It Pays to Plan
Here at Guided Makers, we are excited to consult and collaborate with clients on developing their own apparel line.
From years of experience in the industry and understanding the cost of doing business (development and production), the greatest piece of advice you can receive is ‘it pays to plan’.
Before you get to the product development phase of your project, research and planning is key to allow you to make the best decisions possible for your product and business needs.
Research in store or online.
Understand Your Market
Knowing your desired market/ industry is a key factor to success. This may sound obvious but doing some research on possible competitors/ market space will really help guide decision points as you begin to get off the ground.
Research can easily be done online or immerse yourself in the target market – head to some stores (when current Covid-19 restrictions have been lifted!).
Reviewing similar brands and products, assessing their product offerings, how they sell their product and pricing. Look in stores that offer similar product and designs to what you want to offer. Reviewing, touching and feeling the competitor’s product will provide you with a wealth of information to refine your desired target product.
Create mood boards to help visualize your product and brand theme
Know Your Product
You’ll start with your initial idea and build on this with additional inspiration. Have fun with this! Select images, fabric swatches, Pinterest and more. Spend some time considering desired materials. This can be very overwhelming so the market research mentioned above, will also help you narrow down your research to something that you specifically want to create. Example, you want to make Women’s shirts….that’s pretty broad to get off the ground. But perhaps after researching your market and learning more, you now know you want to make women’s shirts in organic poplins and only made in the USA – now that’s something we can work with!
Pricing strategy helps understand target production costs
Pricing
Know your market pricing. This will help determine how you want to price your own product. Ideally price competitively but perhaps your idea warrants a different price strategy based on how you plan to build and sell it. Without knowing your targets, you could be killing your own business before you even start it. When creating product or a brand, typically you will always want to make some form of profit margin so starting out on the right foot will help you be successful now and in the future.
Selling channels are important to consider early in the process.
Selling
Think about how you will want to sell your product. Many folks we speak with are so focused on making the product, they really haven’t thought through how they will sell the product and when they will want to sell the product. Having some thoughts around this as you get started will be important as it may drive manufacturing decisions together with cost decisions.
Considering your finances -investments and revenues is key to success for your brand
Investment
This is always a challenging aspect of getting started but should not be overlooked. Consider how much money you have to invest in your brand, especially into product development and manufacturing. The apparel industry is not an inexpensive industry to jump into. There will be initial design and development costs to consider, raw material costs, manufacturing costs and more. In addition to creating and making the garments, there may be additional costs related to selling such as marketing, website, photography, product launch.
Before we start with you on your project, we will encourage you to consider the following key steps. In fact, it’s preferred clients work through these steps before we start on product development.
Reach out to find out more on how we can help you.. We offer a pre-development package to clients. A focused approach to determine the right development path for your product and brand. Package includes mentoring calls/ meetings, useful templates and tools to support your research and decision making.
Reach out on our contact page to schedule a complimentary introductory call today.