Starting a fashion brand is a very complex and difficult process. You might have the passion to be the owner of your own clothing line, but without all the right foundations set into place, you won’t be able to have a real business. It’s not impossible, but there are a lot of things to consider when wanting to start a brand, such as studying the market to see if your type of products have a necessity in it, studying your competitors to see what they’re lacking so that you can introduce it first, knowing and securing the type of team you need, and so much more!
If you’re looking to start a fashion brand, then you need to be aware of so many factors and the best way to implement them when setting up your whole business. We’ve taken the liberty of curating a fashion brand launch checklist below to help you get started:
How to Launch a Brand Checklist:
1) What Does the Market Need?
In our opinion, you could approach this question in 2 ways :
You could introduce an aesthetic that’s totally fresh and has never been seen before. You’ll have the advantage of having a lane of your own, and your competitors won’t seem like too much competition at all.
On the other hand, your brand doesn’t have to have a global novelty, but if the area you’re based in is lacking something that’s so in demand in other places, then you will still bring something new to that specific area. The type of brand we’re talking about here usually stems from a personal perspective or need of the founders themselves.
Take Sara Blakely for example, she saw a lack of size inclusivity in the fashion market, and opted to introduce her own brand ‘Spanx’. She started her own brand because she was frustrated with being unable to find suitable undergarments to wear under cream-colored pants for a party. She started her business with $5000 in savings and her company today is worth over a billion USD dollars.
2) Create a Business Plan
This is a fundamental aspect of your brand launch checklist. You should visualize and write down the goals you want your brand to achieve, and how you’re going to get there.
You should have projections for where you want your brand to be 2 months or even 5 years after launching, and how you’re going to get there. Who’s your target audience, how do you want to reach them, how are you going to source your materials, how often do you want to produce products for release, how many people do you need to hire, who do you want to collaborate with, and what profit do you want your brand making in the near future.
We know that all these questions sound overwhelming, but all it takes is a little bit of thinking about your dreams and goals, and that’s not stressful, that’s you DREAMING! When has that ever been a bad thing?
Don’t stress and definitely don’t doubt yourself. All these things are easily attainable if you put in the effort, and really believe that you can do it! Writing down a business plan is basically like going to a psychic who tells you your future, and it could come true, not because the psychic told you so, but because you believed it so much that it gave you the power to manifest it.
3) Target Audience
As briefly mentioned above, knowing your target audience is very important because you know your products aren’t going to be for everyone. You’re trying to bait a specific demographic of people, and when you know who they are, that’ll be the point of departure for what products you produce, the vibe of your brand, in terms of your store, social media presence, or styling and locations for photo shoots.
4) Design The Products
You can’t have a fashion brand without products. If you know what your sector is, then you can start producing the style and cuts that reflect the identity of your brand, but obviously, there’s more to it than that.
You also need to know where to source the materials, as well as what type of manufacturers you want to work with. You can choose to work with local artisans around your area or expand your search to manufacturers in China, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, or Bangladesh, where most fashion commercial production houses are based.
If you go with the second option, keep in mind that as a startup business, you can’t afford to be flying back and forth from one country to the other, so most of your communication will be over the phone. However, if you’re already based in a country with a big manufacturing company, then you’re just really lucky!
One last thing. If you want to mass produce most of the products in your collection or all of them for that matter, then you have to make sure they’re practical because accessibility is key to making a working relationship with your artisans realistic.
At the end of the day, you can’t really expect them to reproduce something that’s so Avant-Garde in big numbers. They’re artisans, not fairy godmothers, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t be modern. It’s all about finding a balance.
5) Logos, Brand Name, and Websites
Your brand is your baby, and you need to give your baby a name. It should be something that reflects the mission and identity of your brand. You could go for an eponymous label (name your brand after yourself) or give it a name that has a special meaning to you.
You just need to put a lot of thought into it as well as the design of the logo, which you then introduce to your website that you can create using popular platforms, such as Shopify or Etsy.
Once you have a website with a logo and products, you can start selling!
Now that you’re a little familiar with everything that it takes to run a fashion brand, we would like to end this article by reminding you that The Stylatude are pros in these sorts of matters, and would love to assist you in making the right decisions when it comes to all the layers of launching a fashion business.
We know how to launch a brand, and you can too if you contact us right now!