How To Start A Clothing Business: What You Need To Know

If you have a passion for fashion, starting a clothing business might be a great way to turn your skills and creativity into a career. It’s more accessible than ever for new business owners to sell their wares online and turn a profit.

There are a variety of ways to sell clothes, from finding collaborators and wholesalers to providing great items for excited customers. Here’s what you need to know about how to start a clothing business from start to finish.

Here’s how to start a clothing business in nine steps:

1. Find your niche

The fashion industry is massive, consisting of a myriad of different brands – all with very different styles and niches. It’s important to identify your niche and stick to it. This will help you to create a product line that resonates with your target market and build a solid brand. Remember that as appealing as it may be to try to be everything to everyone, the best brands have a very defined niche and they stay in said niche.

Here are a few examples of highly successful clothing brands that operate in different niches:

• Wrangler (casual)
• Adidas (athletic)
• H&M (trendy)
• Ralph Lauren (classic)

Picking a niche means playing to your strengths. If you’re a strong seamster, you’ll spend most of your time designing and constructing pieces. If you’re a visual artist, you might create art that can be printed on T-shirts or other clothing items.

2. Know your audience

Early on, it’s important to figure out your ideal customer. When you’re working towards establishing your business, fashion makes things both easier and harder at the same time. You can easily imagine who would wear your clothes, but you also have to find where they congregate (in brick-and-mortar stores and online) and how to reach them.

Here are a few questions to consider when determining your audience:

• Who are they?
• What are their favourite clothing brands?
• Do they identify with certain brands?
• Where do they shop?
• How often do they shop?
• Do they care about trends?
• What is their price point?
• What influences their buying decisions?

By answering these questions, you will get a better understanding of your target audience. This enables you to more strategically build your brand, develop products they’ll want, and distribute products so they’re easily discoverable by the people who will buy them.

3. Create a marketing plan

After defining your niche and identifying your audience, the next step is to put together a marketing plan. While it sounds like a lot of work – it doesn’t have to be very comprehensive. But you do need to detail which channels you plan to use to sell your products (e.g., direct, Amazon, Etsy, boutiques, big box stores, etc…) as well as how you plan to market your businesses so that you get sales.

Here’s are the must-haves when creating a new business marketing plan:

• Market and competition
• Distribution channels
• Marketing strategy
• Marketing and advertising channels (e.g., social media, PPC ads)
• Marketing budget

A marketing plan essentially establishes how you will market your clothing line, and with that, can greatly guide how you go about product distribution and advertising strategies, which will impact your sales. Learn more about how to write a marketing plan.

4. Name your brand and create brand assets

If you don’t already have a business name in mind, it’s time to choose one. Clothing business names can vary wildly. For example, Under Armour, ASOS, Banana Republic, L.L. Bean, TopShop, Brooks Brothers, Dickies, Deus Ex Machina, Vardagen, or Salt Life. In short, your clothing business can be named just about anything you want it to be.

Here are a few tips to keep in mind when naming your clothing business:

• Make sure that it is easy to pronounce and spell
• Choose a catchy or memorable name
• Consider how it translates into other languages
• Check if it is available as a domain name (e.g., yourbusinessname.com)

Once you have a business name, choose a slogan (optional), a brand colour scheme, and create your logo. If you’re looking for an easy and affordable way to create your own logo, try using Canva, which is a free drag-and-drop design tool that has dozens of prebuilt logos you can customise. Alternatively, you can get a logo professionally designed for as little as £5 on Fiverr.

5. Register your business

There are usually legal issues to address when starting a business. The following is a good checklist of items to consider when establishing your business:

• Choose your business name
• Register with Companies House (for limited companies)
• Register your business with HMRC
• Apply for the required permits or licences necessary for your business.

You may need a licence or permit if you want to be a street trader, if you plan to sell food or alcohol, or if you want to play music, for example.

Contact your local authority or council to see what the legal requirements are for your business.

6. Design and source your products

Chances are you already know how you’re going to design and source your products. However, if you’re on the fence or open to ideas, there are three main ways:

• Buy products from wholesalers
• Design your own and have them manufactured
• Design and sew your own in-house.

Of course, which you choose will depend on how you plan to sell your products. For example, if you’re planning to curate collections of clothing to sell online, say directly via your website or on Amazon, you could opt to purchase products from wholesalers or drop shippers. This is a great way to keep upfront costs low – especially if you are dropshipping products. However, it also means your products are not as unique and therefore might require more marketing.

7. Price your products

Pricing products in fashion is largely determined by two key variables. First, the cost of goods sold (e.g., labour expenses and cost of materials) and second, by the niche you’ve chosen to target. For example, the average clothing line uses what is called the keystone markup strategy, where the price is calculated by taking the cost of production and doubling it. Though, it may be increased as much as 5x, depending on your niche (e.g., high-end clothing brands).

Here are a few key costs to include when pricing your products:

• Cost of materials
• Time
• Marketing and advertising
• Packaging
• Shipping

If you’re stepping into the luxury brand space, your products should be priced accordingly. Items that require a lot of attention, care and time in their creation should have premium prices.

On the other hand, a clothing company focused on high volume can have items with lower price points. Encouraging consumers to buy more means adding deals and flash sales to further incentivise purchases.

8. Distribute your products

Clothing businesses have a number of distribution options available, from selling directly via their own website and selling on third-party sites such as Amazon and Etsy, to selling in-store, through local retailers, or national big box retailers. To maximise your exposure and increase your sales, it’s generally best to plan to distribute and sell your products via multiple channels.

Even if you do not plan to sell products directly or online, you still need to have a website. This helps build your brand and if you’re planning to approach retailers, it gives them a way to check your product catalogues and lookbooks. Learn more about how to make a website or check out the best e-commerce platforms that enable you to easily create an online store where you can sell your products directly to customers.

No matter how you plan to sell the bulk of your products, you should have your own website.

If you’re not ready to sell from your own website, you can look into Etsy or other highly ranked e-commerce platforms to lessen your workload. The less time you have to spend troubleshooting a website, the more time you have to work on designing clothing.

9. Market your clothing brand

Last but not least, you need to market your clothing brand so that it can be discovered by your target market. There are a number of ways to market a clothing business, but ultimately you want to choose marketing channels that reach your particular target market. In other words, be where your target customers are.

Here are some of the most popular marketing channels and strategies for clothing brands:

• Organic social media marketing (e.g., Pinterest, Instagram)
• Paid social media advertising (e.g., Facebook Ads, YouTube Ads)
• Paid search advertising (e.g., Google Ads)
• Forums (e.g., Reddit)
• Content marketing
• Influencer marketing
• Paid placements
• Banner ads (e.g., Google Adsense)
• E-commerce ads (e.g., Amazon Ads, Etsy Ads)
• Search engine optimisation (SEO)
• Email marketing
• Sponsorships
• Local events
• Local news

When choosing the right marketing strategies and channels for your clothing business, remember to always keep your brand in mind. Consider if it stays on brand and if it’s likely to be a good use of your marketing budget. Just like choosing distribution channels, you will also want to use multiple marketing channels for maximum exposure.

Bottom line

Starting a clothing business is a great way to merge creative passion and business sense. It also gives you the opportunity to see your artistic work on people on the street, while turning your passions into a profitable business. On top of that, it’s more affordable than ever to start a clothing line, so you don’t need a huge investment to get started.