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Building a clothing business takes an equal amount of planning and creativity. Get advice from a Project Runway alum on everything from finding your customer to honing your style. We guarantee that you’ll get a great apparel design no matter what your budget is. Our higher-priced packages offer more experienced designers and more hands-on support. Still, the item looks new there is no change in color and size.
Step 6: Contact Clothing Manufacturers
It’s important at this stage to really be thorough as small things such as location can have a massive impact on communication, turnaround time, and shipping when it actually comes to working with a manufacturer. The next step in this process is to research potential clothing manufacturers. Your tech pack tells your manufacturer all the information required to transform your design into a final product. A proper and complete tech pack will reduce errors in production, save you money, prevent miscommunication, and ultimately, bring your product to life exactly how you envisioned it. This is where researching your manufacturer in advance pays off for you, though. All of this information will be outlined on the manufacturer’s website or by contacting them directly.
Hoodies and Long Sleeves
These exercises will help you move to the next steps in the process of building your clothing brand. Your clothing brand’s aesthetic and values should be clear from the get-go, starting with your home page. And a dedicated About page can help potential customers create a connection with you and your brand. If you plan to go all in and work with manufacturers on a production run, you’ll have high upfront costs to meet minimums. A solid business plan and costing exercise will help you determine how much funding you’ll need. Custom clothing is the art of taking existing products and modifying them to suit your own style and tastes.
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How To Build a Brand in 7 Steps: Get Started in 2024 - Shopify
How To Build a Brand in 7 Steps: Get Started in 2024.
Posted: Wed, 20 Dec 2023 08:00:00 GMT [source]
If you’re lucky, by this step you’ll have received responses from some of the factories you’ve contacted and now it’s time to narrow down your search. Your brand visuals are the common brand elements that many people immediately think about when they think about a particular brand. This includes your company’s logo, brand colors, and fonts, as well as your overall design and photography aesthetics. The next step is to develop a brand for your new clothing company.
Option #1: Print-on-Demand Clothing Line
Specific costs vary, but expenses to start a clothing line include fabric and other materials, labor, shipping, heating, rent, equipment, and various other production costs. We hope this post has provided you with very clear insight into the steps, systems, and processes it takes to start a clothing line. It may seem overwhelming at first if this is all new to you, however, just focus on one step at a time and grow from there. When setting up your clothing store on Shopify you’ll want to take your brand into consideration and make use of all your brand visuals. Implement your color palette, use your logo, take effective product and lifestyle photos of your garments, and create a glowing “About Page” so your customers can learn more about who your brand is and what you stand for.
For more options, source clothing products from a wholesale supplier. For complete and total input and control over your clothing brand, work with a clothing manufacturer. You can put your own label on wholesale clothing as long as it doesn’t conflict with the wholesaler’s policies. Essentially, you purchase wholesale clothing from a supplier, add your branded tags, and then resell directly to your customers through your clothing business’s online store under your own brand name.
This is a win-win for everyone, as it gives your line a chance to get exposure in a store with no risk to the retailer. Wholesale played a huge part in the growth of Sarah’s brand in the beginning. After navigating other sales channels like her own retail store, she’s recently returned to a wholesale strategy. The fashion industry operates on a seasonal cycle (fall/winter and spring/summer), and working backward from each season means that development of a collection can start a year or more out. If you ship your own orders, establish an inventory system that keeps clothing protected from sunlight and moisture, and organized in a way that makes it easy to find.
Promo Products Worthy Of Your Logo
They are a great platform for quality custom t-shirts, great colors, great design with premium brands. Spreadshirt gives you the chance to personalized your clothing by adding prints and designs to a number of different areas of the item. Front, back, both sleeves and even the hood are the most popular. When designing your product some items might have restrictions due to the placement of buttons or zips.

If you’re in the United States, check out the US Small Business Association, in Canada the Canadian Government Website, in the UK the UK Government Website, and in Australia the ABLIS. Try Shopify for free, and explore all the tools you need to start, run, and grow your business. Sarah’s experience as a contestant on Project Runway taught her many important lessons about herself and her industry. Seasonality doesn’t have to dictate all of your collections, however. “It’s always such a shame when I design a beautiful print and I think, ‘I only have this for one season.
Spreadshirt makes it easy to create custom accessories like smartphone cases, backpacks, and more. Modify existing designs or upload your own, and add that final touch by including personal text elements. If you’re searching for a personalized gift for that next birthday or holiday, you can easily create the ideal present for him or for her.

Hone in on your strengths and be true to your own design sensibilities. Many institutions offer fashion design and small business programs in varying formats. Schools like Parsons in New York and Central Saint Martins in the UK are world renowned for their fashion programs. Sarah has lived and worked in two countries, and her experience spans everything including design, production, education, and physical retail. While fashion school can teach you about pattern grading, sewing, and draping, it doesn’t always prepare graduates for what it’s really like to start your own fashion brand.
At this point, we strongly suggest that you consider partnering with a professional who knows what they’re doing and how to do it properly. If you plan to have graphics or images on your clothing pieces, the designs (the style of designs and quality of designs) can help set you apart from others. Working out of a factory has also given me an upfront view of how many people get into this industry with absolutely no clue what it’s going to take to build a brand that is even remotely successful. Blaming ignorance isn’t entirely fair… We had absolutely no clue how hard it would be either. However, we started Stock with a clear reason of what differentiated us, why people would be interested in buying our stuff, and how we would go about selling.
Using gifts as a way to thank your customers for their purchase is a surefire way to capture their attention and make them feel valued. It doesn’t have to be anything big (some companies include candy bars to treat their customers) as you just want it to be an addition to the package, but something small can be just as appreciated by your customers. The final step of the manufacturing process is really just the first step of building your own clothing brand. Furthermore, the benefit of sketching out your ideas is that they can be shared. When it comes to the product development of your clothing line, there is generally going to be a common path to follow with some common terminology no matter what types of clothing products you’re developing.
Many customers now expect to have their packages tracked and expect to receive email updates on the whereabouts of the packages. If you’re interested in giving your customers a streamlined and professional shopping experience, look into what tracking options your shipping carrier has available. It almost always costs extra or will mean that you’ll have to upgrade to a more expensive service, but it could be very worthwhile for both you and your customers. If you’re serious about building a brand or learning more about digital marketing, search engine optimization, and conversion rate strategies, you need to build your clothing store on a customizable ecommerce platform. Keep in mind that your shipping boxes don’t have to be boring cardboard boxes.