Hi Guys, Fashion Mythology is back with new content! We made some changes in the last couple months and have decided to focus now exclusively on B2B and industry relevant content for this blog (this is the kind of stuff our readers seem to prefer anyway). So stay tuned, because from now on we gonna release one long-form article per week teaching you new facts and strategies for business, sales and marketing in the fashion, luxury and lifestyle world. This week’s topic is how to start a fashion business effectively in 2017, so let’s start:

1) The Fashion Business Plan

First, you need to write a business plan. It can be a word document, a presentation, a table or a combination of all those formats (hint: make it multimedia). A good fashion business plan consists of several components. You can map out your business and the strategy for the first year or so to extreme detail, I personally would recommend though to focus on the essentials and stay flexible, since over-analysis and to stringent planning often doesn’t work out when the reality of costs, schedules, people and resources clash. So in my opinion, the bare essentials are:

 

Product – What do you want to sell

Supply Chain – Where and how will your product be produced

Logistics – How will your product be shipped to the customer

Geography – Do you want to sell local, national or international (which countries?)

Customers – Who do you want to sell your product to

Pricing – Is your product gonna be mass market, fast fashion, premium or luxury

Points of Sale – Are you gonna sell online, have your own dedicated brick and mortar store or try to place your product in wholesale department stores?

Location – If you’re gonna do retail, where should you open your shop to have enough foot traffic

Finance – You should forecast all the relevant costs for the first year and come up with the 3 basic financial documents (Cash Flow Statement, Balance Sheet, Income Statement)

Your Team – Are you a solo entrepreneur? Or do you have the funds to recruit employees or hire freelancers and agencies

Roles – You should consider who will fill the following roles (at a minimum): CEO, Design, Sourcing/Merchandising, Accounting, Marketing, Public Relations,  Operations, Technology, Human Resources, Legal.

Technology – What kind of software and hardware do you need to setup shop and start selling

Workspace – Are you gonna work from home from your laptop? Are you gonna have a dedicated office space? Work from a brick and mortar store?

Marketing – How are you gonna advertise in the first year? How is gonna design or produce the content? Which channels are right for your business – Google, Facebook, Social Media, Apps, Display?

Public Relations – How can you create media buzz for your brand? Press Releases, Magazines, Blogs, Fashion Shows, Trade Shows, Influencers, Celebrities?

 

2) Your brand

One one page or so you should try to nail down, what makes your fashion business different from everybody else. Is it your design, your materials? The way you produce or source your items? The specific market niche you want to serve? Is it your personal taste and your life story? Do you have heritage, has your family been involved in fashion for generations? Or maybe it is not the product or the human face of the brand, maybe it is the brand itself (logo, colours, photography, visual merchandising) that is artistic, cool and stands out amongst your competitors.

Whatever it might be, you NEED a differentiator to be successful in the ocean of competitors, because we all have to realise, the lower the entry barriers for fashion become, the more saturated the market will be with people trying to sell on the same premise.

 

3) Your Vision

Let’s try to dream a bit here. Where do you want to be in 6 months, in 12 months, in 2.5 years and 5 years? What is your end goal, to have a store you can live off comfortably? To retreat from active management at some point and live off the profits? To build your brand into an empire? To go global, maybe sell stock to investors and be publicly listed? You should start thinking about this right from the get go and focus your goal setting on the first 6-24 months.

Your financial statement, your funds and the available time gonna have the most influence on your vision, but nonetheless, you should inject some passion into your project at this point. If you just want to make money and you don’t love clothes, you don’t stand behind your project…chances are your business will fail.

 

4) The Proper Funds

Let’s be real here, you can’t create a successful business without capital. Anybody who is telling you different is lying to you or tries to sell you an entrepreneur or marketing course. A drop shipping fashion eCommerce store with stock footage branding and cheap 3rd world freelancers running the operations behind the scenes will still require up to
20 000 US$ in the first year to funnel into advertising and business building to have a chance of being profitable. Anything less will require lying, stealing and exploitation and you don’t want to start your business with so much bad karma, don’t you? Getting funds is often the most difficult part for a fledgeling entrepreneur (I speak from experience), but there are different options to consider, the most common are:

 

• Saving up from your day job
• Asking family and friends for investments (careful, don’t ruin your relationships)
• Getting credit from a bank (can be hard if didn’t have a long career already or a fantastic credit score)
• Searching for a business angel (private investor) or a venture capital firm
• Crowd funding (Indigogo, Kickstarter etc.) – A good idea if your idea is creative or has a humanitarian side
• Raising Bitcoin through the blockchain (to put it in simple terms: Kickstarter with bitcoins)
• Getting a private credit through a credit funding site (careful with the terms and credibility here)
• Boons and grants from the government (In some countries your government will support you)

 

5) Time

You need to put in the time. But what if you are starting this business with limited funds and you need to keep working at your day job to keep the lights on, time will be a very limited resource. You will have to work 2-3 hours after work into the night, work the weekends and use every day of vacation you have. And there is a limit to how long you can do this before you burn out. Don’t believe those extreme stories of people like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Elon Musk and whoever they are with their 80+ hour workweeks. If you’re a normal person with a dream, you won’t be able to work those hours. In my experience with clients and from my personal life the following situations can work:

• A high powered job with evening hours and work weekends. Because of your high income, you are able to outsource a lot of work and get things done effectively even though you cannot spend that time on the business.
• You acquire the proper funds (20 000 US$+ or much more), in addition to that you have enough savings to pay your bills and you can work full-time on the business. You do what you can yourself, for things you are not good at, you get the necessary help (quality freelancers or established agencies).
• You are flushed. You either have accumulated some wealth before or you have partners/investors with the proper funds. You have a vision, an idea. So you commission the best people you can find to help you realise your goals.

 

6) Creativity

Fashion is creative and expressive. The style you are going for with your products, your brand and your company culture has to be consistent and strong. You might have ideas but no technical skills (like fashion design, graphic design, writing etc.) so you better get help from the right people that can help you realise your ideas. Every collection needs to be fresh, new while still retaining the core strengths of your original concept.

This is the reason big luxury fashion companies exchange creative directors (head designers) every couple years. To be creative you need to be inspired and put time away to look at art, listen to music, watch movies, read or travel. If your work-life balance doesn’t allow for inspiration and creativity, fashion might not be the right industry for you.

 

7) Get going

Once you have written your business plan, acquired the funds, planned out your time and mapped out your brand and vision, it’s time to get going. Buy the software and technology, hire the right people, start working on your designs, commission prototypes, rent store spaces etc. What you start with is not as important as that you start! Don’t let fear hold you back if you have planned correctly, you are convinced of your idea and you have the necessary assets to make it work. Some people might have to make a 1-2-3 kind of To-Do list to be able to work effectively, don’t hesitate to do that if you need to.

 

So this is how you start a fashion business in 2017

So that is our basic primer on how to do it. If you follow these steps you should make a huge leap towards creating a successful fashion business. If you need more help than just an how-to article, feel free to visit us and book a free 30min consultation with us. Also, check out our service pages on luxury marketing or fashion marketing if you’re serious about making your business a success. As professional marketing consultants,
we are always there to help.

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