Fashion business information, advice, guidance, and education for fashion brands
I'm not looking to raise money or bring on investors so why do I need one?
This is usually the response that we get when we ask designers if they wrote a business plan for their new start-up fashion brand.
Quite frankly, I don't blame them for thinking this way, I myself thought the same until I started my fashion brand.
When did being busy become the new measure of success?
How many times you heard someone says 'I'm so busy,' yet you couldn't stop but thinking, what are they so busy with???
Feeling busy makes someone feel successful and accomplished while giving others the impression that that person is indeed successful....more so, they might even envy them.
A good fit is obviously a result of a good pattern, but you will be surprised to learn how much impact your fitting sessions can have on how quick you will get there and how good and consistent your fit will be.
Not to mention how much money it will save you!
I have been part of hundreds of fitting sessions during my career and I'm always surprised to see how quick a fitting session can go wrong.
You have probably noticed it on some garments that you bought.
It is a number, usually somewhere on the care labels, most likely with the letters RN# before it. As in the picture below.
An RN number or registered identification number is a number issued by the FTC (Federal Trade Commission), upon request, to a business residing in the U.S. and engaged in the manufacture, importing, distribution, or sale of textile, wool, or fur products.
Deciding whether to produce your fashion product offshore or domestically goes beyond the reasons of cost and number of units you will need to produce.
As a matter of fact it's a decision that will impact how your business is set up and operates to best fit that scenario, re; what kind of people/services you should hire and even the details of your designs.
I have received some great feedback to my last post on should you or shouldn't you do a trade show as a start-up brand.
I heard from designers who had similar bad experiences to mine, others that are contemplating if they should do a show and others who decided not to do one after they ready my article.
What a great slogan.
I was never a fan of Nike (has to do with my favorite sport), but I do LOVE the message of this phrase and I do use it a lot!
Anyways, I’m not here to speak about that.
I’m here to speak about you and turning your talent and great ideas into a business where you can make money doing what you love!
Just one?
You're probably thinking that there are a million important lessons a new fashion entrepreneur must learn, and you'd be right.
However, not all lessons are made equal.
That's why we reached out to the speakers at this year's Be Creative Be Profitable seminar and asked them, "what's the single most important lesson every fashion entrepreneur needs to learn?"
Below is the conversation that ensued...
This last week I had a meeting with 2 investors who recently bought a licensing to build a fashion line for a public figure (name is confidential) and they wanted to learn more about the industry and how can we help them.
After I gave them a quick rundown of the process one of them asked: So how much of it is luck?
Did I hear right? I asked myself.
When I first heard about cash flow in relation to my fashion business I thought to myself: What does it have to do with fashion??? I went to fashion school not accounting, right? ....Just checking.
And my ego added: I have a great style, people love my designs, they'll buy them and my brand will be successful...
As I mentioned before...I made quite a lot of mistakes with my fashion brand and paid heavily for them, the above was one of them.
What is cash flow?
Cash flow is the net amount of cash moving into and out of a business.
We often get asked if a fashion design degree is necessary in order to have a successful fashion brand?
The key words in that question are necessary and successful.
If you have a fashion design degree, this means that you learned in theory how to design a full collection, got introduced to the technical and design terms and the process of making a fashion product. HOWEVER, if you do not have a fashion design degree you
As a start-up fashion brand, costing your product for the first time is one of the most challenging parts of your fashion business.
When you source a factory you will have their costs for making both a small run of your product (i.e. 50 units) and a bigger run (i.e. 200+ units). For many designers, the first season is experimental and you might not know exactly how many orders you will get. So the big question is: Should you price your product based on the cost of a small run or the cost of a big run?
Today's post is an answer for a designer's question about payment terms.
Janette Hanna asked Boaz:
Hello Boaz, I wanted to learn about a document/contract? for terms when taking orders from boutiques. I would like to show them a document with clear terms, ie pay 50% on order, 50% upon delivery. Are 50/50 terms used? J. Hamill says to charge the their credit card for remainder the day you send the order. Not when they receive the order. Needing clarification.
Last week we looked into answering the big question of How Much Does it Cost to Start A fashion Brand, this week we’ll tackle the question of How Long Does it Take to Launch A Fashion Brand?
Similar to cost, the time question does not have only one answer and the answer depends on different aspects of your brand, such as your product, your target customer/ market, your commitment and availability (time and money), your business concept, business strategy and more.
