Owning and running a successful clothing business is a dream held by many people. A dream filled with riches and luxury, which unfortunately won’t come easy without the endless hours of hard work, dedication and planning.
We have compiled this list of 5 crucial steps to take to ensure your start-up will become a viable business.
Research
This one is always a great place to start as failing to do your market research could pull a thread on your business. Looking at the current market environment is invaluable, as there may be an industry change or an advance in technology which could impact your business. It is also worthwhile having a look at other recent start-ups to see if there are any clear do’s and don’ts.
Designs
Have you thought what will make you stand out from the other businesses out there? Creating an eye-catching logo isn’t as simple as you may think, and the right logo will stay with your business until the very end, so you want to make sure you get it right the first time. If you are stuck for ideas the guys over at Banana Moon have a handy guide on how to create a logo.
Marketing
When it comes to marketing your business, it is important to define your audience and understand how and why they buy. Remember not to fall into the trap of ‘create and they shall come’ as unfortunately that does not happen anymore, if you want traffic you must tailor your website to achieve that. You could jump straight into it and pay for traffic from social media and search engines, and despite being able to ‘buy’ users that are ready to convert, these may not be loyal customers and never return so you must focus efforts on creating an organic customer base.
Stock
When stock planning it is important to have an idea of the quantities you will be selling, as you don’t want to create a run of 200 garments just to store them, as that is dead money which could have been better utilised. If the prospect of holding stock seems daunting or doesn’t fit in with your ambitious strategy you could explore the stock fulfilment options that are available, although id you go down this route you have to remember your ability to control what leaves to the customer is drastically reduced.
Growth Strategy
Where do you see the business going in 5 years? Do you plan on investing money back into the business and growing from there? Maybe you are happy with your current level of customers and the fulfilment model you opted for, or maybe you are ambitious and plan on opening a brick and mortar store to support your online business. Whatever your plans for the future it will always pay to continually carry out research into the state of the market, what your competitors are doing, and most importantly how do people feel about your business, because after all, there would be no point in expanding if you customer base isn’t going to grow.
Photo by Marek Levák on Unsplash
