiful clothes to sell but no one will know about them because you don’t have an effective marketing strategy. Are you going to use social media, paid ads, or signage for a physical store?
There are all kinds of ways to invest in your marketing but it’s going to require you to evaluate the best marketing mix for your business. Forbes.com states that storytelling is an imperative business move for emotional engagement with your audience.
Why? Because people respond to people, and when you can make people resonate with your brand on an emotional level, you’ll have loyal customers for life.
Over or Underpricing Your Clothes
In starting your own clothing line, your goal is to provide your customers with quality, great looking clothes. But in providing them with great clothes, your goal is also to bring in revenue. Finding the right price for your clothes is going to be a tricky web to weave.
You have to consider the labor and expenses required to create each garment, but you also have to consider what price will bring you the most revenue and what will be a fair price for your customers.
This is going to require quite a bit of research and price comparisons but it’s very necessary. It can make the difference in building a successful and thriving business and a money pit.
Take your time during this phase of your business because you don’t want to price your items too low to make people think they’re not good quality, but not price them too high for the group of people who are supposed to be buying your products.
