How to Begin an Online Startup in the Field of Clothing Line?

Who doesn’t love clothes? The three basic necessities of one’s life are food, cloth, and shelter. Apart from being a basic necessity, clothes have become more of a trend. Thus, the clothing business idea is one of the best start-up ideas.

If you are looking for any small scale business ideas for clothing, then considering how the pandemic has taken a toll on everyone’s life, online business ideas are worth checking out. One can open their clothing start-up online to provide safe and secure services to everyone along with maximised profits, making it one of the best start-up ideas.

Therefore, to help you with how to start a clothing business here is a comprehensive step-by-step guide -

1. Planning your online clothing store

Planning a niche is the first and the most important step of any new business ideas. The initial thing you should plan is the type of clothing store you want to open.

Niche is chosen in consideration with uniqueness, as plenty of online stores already exist in the market. It won’t be wrong to say that choosing a niche is one of the most critical steps of any small-scale business ideas.

Even passion is a must for any new business ideas. The return on your start-up is another factor that must be considered while deciding the niche of your clothing business idea. Your choices must be as unique as your unique business ideas.  

2. Choose the business model you want to operate in

The next move for how to start a clothing business is to choose the business model you want to operate in. Usually, there are four kinds of business models that one could implement in their small profitable business ideas. These models are:

• Print on Demand:

This model is suitable for any low budgeted clothing business idea. The core principle of this model is to print a design with a digital ink-jet printer on blank products. However, the profits are extremely low.

• Dropshipping:

This model basically enables you to sell products from wholesalers, making it a budget-friendly clothing business idea as no capital is required. However, one could not develop their unique identity as a brand through this model.

• Clothing line from scratch:

This model enables you to create unique and creative clothing as it helps you develop and launch your creative brand from scratch. However, the management and responsibility in this idea are quite high, and coordinating everything may prove to be difficult sometimes.

• Private label clothing store:

This model works in a way that initially focuses on choosing a product line, and then private manufacturers are chosen to create those clothes. The processes could be streamlined through e-commerce platforms. However, the entire responsibility of the fulfilment of the inventory lies on the owner.

Based on the goals and arrangements you have for your clothing business, you could choose one of these models. Once you have chosen your business model, you can proceed further.

3. Check your resources and stock

Checking your resources and stock is essential for starting a clothing business; it includes investment and space. Investment and space depend based on the business model you have chosen. Like in business models like Print on Demand and Dropshipping, low investment is required, whereas investment is required in clothing lines from scratch and private label clothing stores.

Since this is one of the online business ideas, and according to many business models, it does not require any space like the Dropshipping model. Thus, it can also be counted as one of the small business ideas from home.

Once the investment and resources are sorted out, you need to keep a stock ready of your items which you will publish on your online store. Without any reference material, you could not attract customers to your brand.

4. Determine the prices of products

After successfully designing or gathering your product range, you need to determine the price you will fix for a product to be sold online. Since you are looking for small profitable business ideas; therefore, this price should be determined to cover all your incurred costs and give you profit.

After all, to stand out as one of the unique business ideas, these prices will influence customers and eventually provide success.

5. Choose your E-commerce platform

The E-commerce platform is one of the essential requirements of your online clothing business idea. Thus, the next step of starting a clothing business is choosing the appropriate E-commerce platform. An E-commerce platform is chosen based on factors like:

• Payments Gateways
• Traffic volume
• Open-source solution
• Stock size
• Platform Payment plan

A good E-commerce platform is the one that provides you with an ease of quick and easy listing of products, upload photos, provides a fast checkout process, and adds product descriptions.

6. Customise the settings of your eCommerce sites

Managing the E-commerce site you have chosen is another step of how to start a clothing business online. These fall under the following spectrums:

• Domain name: A domain name for any small business ideas should be unique and congruent with your business’s potential goals. It should be simple, short, easy to remember, scalable, and logical as well short.
• Customisation of store and templates: Your store should possess qualities like easy navigation, easy usage, and specific branding as well.

For any small business ideas, E-commerce platforms provide many templates to satisfy your customised needs. A correct template must be chosen to meet the expectations you hold for your site. It is an important aspect of your clothing business idea as your e-commerce website will present you as a brand.

• Listing your products: The last step of E-commerce customisation of your clothing business idea. To list your products, you must provide SEO-friendly product descriptions, complementing product display, easy navigation, a simple checkout process, and a quickly accessible search option.

The E-commerce site which completes all the requirements stated above has completed its due process of customisation, and you have moved one step closer on how to start a clothing business. Your store is ready to be launched in the market

7. Marketing the online store

Marketing is indeed a crucial step while planning how to start a clothing business as it could prove to be one of the most critical factors to determine the success of your clothing business idea.

It would be the turning factor that would attract your customers. You could conduct various marketing activities like Email Marketing, Social Media Marketing, and Content Marketing as well. You could also work on influencer marketing. Thus, tools like Facebook and Google Ads, Emails, Instagram, SEO could prove to be a catalyst for your brands by bringing them into existence.

8. Seek for investments or partnerships

Once your store has witnessed a soft launch, you could seek more investments and partnerships to provide a boost to your business, and it would come as a success for all your marketing campaigns.

To seek investments and partnerships, you could pitch your products to the interested parties, polish your business practices and incentivise the investors or partners. It could aid the growth of your small-scale business.

In a country like India, where the population is so high, the clothing business could help you earn equally high profits, and its existence could never diminish, and it is also one of the best small business ideas from home.

Also read:

1) 10 Best Ways to Promote Your Small Business
2) How Many Social Media Sites Can I Promote My Online Business On?
3) Online Business Ideas You Can Start Quickly
4) 8 Online Business Ideas That Could Make You Hit Gold in 2020

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FAQs

Q. What type of business model is suitable if you cannot invest at all?

Ans. In case you cannot invest much, you can try the drop selling business model as you are merely mediocre between wholesaler and consumer.

Q. On what factors should you choose the niche of your business?

Ans. Factors determining niche are uniqueness, passion, and return.

Q. What are forms of marketing strategies you could use?

Ans. Email marketing, Social Media Marketing, content marketing, Influencer marketing are a few of the marketing strategies.

Q. Is a business place necessary for an online clothing business?

Ans. No, certain business models like drop selling do not hold any space requirements.

Q. What are the things you need to customize in your eCommerce website?

Ans. The customisations encompass domain name, template set, store setting, and product listings.