Starting a fashion business is exciting but it’s something that you want to take care of when planning before its actual launch. There are many intricate details to establish and iron out so that you give yourself the best chance of success.
If you’re not paying attention or giving it all of your efforts, then it’s more likely to fail than find any stability in an already popular industry. Here are five common mistakes to avoid when starting your own fashion business this year.
01.NOT ESTABLISHING THE RIGHT CONCEPT AND BRAND NAME
There are a lot of fashion businesses out there of all shapes and sizes. Some are very broad in what they offer, while others will have a specific niche. It’s therefore important to understand what your concept as a fashion business will be.
Try to find a gap in the market and you’ll likely find more success by exploiting a gap that hasn’t yet been taken advantage of by another company.
The brand name is important to get right too. You want it to be memorable and something that will gain popularity. Make sure it’s easy to pronounce as you may find you deter some people from buying if they don’t know how to say the business name out loud.
02.NOT CREATING A BUYER PERSONA TO IDENTIFY YOUR CUSTOMERS
Every fashion business will have different buyer personas. These are profiles of your ideal customer of which you might have just one or multiple. Most companies will likely have multiple buyer personas that they don’t realize would be interested in their brand.
Conducting market research and defining your target audience, will make it easier to create more accurate buyer personas as a result.
Developing these buyer personas is important because it will help form closer bonds and relationships with your audience if you know more about them, what they want, and their buyer habits.
03.NOT WORKING WITH THE RIGHT BUYERS
You’ll want to work with the right suppliers when starting up a fashion business, especially when it comes to picking out the wholesale clothing that you’ll sell to your customers.
The distribution and delivery of your clothing are also important to help keep customer satisfaction high, especially as they’re spending their hard-earned money on you.
04.A LACK OF INVESTMENT IN MARKETING
Marketing is an important part of running a business, so you’ll want to make sure that you’ve got some form of marketing strategy in place from the beginning. This will be particularly important when you launch because you want to make as much noise as physically possible online and offline.
Be mindful of how much marketing budget you have to spend and reinvest some of your profits to slowly build that budget going forward.
05.NO BUSINESS PLAN
Finally, make sure you have a business plan for your fashion business. There are a lot of opportunities to get investors on board and as such, a business plan is a necessity to act as part of your pitch deck.
These common mistakes are easy to avoid if you know that many businesses tend to make these when launching. Don’t be one of them!