Types of Fashion Business You Can Start

Whether you’re just looking into starting your own fashion business or have been fixated on it for a long time, it’s important to know where your business leanings lie. There are hundreds of options for you as you start to decide where your fashion business falls, so make sure you know what you want to do—and how you want to do it. 

Types of Fashion Businesses You Can Start are:

• Your own brand. 
• Your own retail shop. 
• An import and wholesaler. 
• An online shop. 
• A custom clothing shop. 
• A clothing manufacturer. 
• A traditional or cultural fashion store. 
• A store focused on a particular type of clothing. 
• A bridal shop. 
• A fashion marketing company.  
• Consignment, resale, or secondhand shop.

Before you start your business, make sure you know what the fashion industry consists of, and then you can really start to drill down on your possible choices. Find out what each type focuses on as you read on, and you can decide what your future fashion business will look like. 

The Four Levels of the Fashion Industry

While there are many different businesses that you can start as a fashion business owner, it’s important to understand the four levels of the fashion industry—and that being in business in any one of them makes you part of that industry. Regardless of sector, all of them are devoted to one goal—serving customers by satisfying demand, while also turning a profit. 

1. Raw material production. This part of the fashion industry is arguably the most important, as it creates the materials that are used within the other levels. This level creates fibers used in the fashion industry, like cotton, hemp, silk, and cashmere wool. Textiles are also created in this level—all types of fabrics, cloths, and even leather and furs. Within this level, the textile design and production sector functions.
2. Fashion goods production. This is the part of the fashion industry that most companies—and most likely, your business—falls into. This is where designers, manufacturers, contractors, and more fall in their place in the fashion industry. This level encompasses the vast fashion design and marketing sector. 
3. Retail sales. This encompasses all the businesses that receive goods from the manufacturers and sell the items to the general public. Fashion retailing is done within this level. 
4. Advertising and marketing. A massively important part of the clothing industry, it is its own level to itself. Marketing and merchandising businesses fall into this category, along with those businesses which organize fashion shows.

How To Create A Catchy Brand Name for Your Fashion Line

Types of Fashion Businesses

There are unlimited possibilities to what your fashion business could be, so narrowing it down can be complicated. The following is a list of some of the possibilities you could focus on when creating your fashion business. 

• Your own brand. While this tends to be the most popular, most lucrative, and the hardest, this would include you focusing on creating your own clothing items under a certain name. In many cases, creating your own brand would mean focusing on creating your clothing from the start to finish—and selling your items as well. You would also be responsible for your own marketing. 
• Your own retail shop. What makes this different than creating a brand? You’re not creating your own items—you’re selling someone else’s. A retail shop doesn’t have the focus on textiles or creating the clothing like a brand does, but you still need to find a trusted manufacturer to sell your items. Your main focus would be on retail and advertising. 
• An import and wholesaler. The opposite side of the spectrum from a retail shop, you could also create your own import and wholesale business. While not on the front end of creating a brand or selling to the public, this business is vital to the industry, as you can purchase branded items and sell them to retailers to make a profit. 

• An online shop. Much like the retail shop, you’re focusing on an important part of the clothing industry—eCommerce. You have so many options in creating an online shop that you might not have with just the retail store, and you have the opportunity to sell to people throughout the country. You can also consider offering custom tailoring, which people are always looking for. 
• A custom clothing shop. While buying clothes off the rack is nice, we all know that celebrities get their clothing tailored, even as far as their t-shirts that they wear. So how do you tap into that market of people aspiring to be like their favorite celebrities? It may not be in selling clothing, but rather customizing them. If you have skill in sewing or know people that can, creating your own custom tailor where you can either alter existing clothing or even make your own on the spot can be prolific.
• A clothing manufacturer. A larger form of the custom clothing shop, you can step outside of the box and simply become a clothing manufacturer. Businesses can come to you with their designs and your business would create them. Whether they are purchased by the initial business or sent to retailers is all up to you and the designer. 
• A traditional or cultural fashion store. If you’re looking to honor your heritage or the local heritage, this is a great way to get on the map. There are plenty of traditional clothing items that need recognition on many different points in the market—like the Scottish kilt, the Indian sari, the Japanese kimono, or the Mexican huipil. 
• A store focused on a particular type of clothing. We’ve all gone to a sportswear store, a footwear store, or a store focused specifically on accessories like watches and jewelry. Even cosmetic stores are considered a part of the fashion industry. If you find yourself liking a certain part of the industry best, consider opening a business focused strictly on that item. 
• A bridal shop. Nearly its own industry in itself, opening a bridal shop means working with designers and manufacturers of expensive items—and working with people who are looking to look their best on the happiest day of their lives. If this is something that appeals to you, a bridal shop may be your business idea. 

• A fashion marketing company.  You don’t have to sell or create clothing for you to be a part of the fashion industry. If you’re looking to help other businesses market and sell their items, along with helping to shape the fashion industry, consider starting your own marketing company. From here, you can help businesses advertise or even help to create events, write blogs, create articles for fashion magazines, and help educate the public on the fashion industry. 
• Consignment, resale, or secondhand shop. This part of the industry can be incredibly important, especially with the arrival of sustainable fashion and the fall of fast fashion. People don’t want to see clothing in landfills or hurting our environment, and if they can make a few dollars back on a consignment shop purchasing their old items? It’s even better. With the fun if the consignment or retail shop, you also create an experience for your customers—people want those “unicorn” finds and those vintage looks, whether they find them attractive or not. 

Before you make a decision on what kind of fashion business you would like to create, consider what you want to provide to your customers and how you want to provide it. If you want to create a traditional business, find out which cultural item may suit your goals most. If you love to sew, consider creating your own tailoring business—or branch out into manufacturing. If you simply want to sell other people’s brands, you can pour your heart and soul into a retail or eCommerce store. Regardless of what you choose, making sure your heart is set on one before you make that decision is key—if you want a business that will stand the test of time, it needs to be your passion. With passion comes success in all forms, and you too can break into the fashion industry.

We Answer: Is 10k enough to start a clothing line?

RELATED QUESTIONS

What is fast fashion?

Fast fashion is a part of the industry that is cheap and trendy clothing, usually copied from celebrities or even the catwalk, that is created extremely fast simply to meet the demand. Getting the styles on the market as fast as possible means that the items are still very popular at the time, but much like our Internet memes, they tend to fall flat when the demand falls away, meaning the items typically are discarded and becomes one of the world’s largest polluters. 

What is sustainable fashion?

The opposite of fast fashion, sustainable fashion focuses on the environment and creating clothing that not only addresses issues in textile creation or manufacturing of clothing, but focuses on how long it may be within a landfill. Creating clothing with ecological impacts in mind, sustainable fashion looks to eliminate the carbon footprint of the fashion industry through changing how clothing is manufactured, sold, and discarded. 

To learn more about how to start your own fashion clothing line check out my startup documents here

Please note: This blog post is for educational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Please consult a legal expert to address your specific needs.