How To Start My Own Clothing Company – Clara Spars combines her unique cultural background with stunning art to create a brand that unites and inspires Stanford students. (Photo: Clara Spars/The Stanford Daily)
I’ve been drawing in my spare time since grade school, and I’ve sold some stickers in the past to raise money for fire victims in my home state of Sonoma County. This time, I decided to make stickers to sell them. I opened a shop on Etsy and uploaded some of my design ideas to Instagram to see if anyone would be interested.
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How To Start My Own Clothing Company
There are certainly times when I doubt my place in the Stanford community and whether I fit in with my peers in all their academic endeavors, but there are also times when I am surprised at the wholehearted support. I stay Student body. Through the power of social media, I was able to spread the word about the stickers I was selling. The orders started coming in and before I knew it, I was making my first $100 profit.
How I Make My Own Clothes For My Fashion Brand🪡
A week later, a friend of mine asked if I would ever sell my designs on clothes. I’ve painted on old t-shirts in the past, but never thought of printing my art on clothes and selling them as real goods.
My mom grew up tending to her family’s chickens and rice fields in Bali, Indonesia, and my dad rode BMX bikes on the slopes of Tamalpais, California. I’ve lived in America my whole life, only been to Bali four or five times since birth. As I grew older, I began to feel the pull of another side of my identity.
“Kita” is the Indonesian word for “we”. We are all united through art and language. I decided it would be the perfect name for the small brand I wanted to create and I wanted to create a sense of unity among those wearing my designs. The logo includes a Balinese fan used for traditional dance practice on my mother’s island. For me, it reflects my heritage as the daughter of a Balinese mother and an American father.
A few months ago my grandfather died unexpectedly in Bali. In the handful of times I was able to connect with him in person, we couldn’t communicate through our broken Indonesian and his broken English, which made it seem even more distant between us. After her death, I realized that I hadn’t connected with her the way I wanted to, and I wanted to reconnect with my Indonesian culture more than ever. By far the best way I can do this is through my art. Although the initial idea to create stickers was as simple as wanting to make some extra money, over time I recognized that another part of why I created KITA was to explore my cultural interactions. I hope to continue to do the same through my art.
Momo Phat Tagg Graffiti
Each of my creations represents a different emotional experience, all of which are united by a similar bold, black and white aesthetic. They reflect different aspects of the experience of being a woman, be it loneliness, hunger for food or love, confusion about one’s condition or thriving on the strength one finds within. I feel that these types of sentiments resonate with people of all backgrounds and are not necessarily unique to the female population.
Stanford students have been my biggest customers. My close friends have a tradition of taking one of my shirts or shirts with them wherever they go. Once or twice I walked around campus and saw a KITA sticker on someone’s laptop or my picture on the back of a t-shirt as someone left.
March has been three months since I started my small business. Four student organizations have commissioned KITA for gear badges. Many people request designs for tattoos and band t-shirts. Now I am building my website with the help of my friends.
I owe a lot of this to the part of Stanford that uplifts each other, supports local artists, and takes pride in sharing each other’s passions with the world. For this community, I am grateful. Owning your own fashion brand is a dream for many and with the technological advancements we’ve made in recent years, making that idea a reality is now more possible than ever.
How To Start A Clothing Brand In 2023
But, of course, you’re not the only one having these dreams. There are many people who want to follow the same path. To stand out from the crowd, you need to plan ahead.
Here are some questions you might want to ask yourself before tackling the nitty-gritty parts of kickstarting a label.
Start with the basics. Grab a pen and paper and imagine what you want to do. Make a list of everything you want to remember. Set some goals. Get your preferences straight. Consider writing a business plan.
Create your first business log before moving on to the job research part. Having planning skills that you can put to good use in business will definitely pay off. Now that you have a written report, you can now look at the process of doing the research.
How To Start A Clothing Line Online From Scratch [updated 2023 ]
Research where the nearest material sources are. This is where our best friend Mr. Google comes in. With a business degree or some experience in the field, you can move through these steps effortlessly.
There are many types of business models that go with people entering the business, but the most common are print-on-demand, private label, custom cut and sew line.
This is the easiest and cheapest option as it is a fully automated business. The downside is that you can’t stray too far from the normal clothing style and you’ll get less profit.
The private label that most people dream of. Unlike print-on-demand, it involves buying blank materials in bulk. If you don’t have a physical place to store inventory, this can be a problem. Also, if you don’t sell clothes, you should keep them. On the bright side, you have free reign over the results and details of your final product.
Start Your Own Clothing Brand From Home
You may need a lot more, even around £2,500. Private label is much more practical than before, but the benefits have also increased.
The last mention includes further customizations made by your company. Designs, patterns, fabrics and productions created or approved by you. This involves intensive management which can cost around £10,000 due to production costs, design, human resources required to run the business and other miscellaneous costs.
The potential of this business model is that your products can be unique and therefore your brand. Also, cutting and sewing is likely to have higher profit margins.
Again, the amount of capital you need may vary depending on the type of business or model you want to build when starting your clothing brand. If you need customization, it will cost more and take longer to make because of the uniformity of your product.
Learn How To Start Your Own Brand
If you decide to add content that is not common in your region, you will need to import it, which will cost you.
Designing your logo and your clothes may require a creative touch, for which you may choose to hire people. If you want to focus on specific aspects of your business rather than doing all the work you need, you should hire people to do other work.
What kind of brand do you want? Is it a fast fashion brand like ZARA and H&M that offers the latest trends at affordable prices but at the expense of quality? Or do you charge a little more so your customers can get better quality? Balancing quality and price is a constant struggle in the industry.
The higher the quality of the dress, the higher the price, right? This is the common assumption, but it is not entirely correct. Nowadays we can find good quality clothes at affordable prices.
How It Was Like Starting My Very Own Small Biz
Got budgeting skills? Don’t look around your area and choose who is the best seller for your brand. Mass production requires quantity, it is true. But if they underestimate the expected value of your product, your investment could go sour. But on another note, don’t spend too much on your content, it can guarantee a high price of the product which will make your customers decide for a long time whether to get it or not.
The aforementioned business models can also be applied to this segment. There are three main points about the product. These are quantity, quality and distribution. Must keep.
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