Starting a Sustainable Fashion Business, Profitably

A question I'm often asked is, 'is sustainable fashion profitable', or 'is sustainable fashion more expensive' - in this video I want to address those questions and share some ways in which you can make your sustainable fashion brand profitable.

Keen to learn more about Starting a Fashion Brand? Register below for my free Masterclass which covers the topics in this video in more detail;

Register for free here; ➡️➡️➡️ https://thefashionbusinesscoachlearn.com/sustainable-masterclass-register

Let's Chat! And take your brand to the next level. Get in touch to arrange your free enquiry call here;

https://thefashionbusinesscoach.com/contact

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Starting a Swimwear Line; How to Fit Swimwear Designs

Getting the right fit on your swimwear products is really really tough. Especially if you're new to the fashion industry and don't really know what the right approach is.

Let's explore what you can do to improve the fit of your swimwear products. Here’s a transcript of one of my weekly videos in which I answer one of your questions on starting your very own fashion brand. You can click here to watch the free video.

Swimwear Fitting Process

This week I want to address a question that I've had from a few people which is about the fitting process for swimwear products in particular because I know that that one's a little bit tricky and a little bit different from a dress design.

What is a Body Size Chart?

What do we need to do when we're working with swimwear products? The first thing to know especially if you're a new brand trying to develop your own sizing for your brand is that I wouldn't refer to body size charts. 

A body size chart is something that you would see on somebody else's website, like a store's website, which helps you to decide what size to buy and that's going to tell you measurements if you measure around your bust or your waist or your hips and that's really good from a customer perspective in order to try and buy the right size from that particular brand. But it's not going to be particularly helpful for you with deciding on the measurements of your swimwear products

The reason for this is that swimwear is actually negative body size. So if for instance, your bust measures 86cm the swimwear is not going to measure 86cm. It should be quite a lot smaller than that. The amount will depend on the stretch of your fabric and also, different brands interpret fit differently.

Some brands want things to be really tight-fitting and on the skimpier side whereas others are more generous with their sizing. So it's partly to do with the fabric partly to do with personal preferences as well. 

Have You Done Market Research?

If you're a new brand wanting a starting point, then the best place to look is going out in the market, doing market research, trying on different designs, ideally ones that are similar to the ones that you want to make, and taking a mental note of the fits that you like and that shape that you like and having a look at the measurements of those items as well.

Go that step further and looking at what brands similar to yours are doing with their measurements. You can also compare that to that body measurements chart if you'd like. I know a lot of people like to do that comparison. It's not something that I would do personally, but you may want to, just so you can start to understand what that variance between the body size and the measurements of the garments are.

Why Do You Need Tech Pack?

I would always suggest in terms of perfecting that fit, that you have detailed measurements in the tech pack and when I say detailed, I mean literally, anything that requires measurement of some kind to be added in there because I see a lot of tech packs which have just the basic measurement. So maybe like the bust, waist, hips, and length on a swimsuit. 

But actually, we need a lot more than that. For instance, we want to be looking at the armhole drop. We want to be looking at any measurements for seam details or for ruffle details the neck drop and so many more measurements, so make sure that you don't skimp on measurements in your tech pack when you're creating that and also make sure that you preparing for the sampling process as well.

You don't want to be rushing, you want to allow enough time to have samples made so that you can perfect the fit on a real model, because as much as you can put a lot of time and effort into your tech packs, and I definitely recommend that you do, you still will need to have a fit process.

If you have a really great tech pack and your item isn't too complicated, then you hopefully going to be able to get two to three samples and they're ready to go to bulk production. But if you skimped on the tech pack or you're not communicating properly with the factory, you'll probably find that it's going to be more like 5, 6, 7 even 8 or 9 samples until you're actually getting a good fit on your model.

Don't skip on that initial research phase or the tech phase and make sure that you go through the sampling process.

Is Your Brand Swimwear Fitting Ready?

If you don't know what any of those things mean that I've just said, feel free to put a comment in the box below because we have got videos and free training on those topics, which we can link to for you if you're unsure.

I hope that's helped, at least having a starting point for where you can look for some measurements and how you can approach your sizing. If you do want some more help on perfecting the fit then I do have a service that helps people go from the initial idea to factory ready. So I'd love to chat with you, just click here for more on how I can help!

Fashion Supplier Lists; Why They're Not Helpful Video

I often get asked about lists of fashion suppliers, from people who want to find a manufacturer for their fashion brand. Truth is, these lists aren't much help. In this video, I explain why and what you need to do before you look for a factory, to help make the factory finding process easier.

Ready to learn more about fashion manufacturing? Join my free Masterclass by registering here;

https://thefashionbusinesscoach.com/sustainable-masterclass-register

Let's Chat! And take your brand to the next level. Get in touch to arrange your free enquiry call here;

https://thefashionbusinesscoach.com/contact

Thanks for watching!

I hate spam too - if you sign up to this email list, your details won't be sold or leased to anyone else. I will email you from time to time with helpful content and occasional offers, which you can unsubscribe from at any time. 

Finding a Fashion Factory; What You'll Need to Provide

Are you one of those people who have been contacting factories trying to get your fashion ideas produced, but you’re just not hearing back or you’re not getting a positive reply from any vendors?

If you don't have a detailed tech pack, then I'm not at all surprised. This is one of the key things that you need to provide the factory with before they can even tell you if they're able to help you. So in this video transcript, I want to tell you a little bit more about what you need before you can actually approach a factory to make your fashion designs. You can also watch the free video here.

Why Hasn’t a Manufacturer Replied?

This week we're looking at one of the common questions that I get asked which is ‘why hasn’t a factory replied to me’ and nine times out of ten it's because the person in question hasn't got a tech pack yet and they've missed this very important middle step. Unfortunately, we can't go from design idea to communicating with the factory straight away.

We have to get the tech pack done first because that includes really detailed and useful information for the factory that will first help them to determine whether they can even help us and second to determine what the pricing would look like if they can.

Why Do You Need a Tech Pack?

The reason that a lot of factories don't reply to new brands who don't say that they have a tech pack or don't mention it at all, is because they're inundated with so many emails from people wanting to work with them. And the thing is, quotes are really time-consuming, emailing people back with information is really time-consuming.

They're only going to spend time on people that they know that they can actually help and if they don't know the kind of construction techniques that you're using, they won't know what kind of machinery that they'll need and whether or not they have it. If they don't know the specifics of the fabric they won't know if their factories capable of working with that fabric.

What is Tech Pack?

Many factories are specialised in a particular area. So they need to know quite a lot of information to determine whether or not you could actually be a customer of theirs. We need to make sure that this tech pack is completed along with some other information such as how many items you're willing to buy from them and how long you have when you need the stock.

Those three things you need to have decided and finalised before you can start the factory outreach because otherwise, the factories aren’t in a position to give you helpful information

and many will just not bother to reply because honestly, they don't want to educate you. It's not their job and I can understand that. That's why I'm making this video so that you know. Make sure that you get that tech pack done.

Create Your Tech Pack for Clothing Production Process

If it's something that's totally new to you and something that you'd like a bit of help with, then just click here, this is a link to my website that explains how I can do those for you if you're interested. But even if it’s with somebody else please don't skip that step because it will not only help you in this initial phase of getting a reply from factories, but it'll also help you further down the track as well when it comes to holding the factory accountable when it comes to perfecting the fit, making sure that everything's as you expected. 

You need a tech pack basically is the moral of the story. So please don't skip that step. I have had clients in the past that didn't want to pay for it. They've skipped it and then a few months later have come back to me and said ‘I should have had a tech back shouldn't I, I’ve just

wasted a ton of money on samples that were no good because the factory just did what they wanted because I didn't give them enough information so that they could translate what was in my head into an actual product.’ So, please make sure that you do that and I hope that this has been helpful.

If you have other questions around working with a factory or making contact with a factory, please feel free to leave those below this video and it can certainly be considered for another video in the future. If you like this video, make sure that you subscribe or follow depending on which channel you're watching this on. I do have new videos out every single Tuesday. 

If you don't have a tech pack already, I'd love to share this link with you, just click here to view it! It will give you more information on what it is specifically and how I can help you with it if you're interested in outsourcing that. Thanks so much for watching and I'll see you next week.

How to Launch a Fashion Brand in 2021 Video

If you want to launch your own clothing brand in 2021, this video is for you! I share my tips for launching your fashion brand from scratch.

Keen to learn more about Starting a Fashion Brand? Register below for my free Masterclass which covers the topics in this video in more detail;

https://thefashionbusinesscoach.com/sustainable-masterclass-register

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I hate spam too - if you sign up to this email list, your details won't be sold or leased to anyone else. I will email you from time to time with helpful content and occasional offers, which you can unsubscribe from at any time. 

Sustainable Fabrics for Fashion Startups

What fabrics are sustainable?

Sustainable fashion is something that I've been working on for years and years and I'm really happy to see that more and more people are starting to share my concern for the environment.

As a sustainable brand that can be really hard to figure out what fabric is best to use, what actually is sustainable and what maybe says it is, but it actually isn't. I want to give you some tips for sourcing sustainable fabrics.

If you’d rather learn about this topic as a video, click here. Or, read the transcript below;

What are Sustainable Fabrics?

Well, the first thing that you need to understand and decide about sustainability is to define what it means to you. There's  no official guidelines as to what sustainable fashion actually means, there's no legislation on it. You really need to decide, for you and your brand in particular, what that means.

A classic example is recycled fabrics, loads of brands these days use recycled polyester and a lot of brands and a lot of sustainable shoppers are going to be fine with using recycled polyester or recycled polyamide. Other people are not happy with that, as they view it as essentially a plastic and they don't want to be using that at all, they only want to use bio-based fabrics. You really need to decide from the get-go what your sustainable values actually are and what sustainability really means to you, your brand and also what it means to your customer as well because obviously it's them that you're going to be serving.

We also need to understand that there's not one ‘safe’, so to speak, fabric that you can use. For instance, bamboo could be a great option, it’s a bio-based fabric, bamboo grows really quickly, uses a lot less water than a lot of other fibers, but there's good and bad in everything.

How are the Fabrics Processed?

What's actually more important than looking for a particular fiber is to actually look beyond that and figure out the process in which that material was made. If we look at that bamboo as an example, that can use a lot of chemicals in the process, a lot of harmful chemicals, in the process of turning it from bamboo plant into actual fabric that we can use.

What we want to do is work with suppliers, who can trace the raw materials, they can trace the process of going from that bamboo plant into a thread that's made into a fabric and understand each step of the process and essentially work with suppliers who were actually committed to being better. 

Does Your Suppliers Ensure Sustainability?

If you have suppliers that are just answering questions about sustainability really vaguely chances are that it's not a priority to them and they’re just using it because it's a buzzword at the moment. 

Whenever I speak to a supplier who's excited to work sustainably, they are super excited to answer all of my questions. They want to show me things. They normally have some kind of video or booklet or or some kind of further reading because they're proud of what they've achieved. So if someone's just labeled something sustainable and doesn't really give any further details, I'd be a bit suspicious about that. 

The other thing you can do is to look out for independent certifications. There's a lot of different ones, two common ones I see are GOTS for example and Oeko-Tex, but really understand this, similarly to the fiber types, there's not one rule that means that something is sustainable.For instance a Oeko-tex, they have a ton of different certifications and some of them aren't actually at all related to sustainability and that's - actually scarily enough, the one that I see most commonly used on fabrics to claim that it's sustainable -when actually it has no relevance.

What you need to do with certifications is make sure you actually go to the issuer, go to their website, email them. If you prefer, to understand exactly what that certificate means

and then you can decide - going back to that step one, those brand values - you can decide if that makes it sustainable to you or not.

Are you choosing the right fabrics?

I hope those tips have been helpful as we know sustainability is a very complicated topic, not really something we can cover in detail in a short video, but I hope that's given you a little bit of insight. If there's more that you like to learn about sustainability, please do leave a comment below and I can definitely keep it in mind for a future video or I may well already have a video training on that topic.

If you'd like to get some more support and learn exactly how you can create a fashion brand that doesn't cost the Earth, let's chat! 

My courses and services have helped a ton of different brands go sustainably from zero to launch and I'd love to help you to do the same. Just click here to arrange something! We can set up a chat to see if it's something that I'm able to help you with.

Hope to hear from some of you soon and thanks for watching.

How to Grow a Fashion Brand in 2021 Video

If you have a fashion brand and want to grow and scale your business, this video is for you! I share my 3 tips for growing your fashion brand online and scaling your clothing line up in 2021. We'll cover tips for marketing your fashion brand online and strategies to help you get more sales.

If you'd like to get help scaling your brand, I'd love to hear from you! Get in touch via the form below to learn how I can help;

https://thefashionbusinesscoach.com/contact

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I hate spam too - if you sign up to this email list, your details won't be sold or leased to anyone else. I will email you from time to time with helpful content and occasional offers, which you can unsubscribe from at any time. 

Social Media Marketing for Fashion Brands Using Instagram

How to Promote Your Fashion Brand Using Instagram Marketing

Do you want to sell your fashion products on Instagram, but you're just not seeing traction, or you're not really getting the results that you want?

If you're chasing likes and followers. I'm not surprised because there's something much more important that we should be doing on Instagram when it comes to monetizing it and actually making sales for our fashion brand.

I want to explain to you what that is and give you a few tips to help you see more success with your Instagram marketing. If you want to learn about Instagram Reels specifically, you can click here for info on my free Easy Reels Ebook.

What is Instagram Marketing for Fashion Brands?

I've been getting a ton of questions about Instagram marketing lately. So in this video I wanted to share my biggest tip for Instagram marketing, although this will work across other platforms as well if you choose.

What is it? Well, it's going to be this….don't focus too much on the likes and I know that may be counterintuitive. It may be the exact opposite of what you've been trying to achieve but here's the thing…if you have 10 million followers and 10 million of them like this cute picture that you've just posted of a puppy. What have you got? 10 million likes, right? 

You've not got a sale. You've not got people going to your website. You've not got people sign up to your email list or becoming a customer. You've just got 10 million likes and while that's good for the algorithm admittedly and it's good for the ego - not going to lie - it doesn't actually build your business. 

We have not achieved anything. We've just spent time posting something and people have spent time liking something. We haven't actually gained a new customer. We've not brought money into the business. We've not really achieved a whole lot when we think about it.

What do you Want to Achieve?

My tip really is to really consider what it is we want to achieve with our marketing and chances are, we want to achieve more than just likes when we think about it. 

We want to achieve leads and people who are interested in our brand, who want to go and check our brand out and who want to hopefully buy our products. So rather than creating content that people just like because it's funny or because it's just super cute puppies. We want to make sure that we're actually strategically posting content that makes people trust us more that explains to people what our business is about and that attracts people.

What content should you post?

Content that is helpful or entertaining or funny and something that's going to drive people to your website, or a very least to view our products on our Instagram store section. And the way that we do that is not by posting things because it's super cute but really thinking about what does our audience love, or what is our audience struggling with, and thinking of a way that we can transition this post into getting them to take some sort of action. So when you're creating a post, lead with ‘what do I want the customer to do’ in your mind?

So for instance if you want a customer to go and check out your website and look at a blog post, rather than just leading with ‘go check out this blog post’ you could have an image with how to style something, say your customer is interested in trends, you could have an outfit, a really nice looking outfit, a good image. 

In the text you can talk about the trends that are on at the moment and how you style this item of yours to use different things and basically style it to this trend. Then you can explain in the caption, if you want to see more like this, there's a free article go to the link in bio to check it out or something like that.

Why do we Always Want a CTA?

We always want this CTA, this call to action, with everything that we do because we don't want to be leaving the customer just to think ‘oh okay, well that's done now. I'll move on to the next thing’. We want to keep them in our world essentially and direct them to our website or our products. We want to be building trust with the customer, we want to show them you can provide really good value for them and then you can introduce your products as well once you've built that trust. 

I hope that makes sense and hope that it's made you rethink the way that you want to do your marketing. Rather than creating content to get likes, we want to create content that gets the customer to our website and check it out our products. 

Are you posting the right content?

If you're still struggling a little bit with marketing in general and you never know what to post, or what to say, or you don't have any photos to post, you might want to check out my Fashion Sales Kit which includes all those things basically.

It tells you how you can get really great images that you're allowed to use, not ones that are taken from someone else’s profile! How you can actually post content, ideas for content, even swipe files are included as well. Click here for the link to my Fashion Sales Kit.

If you liked this article and found it helpful, please feel free to follow or subscribe depending on which channel you're watching this on. We have a new video every Tuesday and you can ask your questions in the comments. I'll try and answer as many of those as I can in the future videos.Thanks for watching and we'll talk soon. Bye!

How to Start a Fashion Brand Fast

In this video, I share how you can start a fashion brand fast and get quick results! Traditional fashion business models can take a long time to launch, but there is one option which allows you to launch in a short amount of time. Watch the video to find out what it is →→→

If you enjoyed this video and want to know more about how to launch a fashion brand quickly you can register free to get my ebook here;

https://thefashionbusinesscoach.com/how-to-start-a-fashion-brand-from-scratch-claim-

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I hate spam too - if you sign up to this email list, your details won't be sold or leased to anyone else. I will email you from time to time with helpful content and occasional offers, which you can unsubscribe from at any time. 

Fashion Brand’s Cost and Budgeting for Product Samples

Recently, I was asked about the sample development process and specifically, if you as a fashion brand have to pay suppliers for samples of their products. I'm talking about samples of clothing products that they've made.

In my recent video, I wanted to answer that question for you. It's really important one as many people, rightly so, want to get samples from multiple vendors so they can check quality before going ahead with production. So I created a video on the Fashion Product Sampling Process. Below is a direct transcript from the video, or if you prefer, you can click here to watch the free video.

What is the Sample Process?

The first thing that I want to address is the sample making process, and the question that I had about whether or not brands are expected to pay for their samples. So I wanted to dive into that topic a little bit today.

First things first, if you're brand-new and don't know what the sample making process is, then let's go over that. Basically a lot of fashion brands who are brand-new think that they can just draw out a quick sketch or something like that, hand over to the factory and the factory can take it from there.

But unfortunately that's not the case. We actually have to provide a lot of information ourselves to the factory. Before we're even doing any kind of factory sourcing/searching anything like that, we want to make sure that we have this detailed document, this blueprint so to speak of our products and that's something called a tech pack. When we've got to that tech pack stage what we typically do in the industry is send that to multiple vendors and get some ideas for pricing and see what they offer whether we're happy with different inclusions and then normally we will pick one or sometimes we pick multiple to make an initial sample of our product to check whether we're happy with that factory.

Why Make a Sample?

There’s really two reasons for this sample in this first instance this first sample.

The first one is to check the quality of the factory, check that we're happy. Not only with what they've actually delivered the work that they've produced and sent to us in the form of that sample. But also just to see how things went. How is the communication? Did they listen to us? And use that as a bit of a trial for whether or not this factory is one to work with again.

Some people have multiple factories that they have a sample with initially, so there may be comparing the samples and the quality and the price and so on. That's the very first stage and so to go back to the original question.

Yes, you are going to pay for samples and it is absolutely worth it because you don't want to be proceeding with a factory committing to a big order potentially without having seen a sample and what they're capable of. I would always have a sample of your own product made before you commit to any large order. Yes it might be worthwhile and helpful to see a sample that they've made for somebody else, but of course at the end of the day we want to make sure that your product is possible to be made by them and they understand the fashion manufacturing process. We want to make sure that they have all of the equipment that they need for yours and that they understand it that they can execute it well and although there are benefits to seeing a product that they've made for someone else, of course, no two products are identical.

Factory sourcing is very much like matchmaking, just because it was good for someone else doesn't mean that it's going to be good for you, which is why factory recommendations don't tend to be that helpful. Again a bigger topic for another day.

Essentially with this sample, we want to make sure that we're getting a sample of our product from the factory before we commit to a big order with them. So yes, there is the downside because we're going to have to pay for this sample. But in my opinion the reward massively outweighs the cost of that because it just gives us that bit of confidence that we're happy to move forward with this Factory and basically give them more money in the form of a large order and let's face it. It's better to know now if this factory is no good or can't produce what you want than after you've paid them a deposit for a massive order.

So yes, we do need to pay for the samples. But yes, it’s something that that is worth doing in the long run.

Is that what you're expecting?

Did you budget having samples into your forecast? If not don't panic at least, you know about it now and it's something that we can move forward with. If you're struggling with anything else on the manufacturing side or even the marketing side, design side, or the sample products budgeting I'd love to know let me know in the comments and this can always be considered for a topic in a future video.

These videos are out every Tuesday, so there's always content that we need to fill. So by all means I would love for you to ask me a question.

If you really excited to start your fashion brand but feeling a bit nervous because you actually don't know what you're doing, I'd love to help you. Let's chat!

My products and services have helped a ton of people go from zero to launch with their fashion brand, even though they'd had no industry experience whatsoever. So I'd love to chat to you, just click here to arrange something! You can just let me know a little bit about what your challenges are so I can try and help you overcome those and we can schedule a chat if it's something that I can help with.

I'd love to hear from some of you soon! Have a great week and I'll see you in the next video.

How to Promote Your Fashion Brand Using Instagram Marketing Video

If you want to market your fashion brand using Instagram, but aren't getting sales from it, chances are you're missing this one part of the marketing puzzle. In this video, I share my biggest tip for marketing your fashion brand using Instagram.

If you're curious to learn more about the Fashion Sales Kit and how it can help you to market your fashion brand without spending the entire day on social media, you can see the details here;

https://thefashionbusinesscoachlearn.com/The-Fashion-Sales-Kit

Thanks for watching!

I hate spam too - if you sign up to this email list, your details won't be sold or leased to anyone else. I will email you from time to time with helpful content and occasional offers, which you can unsubscribe from at any time. 

Manufacturing Fashion Products - The Biggest Challenge Startups Face

One of the most common questions that I get asked by new startup fashion brands is what is the biggest challenge that I'm going to face when I'm manufacturing my products? Or what are fashion startups biggest manufacturing challenges?

I recently recorded a free video to answer these questions. Below is a direct transcript from the video, or if you prefer, you can click here to watch the free video.

So what is that challenge? It's the MOQ.

If you've not come across the term MOQ before, it stands for “minimum order quantity” and it's something that you're going to be facing all the time as a new or small brand. MOQ means that you have to order a certain amount of either units, if you're having a manufacturer sew your products together there will be a minimum order quantity for that, but also for things like fabrics and trims, buttons labels, you name it, most things are going to have a minimum order quantity, particularly when you're working direct with a vendor rather than through a third party or buying it in a retail store for example. And we definitely don't want to be doing that because the price is going to be more expensive if we're buying from a brick and mortar store or if there's some kind of third-party middlemen, or middle woman involved.

So this minimum order quantity becomes a problem because the minimums are often very very high. As well as working with startups and as well as having my own fashion brand, I also work on the factory side, which is great to kind of see both sides of the argument when we're dealing with pricings in negotiations and things. The factories that I work with, typically our minimum is 20,000 units and that is per color and style. So obviously as a small fashion brand that is completely unworkable.

The good news is there are smaller minimums available. You do have to do a lot of detective work though, particularly if you're looking for something and very small 50 units is about as small as you can go again, this is per style/colour and a minimum as low as 50pcs is hard to come by.

The fewer items you have, the higher the cost per item and that cost difference can be quite substantial as well.

How to Overcome This Issue

So, how do we overcome this one of the major challenges faced when manufacturing fashion products, that is, issue of the minimum order quantity? What do we do if we can't meet a supplier minimum and we can't find an alternative who's going to do it?

The good news is that we can basically for see this problem coming.

When I'm working on my own fashion business, I also have this problem because I don't have the facility at my fashion brand to order a thousand units, plus that wouldn’t align with my brand values anyway. So, I'm really strategic in the way that I plan my collections and as much as I would love to offer like 10 colors have lots of different prints and patterns I have to be restrictive I have to rein myself in with the options. I don't often have many different color options because I need to remember that I'm going to have to buy a lot to meet factory requirements and to meet supplier requirements. I keep minimums in mind when designing and consolidate the fabric and trim options needed as much as I can, to help myself out with the minimum order quantity later.

Designs Need to be More Than Just Pretty

If you can I would definitely recommend not to just sketch in a things and then going all guns blazing trying to find a factory to make them but actually put a bit of thought into design process rather than just designing something that you think looks good. There's a lot more to design than just something that looks good.

Effective planning can really help - make sure that you're not ordering a little bit of something here and a little bit of something there, but actually consolidating what you need to buy so that you're not ordering a small amount of this and that, but just one big order of a particular fabric or colour for example.

What I would say in general to a start-up and a brand is that we need to compromise, we can't have everything that we want at the price we want, we just don't have enough power as a small business to have everything and a good price as well.

So be prepared to make some compromises.

Is that the challenge you were expecting?

I’d really love to know if that was the challenge you anticipated me saying! Or, if there's something that you are struggling with or that you're worried about that is stopping you from getting to the next stage with the manufacture, definitely comment below and I can keep it in mind for future videos.

Not feeling confident on your fashion terminology? I have a free ebook which has 100 of these must know fashion industry terms and abbreviations, the things that people are going to say to you in the industry. You can click here to find out about the free ebook.

I hope you've enjoyed this video. Thanks for watching and I'll see you next time.

How to Size Swimwear Designs; Swimwear Startup Tips

Starting a swimwear brand but don’t have much experience and struggling to get the product fit right? You’re not alone! In this video I share tips for fitting your swimwear and what you can do to perfect the fit ready for production.

Got great ideas but don’t know how to make them a reality? Learn about my zero to manufacture ready service here;

https://thefashionbusinesscoach.com/working-with-me-tech-packs

Curious to learn more about starting a swimwear brand? Read this interview with one of my swimwear clients;

https://thefashionbusinesscoach.com/blog/houseofleidy

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Finding a Clothing Manufacturer; What You'll Need to Provide

Struggling to find a factory who can make your clothing designs, or not getting a reply from a factories? If you're not providing the factory with the information they need, I’m not surprised! In this video, let’s explore what you need to have before you can start approaching factories who can manufacture your fashion designs.

Got great ideas but don’t know how to make them a reality? Learn about my zero to manufacture ready service here;

https://thefashionbusinesscoach.com/working-with-me-tech-packs

Curious to know the kinds of businesses I’ve helped? Take a peek at some examples here;

https://thefashionbusinesscoach.com/portfolio

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What Fabrics Are Sustainable?

If you want to create a sustainable fashion brand but are getting confused by what fabrics to choose, this video is for you! I cover common misconceptions about sustainable fabrics and what you need to look out for when buying eco-friendly fabrics for your clothing line.

If you want to get some support and learn more about building a fashion brand that doesn’t cost the earth, let’s chat! My courses and services have helped lots of new brands go sustainably from zero to launch and I’d love to help you do the same.

You can get in touch with me by clicking here.

Curious to know the kinds of businesses I’ve helped? Take a peek at some examples here;

www.thefashionbusinesscoach.com/portfolio

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Fashion Manufacture Process; Budgeting for Samples Video

Recently, I was asked about the sample development process and specifically if you as a fashion brand have to pay suppliers for samples of their products. In this video. I want to answer that question for you because it's really important one, as many people, rightly so, want to get samples from multiple vendors so they can check quality before going ahead with production.

Let's Chat! And take your brand to the next level. Get in touch to arrange your free enquiry call here; https://thefashionbusinesscoach.com/contact

And you can find more free content on The Fashion Business Coach Blog, here; https://thefashionbusinesscoach.com/studioblog

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Biggest Challenge Fashion Start-ups Face when Manufacturing Products Video

Fashion Businesses (especially new ones) face manufacturing challenges every day and it’s important to not only deal with them as they arise but also prepare for them as much as possible. But what is the biggest challenge you can face? Don't worry; I'm here to help you! Watch this video and by the end of it you'll understand everything.

The details of my free 100 Must Know Fashion Business Terms Ebook can be found here; https://thefashionbusinesscoach.com/freeglossary

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How to Use Instagram Reels for Fashion Marketing

Instagram Reels is here! And I've been seeing some great results from brands using this feature - my own included. In this video I share 5 tips that can help you to grow an audience for your fashion brand using Instagram Reels.

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Marketing for Crowdfunding - Interview with Danielle Towner

I recently had the pleasure of chatting with Danielle Towner and wanted to share some highlights from our chat, as I think they’ll be relevant to a lot of people who want to start or grow their fashion brand using the preselling method. If you’re not familiar with the preselling method, this is one of my favourite ways to launch a fashion brand as it helps you to fund your production and get valuable data on your customer’s preferences. Danielle and I spoke about using crowdfunding as method for launching a business and how to market your brand on social media. As owner of Dream Work Creatives, LLC, Danielle has the opportunity to use her gifts of business development and creative expression. She has a passion for helping solo entrepreneurs and small businesses make their dreams work through marketing and creative strategy. Danielle’s digital marketing services have helped countless businesses build their brand awareness and online presence using social media marketing, website design and content marketing. 

Crowdfunding vs Bank Loans and Investors

(Vicki Wallis) You’ve used the crowdfunding method yourself, do you prefer it to working with investors or bank loans or something like that?

(Danielle Towner) Well at the time, I decided to use crowd funding to pivot that into what I have now. But when I first started, I was young. And, if you know anything about business credit, sometimes maybe you don't have that established business and lenders are less likely to work with you. So that's one of the reasons that I decided to take that (crowdfunding) route.

As far as if I prefer crowdfunding over pitching to investors, I would say, absolutely. Now you have to do what works for you, but I kind of compare it to like, your business is your baby. Right? So, looking at an investor is like that kind of nagging mother-in-law who, you know, she means well, and she wants to help to take care of and nurture your baby. But sometimes she may take it a little too far and you know, just overstep her boundaries. Now that's not the case in every situation, but sometimes you want to think about how much of the company they want to retain ownership. Okay. And how much creative control and how much of a voice that you want to maintain within your company, whether you're owner of the company or partner, you want to think about those.

Danielle Towner

Put in the Work

(VW) And I guess one of the differences between this sort of investors and then doing the crowdfunding method, when you're selling to customers you have got to do a lot more marketing up front. What would you say to people that have this impression of, oh, I've just got this product I'm just going to put it on Kickstarter and it's going to sell amazing and just leave it. There's obviously a lot of other steps in between. So what do you think is the main thing people don't really realise about a crowdfunding campaign? 

(DT) Well, you have to do the work. It's just like any other part of your business. You have to put in that work. And the crowdfunding platform is there to help. So once you put your product out there on the platform, you need to be promoting it everywhere and digital marketing is a huge core of every business right now. You need to think outside of the digital part too. I sent out messages. I reached out to people. I promoted it on social media. I made my calls. Do it consistently and put it in front of people more than once, because they may not have seen it. They may have gone through their day and forgotten about what you told them. You need to follow up. Like, don't feel like you're pestering them until they tell you, you are.

(VW) That's such a common fear. People think that you're pestering them in some way. But the reality is you see everything that you do. Like every post that you write, every email you send, you read it, it's unlikely that a customer or potential customer is actually going to see, you know, even half of what you do. 

(DT) Right. Exactly. And like I said, they will tell you, you know, if you're bothering them. Otherwise until they give you a no, or they “say leave me alone”, continue marketing until your campaign is done. Think more about what your goal is and how you're going to help. 

Which Platform to Use?

(VW) Do you think there's a particular platform that is especially good for promoting these kinds of campaigns? Or is it a case of the more places you can be the better?

(DT) Well, I wouldn't say the more the better. I would think concentrate on maybe two of your strongest and then the others be secondary. Like definitely put it out there, but go really hard on those two that are your strongest platforms. Now, if you've already been promoting your product or if you've already been promoting on social media, you should easily be able to tell by looking at your analytics who's engaging. And other than that, I would say look at your audience. For instance, LinkedIn, you know that a lot of these are professionals on that platform. So there may be other businesses who wants to invest in another business and they can relate to that. So that may be a good one. Put in the work because it takes a lot to build that engagement. 

If you're, you know, wanting something with video, you might want to look at TikTok. It’s fun and engaging for certain age groups and it may be something that you can create a very different creative campaign and use video for that. Instagram would be another good one because you can reach out to different people other than your followers. Even if you have a small following, you can get more engagement and more people learning about your campaign. 

(VW) They’re the first ones to look at. Where most of your engagement is, it’s going to be really dependent on your particular niche. 

Marketing in Advance

(VW) Is marketing something that you think we need to be doing quite far in advance for a presale or crowdfunding campaign? I have people ask me like, oh, I want to launch this brand in like two months, which it scares me a little bit because I feel that it takes a lot longer than that. As a professional marketer, can you get campaigns together that quickly or would you rather do it much further in advance? 

(DT) Well, when I did my campaign, mine was in about a month. But if I, you know, looking at it as a learning period I’d say don’t create your product in silence and then start talking about it when you’re ready to launch. If I could go back, I would have definitely spent much more time. If you’re even just thinking about crowdsourcing as a funding source or pre-selling definitely taking more time to get people interested in your products and spend time building that audience and walk them through the process of what you’re working on so you already have supporters when it's time to launch. 

(VW) I think the more momentum you can build over time, sometimes it can really help and yeah. Correct me if I'm wrong, but would you say the higher the price point of the product, maybe the longer in advance you need to do it so that there is that time to build the know like and trust factor?

(DT) Absolutely. Absolutely. The higher, the price point, the more risk people feel that they’re taking. And the more information that you want them to have. And like you said, building that momentum over time, I'm putting the information in front of them more than once and just building that trust factor and letting them know that you're going to be around. 

Make a Plan

(VW) You've shared some amazing tips, thank you! Is there anything else that’s important for marketing that we’ve missed? 

(DT) I can’t think of anything. We’ve touched on a lot of things! Just make sure that you take the time and carefully plan everything out. I know that there may be an urgent need to get to the next place in your business, but everything works better with a plan. Even if it doesn’t all go as planned, you have something to go back to and say, these are my goals and this is where I am.

(VW) So important. I must admit when I started my first business, about 10 years ago now I was just too excited and I dived right in and it was just such a bad thing to do. I was all over the place. So yeah, goal setting is really important and yeah even if you don't reach that particular goal, at least you have some direction for the months ahead.

So for people that are a little bit daunted about marketing and want to get some outside help from someone like yourself, where can they find you and what kind of things can you help them with? 

(DT) Well, I can definitely help you with putting together a creative campaign or your crowdfunding or setting everything up online. Like I said, my specialties are website design, and then the marketing services, content marketing, social media marketing and copywriting. When you reach out to me, I have a free consultation that we can talk about and see what you need.

Thank you so much to Danielle for taking part in this interview, I really appreciate it! If you’d like Danielle to help you with any of the topics she’s talked about, you can find her here;

Website - https://dreamworkcreatives.com

Instagram - https://instagram.com/dreamworkcreatives

Facebook - https://facebook.com./dreamworkcreatives

Pinterest - https://pinterest.com/dreamworkcreatives

Starting a Sustainable Fashion Label; 5 Things You Need To Know Video

Keen to start a sustainable fashion brand? I’m glad to hear it, I’ve been passionate about sustainability for decades (yes, I’m getting old!!) and over the last 4 years with The Fashion Business Coach have helped a lot of sustainable clothing brands, my own included, launch and scale successfully. There’s a lot of misconceptions I hear about sustainable fashion and it’s hardly surprising given some of the inaccurate information I see out there. So I’ve made this free video to set the record straight and uncover the reality behind eco-friendly clothing.

If you like this video I have more {free} resources that you might like, click below to learn more;

100 Must Know Fashion Industry Terms Ebook

How to Start a Sustainable Fashion Brand Blog Post

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