Start A Clothing Business with Dropshipping
Just decided to start a clothing business with dropshipping? If so, congratulations to you!
Why all the praise? Because clothing has always been one of the most popular industries for dropshipping. And it is still astonishing now. Statistics show that the income generated by retail e-commerce from clothing and accessories was $102.5 billion in 2019 and is projected to reach $153.6 billion by 2024. In just five years, that’s increased by about 50%!
There won’t be a scarcity of potential customers, for sure. On the other hand, this market is already very congested and will only get more so.
Therefore, we are here to provide you with some tried-and-true methods and advice for you to start a clothing business with dropshipping.
But how profitable is it? It’s possible to create a profitable dropshipping clothing business that supports a comfortable living with a few years of diligent work and persistence. How? Let’s find out eight steps to starting a clothing business with dropshipping.
1. Identify Your Clothing Niche
Before you start your clothing business with dropshipping in full force, choose a niche to concentrate on. And to do that, you need to conduct in-depth target market research and thoroughly understand what your clients want and how to satisfy them.
There are two forms of market research: primary market research, which involves your own data collection, and secondary market research, which involves data you obtain from companies like Nielsen, NPD, and MarketResearch.com that have already conducted the research.
Buying research reports could be expensive, so be mindful of that. You might want to concentrate on primary research if you’re bootstrapping your business out of your own money.
Just observe who is making purchases from Amazon’s retail stores. Are they the same consumers who use eBay or avoid internet shopping? You won’t know until you investigate every factor a dropshipper may encounter.
To find out where prospective customers are looking to spend money, whether they are youthful customers who set trends or an older group with strong social ties, search Google Trends and Facebook Analytics, and perform some competition analysis.
2. Identify Your Target Audience
Since a certain group or individual mayrequire your products, finding a need and identifying a target audience go hand in hand.
Your target market is comprised of those categories. You’ll spend your days attempting to engage and build communication with these people. Your chances of gaining and keeping their business will be improved the more you understand those people.
You must thoroughly understand your target market if you want to learn how to start a successful clothing business with dropshipping.
Continue your research until you have a thorough understanding of the psychographics and demographics of your target market:
- Demographics: age, gender, earnings, marital status, place of residence, etc.
- Psychographics: their likes and dislikes, interests, and lifestyle characteristics; their purchase behaviors, including the retailers they now use and why; and the issues they are currently facing and how you can help them.
3. Write Down your Clothing Brand Business Plan
A good clothing business plan for drop-shipping includes:
- Your company name, mission statement, and any other information you want to include about your online clothing business.
- Whom are you trying to reach? What specific objectives do they have when they buy (use their equipment)? Why should they be drawn to the brand name?
- The goals for your business that you aim to achieve.
- How will you accomplish your business objectives?
- How long would you be willing to invest before seeing a profit?
- Why do you believe the business will be successful?
Ideally, your clothing business plan spans the first three to five years of your enterprise. Naturally, things won’t always go as planned, but you still need to have goals.
Having a benchmark against which to measure your progress can help you determine if you’re on track to achieve your objectives or if you need to adjust your original plan.
You’ll also present your clothing line business plan to potential investors and partners. You have a far better chance of getting people on board to support your business and assist in its growth if your plan is well-thought-out, smart, detailed, and encouraging.
The U.S. Small Business Association (SBA) has excellent resources for developing a business plan, including how to organize it section-by-section.
4. Start Designing Your Own Clothing Line
The enjoyable part is now. Get your imagination going and produce your best work.
When creating a clothing line, keep the following in mind:
- Always keep a sketchbook with you. You should constantly be prepared to take notes on fresh concepts and sources of inspiration since you never know when inspiration will hit.
- Make no compromises in terms of materials or overall product quality. Customers will notice if you’re cutting corners to save money, especially if you’re developing a luxury line or clothing store.
- Making your own samples is a fantastic idea. A thorough understanding of the process will assist you in running your clothing business more smoothly, especially when negotiating costs with your manufacturer. But don’t get so engrossed in the technical aspects that you lose sight of your creativity and ability to design new pieces.
- Start making your “tech pack” as soon as possible. When it comes time to produce your clothing line, this is the basic information you’ll give to your manufacturer. Your tech pack should include technical specifications and product details such as measurements, materials, and accessories.
5. Find a Clothing Manufacturer
Finding the proper manufacturer is critical when learning how to start a clothing business with dropshipping. That is why, before making a decision, you should conduct thorough research and thoroughly vet your options.
Here are some suggestions for identifying a clothing manufacturer:
Think about whether you want a domestic or an international manufacturer
Although you might save money by using a foreign manufacturer, you may find that the possible disadvantages, such as longer delivery times or inferior product quality, are ultimately not worth it.
If you’re a US resident, you can find regional clothing sellers on Handshake, a hand-selected wholesale platform that links small businesses with US-based producers and wholesalers.
Use your creativeness in your search
Search on Google the old-fashioned way and browse social media platforms like Facebook groups. Additionally, you can come across directories, networking opportunities, and industry meetups.
Once you’ve compiled a list of manufacturers, thoroughly investigate each by contacting them and getting lots of information. See if there are any positive or negative reviews of them online from other clothing manufacturers.
6. Build Your Clothing Brand
It’s time to create the visual elements that will reflect your clothing lines, such as your brand name, logo, graphics, illustrations, product photographs, and color palette.
It can be intimidating to complete all the branding and design work. Several free, beginner-friendly resources are available to help you keep costs down if you lack design expertise or the funds to employ a professional developer.
7. Choose a Price Point and Begin the Marketing Process
Develop a pricing strategy for your clothing business after taking your cost of goods sold (COGS). Keep in mind that, in addition to the selling price of your products, other elements such as warehouse rent, shipping expenses, and employee salaries must be considered.
Pick a price that covers all expenses, remains competitive in your industry, is fair for the caliber of your service, and has a good profit margin. The Keystone Markup pricing strategy can be used to double the cost. For instance, if producing a t-shirt costs you $5, you can choose to sell it for $20 at retail or $10 at wholesale.
There are several ways to promote items, including:
- Influencer marketing
- Use social media networks like Facebook and Twitter to share content with other websites or engage in the guest blogging.
- Offering free shipping by giving discounts when purchasing large quantities.
- Offering a buy one, get one free deal if high-performing individuals create custom designs following client requirements or specifications.
- Offering discounts, gift cards, and vouchers to customers in return for likes or followers on social media.
- Implement a content marketing plan. Give your blog some thought so it contains more details than a stylist would.
8. Sell Products
The hardest part of starting a clothing line is selling it and selling products after your business is established. When creating an online fashion brand, you need to build awareness and trust among potential customers through natural SEO and content marketing techniques that either inform readers or listeners of the advantages of your product or persuade them of those advantages. Promote your drop-ship small clothes company via email marketing.
Set your e-commerce strategy in place if you want to sell. You must make use of programs like Shopify, Shoplazza, or WordPress. Create a website using HTML5 with the right look, feel, and modern e-commerce platforms so that search engines like Google or Bing can index it.
Your dropshipping business also depends on social media marketing techniques like Facebook retargeting ads, which offer commercials to users while browsing websites unrelated to yours. This method catches users’ interests and then uses them in subsequent marketing campaigns.
Conclusion
Thank you for having the courage to start your own clothing dropshipping business. Keep in mind that small e-commerce business growth takes time.
However, this article mentions the eight steps to start your clothing business with dropshipping. Hopefully, it might be helpful for you.
(Contributed by Sohel Rana & Hermes Fang)
