Fashion Brand Advice To Start A Clothing Business In London

Posted by Fashion Capital on January 3rd, 2019

Are you someone with loads of designs running through your creative mind and wondering how to start a clothing business? Breathing life into hand-drawn concepts with fabric and marketing them is a completely different ballgame compared to designing as a hobby, and requires considerable entrepreneurial knowledge and patience. But that doesn’t imply you have to give up your dreams of running a fashion empire, because no matter what you want to design, it always comes down to a few basic steps.

1. Deciding on a business model:

Owning a clothing business can be as simple as buying blank apparel in bulk and printing designs on them. But, one can have the whole nitty-gritty deal of cutting and sewing. Choosing the business model and the vision behind it is the first crucial step.

2. Deciding on a niche:

Targeting a broad spectrum can be an exhausting, so it’s often recommended to start off by catering to a small section of the populace. For instance, one can target office wear for women. Or, it can revolve around a particular design style that you have in mind. Either way, zeroing in on one demographic for starters is helpful.

3. Drawing, cutting, and pasting the design:

Transferring your ideas from brain to paper comes next. There is 3D illustrating software available for those who prefer digital graphics. Once the design has been penned down, next move is realizing it.

Pattern-cutting is different from design. While designing is developing a unique concept, pattern-cutting is the creation of a template from the penned versions using paper or cards. This has to be remade several times before the fit and the shape of the cloth is satisfactory to a designer. But, once a pattern has been made, it can be indefinitely since it is like a blueprint of a cloth. In layman’s terms, it requires pinning apparel pieces on mannequins to define the geometric structures and stitch lines which is then turned into paper cut-outs. During production, fabrics are cut based on this cut-out. With so much on the line for this, it is no joke that there are so many pattern-cutting courses available, including from our Fashion Technology Academy.

Tech packs are created as the next step to inform the manufacturer regarding specs of your design.

4. Manufacturing:

Once the patterns are ready with tech packs, they need to be sent to manufacturers who will produce your apparel in batches. Clothing start-ups often have to switch around production factories before they can settle on the right one.

5. Market research and selling:

Finally, it is time to score the competition and build up connections with retailers or e-commerce stores willing to sell your apparel. Visiting trade shows and marketplaces is also a great way to sniff out competitions and decide on marketing strategies.

Building a clothing line takes time. It needs to acquire loyal customers and fans to spread your business in a word-of-mouth manner. Like any other business, persevering and enduring are the key elements to a profitable and successful fashion line.