Start Your Own Clothing Business With This 5 Step Checklist

Starting a successful online clothing business is not a difficult process but the pathway does present a few challenges if you're unprepared. Worry not though, we've got you covered with a 5 Step Checklist to successfully launching your clothing business, and selling on any channel you desire - be it, Poshmark, Mercari, eBay or even your own website!

1. Know Your Brand

The first step to starting an online clothing business is to KNOW YOUR BRAND. The market is a huge ocean of people from all parts of the globe, selling clothes that very well maybe similar to yours! But what distinguishes you from the rest is your BRAND - the taste, look and feel of your business. Well, what's a brand anyway? According to businessdictionary.com, a brand is a "unique design, sign, symbol, word, or a combination of these, employed in creating an image that identifies a product and differentiates it from its competitors." Now that you know, take time to cultivate and curate your business's image. Think about what and how you want  to contribute to the marketplace! Meditate on the following bullet points below, to give you some perspective : 

• What will you be selling to people online?
• Who is your target customer? (What do they wear? How old are they? What kind of music do they listen to? Where do they live, etc)
• What colors do you want your website, logo and signage (biz cards/flyers,) to have?
• Why are those colors important to you?
• If you can choose a mood to describe your clothing business, what would it be? (Think Happiness, Sadness, Peaceful, Sexy, Corporate, Hippie)

2. Identify Your Key Vendors

Unless you are actually designing your own clothing from scratch, fostering key, strategic relationships with trustworthy vendors is the lifeblood to your success. Without third party suppliers, you've got no product to sell! Once you've figured out what you'd like to sell to customers, start researching vendors online and compile them in a list. Then, one by one, screen each vendor. You can use public reviews online that you may find on vendor listing websites to influence your selection, or you can  trial and error the darn thing by purchasing products from different suppliers and comparing product quality, customer service style and overall responsiveness to orders. You may have to kiss a few (or a dozen) frogs before landing a perfect list of suppliers that are trustworthy, reliable and impeccable in product delivery, ( but that's the name of the game.) To your benefit, The Fashion Dealership minuses out the guess work / trial and error phase for you as we've done all the legwork to yield a consolidated master list of top notch vendors in the clothing, handbag, sneaker, coat and accessories markets. Feel free to enroll in a paid subscription to access it, here. (Insert link to the TFD website, where it says "here."

3. Establish Your Channels

Sales channels are the key points of interest between you (the brand,) and your customers. Platforms like eBay, Poshmark, Mercari, OfferUp, and Let Go give clothing businesses an unique competitive advantage over brick and mortar storefronts, in that traditional sales marketing is not necessary to rake in money! All you've got to do is list items you want to sell and BOOM, those who desire,  will buy ! Customers come to you in a marketplace platform.  On these sites, your job function reduces to listing items, and processing payments. Oh and if you have a Paypal business account, payment processing is taken care of. The more items you list on various channels, the more visibility for your products, hence, more sales. Ensure that on each platform, you include a detailed description of your clothing business, and for each listing, you are as detailed as possible, including 3 - 5 additional pictures per product listed. Understand that while sales WILL come, in lightening speed, you should have a solid product delivery system drafted and in place to ensure that you're paying patrons are happy.

4. Set Up Your Product Delivery System

The title for this section sounds more complicated than it really is. In a nutshell, you need to decide (before even collecting payments, much less listing items for sale,) how you'll be delivering purchased products to your customers. Are you going to Drop-ship these items or will you be handling packaging and shipments yourself? Most of our overseas suppliers within The Fashion Dealership vendor suite offer amazing drop-shipping courtesies which gives you the flexibility of ...

1. Not having inventory on hand 
2. Not being responsible for product packaging
3. Not having to ship items to customers 

In this way, your business is a plug-in fantasy land, where you are simply listing items, collecting payments and having another person, handle the load of product packaging and shipments! In general however, if you're finding suppliers on your own, you will need to ask them about shipment of goods, their delivery time-frames, and if they provide drop shipping courtesies, as not all of them do.

5. Scale Results

After you've made  your first $1000 or more  in a  week's time (a financial goal that we promise our students,) you'll have a good grasp of what products move quickly and which ones should be shelved. Take note of any analytics that can help you figure out what works and what doesn't. With these notations, you can then focus in on profits rather than trial and error'ing products to yield stagnated sales. Scale your results by relisting the same items that are performing well, over and over and over, again - ESPECIALLY on eBay! 

We hope you've found value in the 5 Step Checklist to launching your online clothing business. We're here to see you through to business success so feel free to become a Fashion Dealership member and gain powerful insight, personalized mentorship and day to day guidance on setting up your fashion empire! Join our FREE MASTERMIND FB GROUP (make the text in all caps, a link to the Facebook group,) where you can see inventory examples as well as current member testimonials PLUS bonus training on how to rake in money today!