How to Start a Clothing Business Online

By | June 26, 2017

No industry is easy to break into but this is especially true for a clothing business. Many other industries enjoy a 50% or higher business success rate after four years but most clothing businesses do not. In fact, 53% of clothing lines will close after four years. To analyze why many clothing businesses fail, it is important to understand that the entry barrier of a clothing business is very low.

Clothing Business Online

With reduced entry barriers, this means that there is an immense amount of competition and if you do not have enough resources to establish a clothing business online, you will face a lot of problems and may be forced to close your clothing business.

What do you need to do to establish a clothing business online?

Major online clothing business competition comes from Zara, Net-a-Porter, and ASOS. While competition is one of the main reasons that clothing businesses online fail after four years, another factor that contributes towards the failure is the backend of the online clothing business itself.

Unfortunately, having a passion for what you do especially in clothing business is not going to be enough to sustain your business. There are many individuals that started their clothing business online simply because they started it as a hobby but most of them are not entrepreneurs. This is important because being an entrepreneur means that you have a different mindset compared to the average person. Therefore, as you wonder how to start a clothing business online successfully, check out the more tips that we have put together just for you to foster an entrepreneurial mindset.

  1. Identify your target audience

One of the biggest failures is that business owners do when they are trying to figure out how to start a clothing business online are failing to identify a target audience. This is one of the key elements of your marketing plan that you should already have figured out before you open a clothing business online. Identifying your target market would influence every movement that you make to allow your online store to move forward. Not only does it affect the decisions that you will make for your clothing business online, knowing your target audience highly influences that type of clothing that you intend to sell.

  1. Know your selling point

With so many key players within the clothing business online, you need to ask yourself why would your audience order from you? The online clothing business industry is very competitive especially with the presence of key players such as that Zappos.

While the presence of these giant clothing business empires does not limit the entry of more clothing business online, it does pose a unique set of challenge to business owners because you need to establish a unique selling point for your clothing business online. There are clothing businesses that have taken the approach of using charity or a good cause to entice their target audience to purchase from them. These causes may be for environmental, children’s welfare or an animal welfare organization.

  1. Strategize your marketing plan

How do you plan to sustain your clothing business online during non-peak seasons? What kind of offers will you give your customers that visit your clothing business? Will you have a subscription plan to stabilize your revenue? These questions are essential to sustain your clothing business online because consumers very much prefer businesses that can offer value to the and knows how to appreciate them by giving them discounts and specials.

  1. Ensure that your website is mobile friendly

More than a quarter of the world population uses a smartphone. A research conducted by IBM found that nearly half of all online retail traffic now comes from mobile devices. Hence, when you start a clothing business online, you should make sure that your website is mobile responsive. As your business expands, you may also want to consider a native mobile app for your business.

Not having a mobile responsive layout for your business can hurt your reputation because most consumers no longer shop online through desktop or the traditional PC. Businesses must continue to innovate the way that they present themselves and one of the ways that they can do this is by providing a mobile friendly layout to their customers. Clothing businesses that provide this functionality will see their business stand out from other businesses because it allowed the consumers to access their product easily the rule a mobile device.

  1. Optimize your product photography

Product photography is essential to a clothing business online because consumers cannot see the product physically. Therefore, the photographs used for a clothing business should adequately describe the condition of the item and it should not vary so much from the picture.

Investing in product photography for your clothing business is necessary because consumers don’t have any other reference to how your clothing may look in reality. If you are searching for more cost saving alternatives, you can learn how to take a proper product photos using a DSLR.

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