Are you looking to start a clothing line with no experience? Believe it or not, it’s totally possible! Check out our tried and true tips that we’ve used to start an equestrian clothing brand from scratch (with no prior fashion design experience!).
Starting a clothing line with no experience can feel like an insurmountable task. Do I need to go to fashion school? Should I pay for an expensive online course, so someone can tell me all the secrets to getting started? Am I just not cut out for this since I don’t have prior experience in the fashion industry? These are all self-sabotaging thoughts that can totally squash your design dreams in an instant.
Luckily, thanks to modern technology and the accessibility of information on the internet though, you can create your own clothing line even if you have little to no experience. Many successful entrepreneurs either didn’t go to college or didn’t use what they learned in college to launch their businesses, and instead learned by trying and failing in real life scenarios to see what worked and what didn’t. There’s no better way to learn something than by diving in head first and getting hands on experience.
Here are our best tips from someone who has been where you’re at (totally clueless on how to get started!), but has done the work and learned a thing or two about starting a clothing brand with no experience.
1. Establish Your Niche & Create Your Brand
The first thing you’ll want to do when starting your own clothing line is to figure out your niche and branding. What problem are you going to solve for your customer? What are your unique selling points? If you can’t answer those questions, you need to go back to the drawing board. Remember that not everyone is your customer, and you need to figure out who you’re actually creating your clothing for. Try to make a product for everyone, and you’ll end up attracting no one.
2. Brainstorm Your Initial Products
Once you have an idea of what your brand is all about, it’s time to brainstorm your initial product offerings. Our best advice is to not overthink this. You don’t need to have accurate technical drawing skills or be an artist in order to design your clothing line. It’s helpful though to either print off a pre-drawn croquis template (or better yet download it to a drawing app if you have an iPad), and then create your sketches on top of this body model. Make sure you are as detailed as possible in your drawing though, making notes of your specific ideas/fabrics/styles you want your piece to have. This is also a good time to start saving some reference photos of specific details, trim, fabrics, etc. that you’d like to use on your piece. It’s okay to not have all the details ironed out for your design, but you do want to have a basic idea of what you want in order to move onto the next step of working with a designer to create your tech pack.
3. Hire a Designer to Create Your Tech Packs
Once you have an idea of what you want to design, it’s time to find a designer to create your tech pack. This is the document you’re going to send to manufacturers to tell them exactly what to make for you. This will specify what colors, trims, fabrics, etc. the factory needs to use to produce your piece. There are plenty of fantastic freelancer designers you can hire for this, but we recommend vetting your designer carefully to make sure they have a good amount of experience and positive reviews prior to hiring them. Remember that your tech pack is what your factory will follow to make your product, so you really want this document to be as accurate and detailed as possible the first time around.
4. Start a Pre-Launch Marketing Strategy
Once you have an idea of your brand and what you’re going to sell, this is when we’d recommend implementing a pre-launch marketing strategy. Create your social media handles, and start interacting with your ideal customers. You do not want to wait until you have the product in your hand to start this process! It’s important to build buzz and anticipation for your product ahead of time, and this process will also provide you with the important opportunity to receive some valuable feedback from your target audience. It will also provide you with a following that you can market your launch to, when that time comes. If you wait to start this process until your bulk order comes in and you’re ready to start taking orders, you’re essentially going to be marketing to no one and starting from scratch.
5. Research Manufacturers & Order Samples
Finding a manufacturer is one of the toughest parts about starting a clothing line with no experience, but honestly is a bit of a tedious process either way. There is really no secret method to finding manufacturers (unless you have a mentor, or someone who can guide you through this process), it’s basically just scouring the internet and vetting potential factories until you find one that you feel is a good fit and that you want to order a sample from. It is not appropriate etiquette to reach out to other brand owners and ask who their manufacturers are (and 99.9% of the time they will not tell you), so don’t do that! Do your own research, and go through the sampling process to make your own educated decision on who will manufacture your product. This is the process that everyone else has had to go through as well! It takes time and it’s expensive (warning: ordering samples is not cheap), but it’s imperative to be thorough because your manufacturer is one of the biggest things that will determine your brand’s quality.
6. Decide on a Manufacturer & Place Your Bulk Order
Once you’ve thoroughly tested your samples and found a manufacturer that is a good fit for your brand, it’s time to place your bulk order. This is exciting, because you’re getting close to actually being able to launch! Don’t forget to get everything in writing with your manufacturer when you’re placing your bulk order and even consider hiring a third-party quality control inspector to ensure that there are minimal issues when you receive your product. It’s also a good idea to ask your manufacturer ahead of time how they deal with any defective product you may receive, and make sure you have this all in writing in case any potential problems do arise. While of course we all want this process to be smooth sailing, that’s just not the way it works sometimes.
7. Launch Your Brand
Once you’ve placed your bulk order, you can either start taking pre-orders for your product if that’s part of your marketing strategy, or you can wait for your product to come in and then move forward with your launch!
