Reasons Why People Fail at Starting a Clothing Line

The clothing business can be hard for a newcomer. There are many different clothing brands, clothing lines are expensive to make, and, like all business ventures, there’s no guarantee of success. However, while some clothing line failures can come out of nowhere, a lot of failures are caused by bad decisions early on in development. We’ll show you some of these bad decisions so you can avoid them.

Reasons why people fail at starting a clothing line are:

Not Using Money Wisely
Not Testing the Design
No Marketing or Bad Marketing
Not Having a Business Plan
Not Starting Small
Skimping on Quality

Table of Contents

Not Using Money Wisely

A big factor in the failure of clothing lines is misspent money as often as a lack of money. Some people will spend money on things that don’t matter in the beginning. Some people who start their clothing lines spend large amounts of money on things like lawyers for copyrighting their designs. While it would be great if you get in the position to need a copyright lawyer for your clothing line, it’s highly unlikely that someone will try to swipe your design while you’re only selling a few shirts on Etsy or something. Money spent on things like that could better be used on other things like quality materials.

There’s also the temptation to use all your capital at once. Beware of it. Save some money to hire new designers for a second round or save it in case something goes wrong. If you’re getting money from investors, you have a fiduciary duty to be wise with it.

Of course, money problems can be caused by more than just misspending money. It is essential to keep track of your money. A lot of new clothing line makers who fail don’t do a good job keeping track of their money and expenses. People can forget what goes into a clothing line. While there are costs for materials and printing clothes, there are also shipping, packing materials, and many other expenses to take into account. Not keeping track of these expenses can become a major problem.

Some clothing lines fail because people don’t understand the amount that goes into starting a new fashion line. If you’re starting a new line of funny shirts, you’ll need to know how much money goes into shirts and printing the funny slogans onto them. Printers will charge you different amounts of money depending on how complex the shirt is (IE the more colors you need the more money it will cost).

You also need to be careful who you get into bed with. Some businesses fail because they give money to the wrong people and become victims of fraud. Before you start bringing people into your business or signing papers, make sure you vet everyone thoroughly. Especially if they are handling your money.

Not Testing the Design

People who want to start a clothing line think that they have a million-dollar idea because their parents and close friends like the idea. However, your friends and family aren’t always the most objective judges in the world. More often than not, they’ll tell you what you want to hear. A major way you can get honest feedback is to post your design on your Instagram to get input from the market. Post multiple versions as a poll to determine what version your customers will most likely buy.

Testing is particularly important if you’re marketing to a niche market you’re not personally part of. For example, if you’re selling a type of clothing you intend to market as accessible for disabled people, you’ll want to get the input of actual disabled people to make sure it is actually accessible.

Though this sort of problem can extend to other groups, not just disabled people. From time to time, even big brands can make something culturally insensitive to the cultures they’re trying to market to.

What Are Good Names For A Clothing Line?

No Marketing or Bad Marketing

If you want people to buy your product, they must know your product exists. Many people who fail at launching clothing lines put marketing on the back-burner while they focus on designing clothes and getting materials. This is a bad idea. You need to plan your marketing at the beginning. Ask yourself what group you’re marketing to. Research how to market to them because people respond to marketing in different ways. If possible, try to get to know people in the group you’re marketing to. If you’re marketing to fans of heavy metal music, go to some heavy metal clubs and meet the people. Research in other ways can only get you so far.

While you won’t have access to the budget for commercials, you can use Instagram and other platforms to promote your clothing line. You can use a blog and other forms of social media to connect with your customers. You can gather e-mail lists of your customers to promote your new clothing lines to them when they come out.

Try to use as many channels as you can for marketing. If you can get an influencer to help promote your clothing line for an affordable price, do it. However, you should always make sure you’re keeping an eye on which marketing channels are working. Some marketing channels (like Facebook ads) cost money. If the marketing that costs you money isn’t drawing in customers, there’s no point in continuing to pay money for it.

However, you can also do marketing poorly. The most obvious fumble in marketing is being offensive. While some businesses try to be “edgy,” their attempts can often end up backfiring, alienating customers, and giving them bad publicity. Sometimes, bad marketing can be unintentional (IE promoting a brand with a slogan that happens to be an innuendo of some sort). Contrary to popular belief, there is such a thing as bad publicity, particularly for newcomers.

Other times, the market the fashion line is trying to draw and the marketing they’re doing don’t match up. If you’ve ever watched a commercial and wondered who it was for, you’ve experienced mismatched marketing. While big brands can handle the occasional marketing mishap, a startup business can’t.

Not Having a Business Plan

A business plan is integral for starting a fashion line for a multitude of reasons. For starters, you need one to get investors. If you’re trying to get money from investor groups, bank loan officers, or even family members, they’ll still want to see that you have a plan to make sure they get a return on their investment.

Even if you can self-fund your startup costs, you still need a business plan. Just winging it won’t cut it. You need a plan to stick to. It can be easy for a creative type to get pulled off track.

Not Starting Small

If you get a big amount of money or otherwise, have it, there is a temptation to go all in. After all, you can often get a bigger discount on materials if you buy in bulk. However, starting small makes the most sense. Going too deep means you end up with a lot of dead stock, and you don’t have room to change gears when trends change. Having big ambitions is respectable but fulfilling big ambitions takes going one step at a time.

Consider starting with fewer clothes. If you plan on having many designs, start with only having one instead. It’s better to start small. Storing dead stock costs a substantial amount of money.

Skimping on Quality

First impressions are everything in business. If you skimp on quality, you’ll leave a bad impression. While cheaper can be better for some things in your personal life, when it comes to business, you should try to get the best materials you can. Think about a time you went to a new restaurant for the first time and had a bad experience. Did you want to go back? Probably not. It’s the same with clothes. If your first impression is low quality, people will associate your brand with having low quality, and not want to buy your clothes again. Worse, they will tell their friends and family that your clothes are sub-par.

Whether you’re a small shop or running a clothing business on Etsy, word of mouth is everything for a small business. You don’t want to be known as the clothing designer that puts out clothes that are uncomfortable to wear or has shoddy workmanship.

Tips on How to Design Your Own Clothing Line