Looking to start a fashion brand in 2023? You’re in the right place! Having been there myself, I can tell you that fashion is a fun industry to work in, and starting your clothing brand can be a rewarding career.
But don’t take my word for it. Statistics have it that the global fashion apparel industry raked in $1.53 trillion in revenue in 2022, and is projected to increase to $2 trillion by 2027. This is how lucrative the apparel market is.
So if you’re thinking of starting your fashion brand in 2023, I couldn’t be more excited for you.
But starting a fashion brand isn’t without its challenges - especially if you’re doing it alone. But it can be done, even without industry experience.
Prefer to learn in video form? Click here to register free for my Fashion Startup Masterclass.
Top 4 Tips To Start Your Fashion Brand
When I started my first fashion business in 2010, I ran into some roadblocks. It took me a long time to get traction and see success. I learnt the hard way how to nail it and get my business out there and stocked in shops around the world. It wasn’t easy getting my first international sales; it took me a long time
Sound disheartening? Don’t worry, you’re here to steal my strategies so you won’t have to do it the hard way.
From that experience, I developed this strategy so that my subsequent businesses and people like yourself, who are brand new, can fast-track success and avoid a lot of the mistakes that I made the first time around.
Here are my 4 top tips for launching a fashion brand for 2023. Are you ready? Let’s get into it.
1. Be specific about who you are designing products for
Starting a fashion brand means you’ll need to consider who exactly you’re designing the product for. Don't just say “I want to start a swim brand”. Fine, that can be a starting point. However, there are so many swimwear brands out there and you need to figure out who specifically is going to buy your swimwear.
Some questions you could ask yourself include:
● Is it swimwear for beach parties?
● Is it swimwear for performance swimmers?
● Is it swimwear to top up your tan in Ibiza?
● Who exactly is buying your swimwear and why?
Dive into this and focus on it because it's going to make most aspects of your business so much easier, including your decision-making process, and most importantly your sales and marketing. So please don't skip this step! I know it's tempting.
It may not be the most exciting thing to start with, but it's so valuable to the success of your fashion brand. Here’s how I know.
I made that mistake the first time around when I started my fashion brand. When I fixed it and got specific, my business and sales quickly turned around. Instead of struggling to try to sell to everyone, I became known for something, not only by customers but also by boutiques and magazines that featured me.
Spend some time on this and you’ll see how defining your niche is a strong foundation for the rest of your business. Trust me when I say it's going to make your decision-making so much easier!
2. Think about your pricing
Don't just rely on factory costs to dictate your pricing when starting a fashion brand. You want to make sure that the price at the end is something your customers can afford.
So you need to ask yourself:
● Is my fashion brand targeting buyers on a budget?
● Are my prices middle-of-the-road, or
● Am I a high-end designer?
Where do you want to fall within this whole pricing thing?
Think about that and then find a suitable supplier. If you're selling a budget-friendly product, you're going to have a factory that is known for speed and perhaps not so much for high quality.
If you go with luxury pricing, you're going to need a factory that produces top-quality work, spends a lot of time on production, and invests a lot of care, detail, and attention into their products. So make sure that the factory is aligned with the final product and pricing that you're aiming for.
There's no “one factory fits all” type solution. It would be difficult to recommend a factory to someone just knowing that they make swimwear. You’ll need to think deeply about what you want from a factory before you can start looking for one.
Finding a factory and pricing are two of the biggest concerns new fashion entrepreneurs have when starting a brand; that’s why I created my step-by step guide to navigating this process (and actually, the whole process from zero to launch and sales!) in The Fashion Startup Online Course.
3. Be actively involved in managing the factory
When you’re starting your clothing brand, you can’t magically expect your factory to make everything perfectly. It’s your responsibility to actively manage your factory.
That starts with communicating your products in detail. When I say detail, I mean... detail. Take the fabric for example.You’ll need to be specific about every detail, down to the percentages of the fibers, what stitch details are going to be used to construct it and how heavy it is.
When you hear “horror stories” of manufacturing from fashion brand owners, they’re mostly due to a communication breakdown.
For instance, if someone just tells a factory: “make me a triangle bikini” it may be confusing since there are so many triangle bikinis out there. They may end up making one you didn’t want.
So you’ll have to specify, for instance, in this case, which kind of triangle bikini you want, which colour, and every other little detail that may seem obvious.
Plus, don’t forget about the sizing too – there’s no such thing as a standard size!
All these different details matter and make a world of difference when working with your factory, so make sure you're being hyper-specific.
4. Make sure you stay on top of every detail
Starting a clothing brand also means staying on top of every detail. This means that you’ll need to track every progress and ask questions whenever necessary. For instance, how the production is going, when things are going to be delivered, and so on.
Make sure you keep checking in. This shouldn't be something you hand over to the factory and you leave them to their own devices. That's how things go badly wrong.
I realised this later than I should, when I was producing products for my brand. Factories aren't always working with our best interests in mind. They work with numerous brands and are often just looking to tick “complete” on their production flow. They just want to make sure that it's finished so they can get paid.
There's only a handful of honest factories out there, and if you're one of them reading this, I'm sorry, but this is often the case. They don't care about the nitty-gritty or your customers — at least not as much as you do.
They will not worry about every little detail, especially if you, the business owner, aren't as worried either. Which makes it your duty to stay on top of it all.
Time to take a leap and start your fashion brand
I know thinking about all the work behind starting a fashion brand can sound a bit scary or out of your reach, but I promise it’s not. You just need to take things step-by-step. If you'd like to learn more about how to start a fashion brand in 2023, I'd love to invite you to join me in my free masterclass.
If you've been following me for a while, you'll know that I've had similar masterclasses in the past. This one's revamped for 2023 so that we can make sure we're doing what's currently working in the industry.
It’s my mission to make your fashion journey easy, so I hope to see you launching a successful fashion brand next year! Hope to see you in the free class! Click here to register for free.
Pickleball outfit inspiration……