Planning

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Planning

1) First things first - do the travel and relationship building; you'll need to get a manufacturer onboard. Not all manufacturers will work with startups; many will have a MOQ (minimum order quantity) which will be a tough sell when you're getting started. Instead, work with a manufacturer that can do smaller quantities and is used to working with startups. This usually also means getting on a plane and going to China, Turkey, or Thailand to get started.2) Pick an eCommerce platform - once you feel confident that you will make garments that people will buy, keep, and be genuinely happy with it's time to start on the website. There are a few eCommerce platforms out there that make it easy for anyone to get started selling online, the top three are:- Shopify- BigCommerce- Volusion3) Bring your new website live - you now know who will make your clothes, you know you can make clothes people like, you've picked an eCommerce platform, and you have some great photos. Putting this all together means you can now have a website where people can buy your clothes. Just remember, after getting to this step, you haven't done all the work you have to; instead, you've just paid the price to be in the game.4) Now the hardest part - getting your name out there. To be completely brutally honest, this is where most new brands fail. They spend a ton of time and money on steps 1-6 and then expect that the sales will just start coming in after that. 99% of the time, your beautiful website will just sit there with very little traffic and no orders. It can be depressing because you think you did everything you had to do, but you just forgot about the most important thing, getting people to your site. This means marketing, and in the beginning, this usually means paying money to get people to your site.6) Develop relationships with influencers - one of the best ways to super-charge your marketing efforts early-on is to try to get influential people to try your clothes. All it takes is one influencer to post a photo with a mention of your brand on Instagram, and you could get a flood of traffic. While you'll want to follow all the traditional website marketing techniques, as someone that sells clothes, influencer marketing will give you the biggest head-start.5) Start building your brand - selling clothes online is more than just selling clothes, it also means building a brand. That means you'll want to get in as many publications as you can. Reach-out to writers, tell them what you are doing, see if you can pick their interest, and get a story out of it. Keep hustling, if you have the budget for it, hire an independent PR person to help with the push. For most brands, this process takes years, so don't expect it to happen overnight.