How to Start and Run a Clothing Brand in 5 Easy Steps

In the UK, 2018 saw the highest number of fashion startups compared with any other year, and it’s not difficult to imagine why. With social media sites like Instagram and Facebook offering a platform for would be clothing brands and affordable access to the masses via social ads, it’s clear to see why clothing brand startups are on the rise.

1. Choosing your market

Starting a clothing brand focused on a particular market or ‘niche’ is a much better approach versus starting a broad clothing brand with no particular market focus. It’s also much easier to target an audience based on a topic or interest.

Try to choose a market which you’re already interested in and have a fair amount of knowledge on. Try to ‘niche down’ and focus on a specific topic. For example, rather than creating a clothing brand within the ‘health and fitness’ market, go deeper and look at topics such as ‘veganism’, ‘running’ or ‘yoga’.

2. Finding the best t-shirt printing company

When it comes to choosing a clothing manufacturer, the choice is almost endless. Finding the right one is a little more difficult. Price will probably be your most important deciding factor, but also consider bulk discount, experience, turnaround time, and of course quality of product.

Try to find a t shirt printing company such as Shirtworks who have been in the game for well over 20 years. This additional step in your research should pay dividends soon enough, as it’s the quality of your clothing which will drive repeat orders and customers. 

3. Create your designs

Don’t be tempted to simply slap a text-based logo on to a t-shirt and think that’ll be enough to drive sales – it won’t. Try to understand what styles and designs are currently working well within your market, which a simple Google search can help with.

Don’t skimp on the design phase either. A good graphic designer can be found on sites like People Per Hour and Upwork for around £20 – £30 per hour. 

4. Setup shop

Almost every clothing brand has a website, although some rely solely on social media platforms to sell their products. With the large choice of free website builders available today, not to mention the very much affordable paid eCommerce solutions such as Shopify, there’s really no excuse not to set up a well designed and functioning website for your clothing business.

Once the site is setup, get your social channels created and live. It’s likely your brand name may be taken on some social platforms – think hard about an alternative which is both easy to remember and reflects the brand well enough.

5. Launch the brand and shout from the rooftops

Once the website is live and the social channels setup, hit publish and start marketing the brand. All major social channels provide options for advertising. Even if budgets are small initially, you can cap spending as low as £5 per day while you test your first ad sets and how they convert.

If budgets are small or non-existent, try growing an organic social following. Adding real value for your followers and community is the best way to do this, rather than simply posting product images and commercial content.