Purchasing clothes from a wholesaler and starting with your clothing retail store is one of the oldest ways to start with a business. This helps to cut down on production costs for you, as you would just be purchasing clothes from a wholesaler and then putting logos, designs, prints, etc. on these clothes. This is a safer way of taking a plunge into the clothing business world by starting on a smaller scale.
Starting on a small scale is a lot better than starting on a big scale. This helps in minimizing the investment costs and saving you from any losses. Furthermore, before you take a deep dive into the retailing clothes business, you must survey the market to find the best deals from wholesalers. You should have your goals planned out from before and how you plan on achieving these goals. This paperwork is a must before starting your business.
Just like any other industry, the clothing industry, too, is saturated, but it should not stop anyone from starting with their own business. Customers are always on the lookout to get good quality clothes at a much cheaper price. Hence, you must offer your potential customers something better than your competitors.
When anybody starts with their retail business, they would want their business to become the most successful one. To run a successful clothing retail store, one must consider the following factors:
-
Identify Your Target Market
Before you start with your store, you must know to whom are you selling clothes? Kids, men, women, sports apparel, or all? This helps you to build your brand identity accordingly. You must also figure out what type of brand would you like to be perceived as a high-end fashion brand, or a brand that offers affordable clothing.
-
Survey the Market
Conduct a competitive analysis to identify all the brands in the market that offer similar products as yours. You must study their brand well, including their marketing campaigns, prices, brand image, etc. to see what difference can you offer to your customers. The clothing retailing business will keep on growing and the market will get more saturated. For this reason, you should make it a point, to analyze the market routinely so that you are well aware of the competition in the market.
-
Financing
The clothing retail business is no joke; it requires a hefty amount of funding for you to start with your business. You might have to take loans to survive in the industry. Even if you have an online store, you still need to invest in setting up your website and in the marketing bit of your online store.
-
Your Location
For a brick-and-mortar clothing store, you need to find the ideal location, according to your budget. Your location must match your target audience. This means that if you launch a clothing line that is targeted towards the youth, and if your store is located in an area where the majority of the people are above 50, then your business will fail.
-
Domestic Sourcing or International Sourcing?
This depends on your clothing line and your budget. However, to avoid customs duties, it is better to source clothes locally. There are numerous clothing wholesalers available locally, but you must purchase from well-established names and those that have positive reviews.
One such reliable brand is Cotton Connection that has been in business for over 30 years. They cater to men, ladies, boys, toddlers, and juniors, and also have their home brand called Cotton Plus. Their clothing line includes T-shirts, sweatshirts, sport shirts, hooded pullovers, boxer shorts, socks, briefs, and a lot of other products. They provide the best rates for the best quality apparel, that are mostly purchased by screen printers, embroiderers, wholesalers, promotional product companies, non-profit organizations, flea market vendors, dollar stores, and independent and mass-market retail stores.
-
Inventory Management and Pricing
As you would be ordering clothes in bulk, you need to update your inventory frequently to prevent any mishaps and disappointments from happening. There would be various styles for each article that must be stocked and updated in the inventory. You must also hire adequate staff to look after your inventory and order articles that are low in stock right away. While managing your inventory, your staff must also look after the pricing of all the articles, keeping a sufficient profit margin on each product. The pricing depends on the cost price of the articles that were purchased in bulk.
-
Online Store
These days, it is essential for all brands to have an online store. Ecommerce has gained a lot of popularity in the past few years as it is an effective way of cutting down the cost of running a brick-and-mortar store. Also, due to the global pandemic, COVID-19, almost all businesses have shifted entirely to ecommerce. Setting up an ecommerce store requires you to develop a user- friendly website. Website development is not everybody's cup of tea; you would require professional help for it. One of the best website developers is DigAptics, which has a team of expert web designers, that can create a unique shopping experience for your customers. They are experts in website development.
-
Marketing
Marketing is an integral part of any business. With the help of marketing, you create your brand's image, target your market, engage with your potential customers, and eventually, increase your sales. Getting a higher ROI (Return On Investment) is the main aim of every business. By conducting marketing campaigns, your brand and products become visible to potential customers.
Similarly, marketing for clothing retail stores is essential too. If the right approach is taken, your clothing brand can attract more customers than usual, just with the right marketing approach. Like everything these days is digital, so have the marketing strategies become digital. Professional marketers, such as DigAptics, are professionals in digital marketing. They make use of social media platforms and digital ads, to showcase your clothing brand to your target audience. They even help in posting engaging content on your social media accounts that helps to divert more traffic to your pages. This eventually helps in increasing the number of followers, likes, comments, and reshares on your pages. All these tactics will help you in getting a higher ROI.
-
Policies and the Legal Structure
Every store, whether online or brick and mortar, has a set of policies that they follow. These include customer rights, employee rights, and a lot of other policies that are required in the smooth running of a store. Legalities include a business license, tax ID number, business insurance, and others.
-
Customer Service
For every brand, customer service plays an important role. These would be the people who would be representing you in front of your customers.- they will define who you are. Therefore, they must be extremely polite and helpful in guiding your customers, and in providing solutions to their issues. An ideal customer service team is one that is available 24 hours a day to serve your customers.
Starting with a clothing retail store is not as simple as it sounds. There is a lot of thought that goes into setting up the store. Moreover, you must purchase from wholesalers that have a good reputation in the market, such as Cotton Connection. Also, relying on professional help for the digital marketing of your store is a smart thing to do. The professionals know what they are doing and will take such an approach towards your brand that it will help in yielding results. The marketing campaigns they carry out are closely monitored by the marketers. If the marketing campaign is not yielding the desired results, they tweak the campaign around to get the desired results.