Are you interested in setting up your online clothing business? Rapid advances in technology, the internet, e-commerce and easy-to-use online tools provide great encouragement and assistance for entrepreneurs who are just starting out.
Now, anyone can sell by targeting the global market from the internet through certain applications and websites.
Online clothing stores have become a billion dollar industry and are one of the most popular eCommerce niches.
Having your own online business is a dream for many Indonesians.
Online clothing business is one type of business that local entrepreneurs are interested in.
We all need clothes as a primary need. It is also a strong reason why the clothing business will never die.
Building an online clothing business that will survive and be successful is more than just buying a website or uploading photos on social media, we’re not saying it’s useless, but you definitely need quality and good business planning.
Therefore, for entrepreneurs who are new to building an online business, here we provide important guidelines on what you can do if you want to make this your main career.
1. Get Ideas and Business Models
Brainstorm. Do this on your own or with your creative, business-literate coworkers.
This will help you create a cohesive foundation from growing your business and launching an online clothing business that will last for a long time.
The following is a framework of questions you can ask while brainstorming:
Target Market and Consumers
When starting this business, you want to have an idea of who will buy clothes from you. Ask yourself, who is your ideal customer? In order for you to find your target market, please visit the official website here lcs2
What style or design will your brand present? Who will the brand be suitable for? Can they afford to buy at a certain price? Are they willing to buy at this price with a specific quality of clothing?
In general, clothing trends are focused based on market age, there is a natural tendency to start businesses from a certain age group. You want to target the baby market? Toddler? Teen? Professional worker? Housewife? Or seniors?
Consider researching the currently popular items for sale in your target age group. Spend some time with the right fashion magazines and a Pinterest search can generate lots of ideas in this area.
Identifying the age of your target customers can be a helpful way to find your niche, but you can take a different approach.
Your style can represent the culture or subculture as you know it. It gives you a wide variety to work with, from trendy, modern looks to older vintage styles.
Apart from age, you can also share clothing segments by gender category; woman or man and also needs.
Think of variations from wedding clothes (wedding), party dresses, kebaya, Muslim clothes (hijab), swimwear, sports wear, bikinis, fashion clothes, daily wear, fast fashion, office wear, nightwear (pajamas). , haute-couture and cool clothing.
To illustrate how important it is to determine markets and consumers, here is an overview.
Imagine that you are selling cosmetics such as powder, lipstick and mascara but marketing them to the wrong demographic, say elderly men. Very inefficient, waste of time and effort.
The demographics themselves include age, gender, race, relationship status, occupation, income and level of education. It’s good if from the start you have a clear picture of who your content is intended for.
Aim
It is good before building your online clothing business to be clear about the original purpose of getting started. What do you pursue in this profession? Be honest with yourself. Why is this important to you?
Questions like that are very important to ensure you can keep going forward, so that your time, effort and capital will not be wasted later.
Maybe you have a knack for designing clothes and want to cash in on this skill. Or you really like fashion and want to do business right away.
Get Input from Fashion Influencers
Ask your friends for input when you first started pioneering. It is common to look for and n learn from Google’s editorial or trending fashion articles, but you can take an extra step by interviewing people (target audience) about how they are likely to interact with online clothing businesses.
Would they buy from an online clothing business if they could read customer reviews first? How much money are they willing to spend on a particular item at their income level?
Do online clothing stores need a solid return policy if they have the opportunity to land your friend’s business?
Field Research for Your Online Business
Find relevant data regarding online business practices in the clothing and fashion sector, take time to learn, compare how one brand differs from another. Combine your ideas with feedback from colleagues.
2.Branding
Brand An influencer
After determining your market audience, goals and research, the next step is branding. This is so critical for a business because of its overall impact on any business entity.
Branding can change how other people perceive a brand, it can also increase business transactions and brand awareness.
Big companies that are successful in their branding are Coca-cola, Nike, Adidas, Apple and many others. What comes to your head when you see the logo of the brand? We associate it with many different feelings and perceptions.
If you want to start a clothing business, you must have strong branding.
To put it simply, if you want to target the lower middle market, it is inappropriate to give photos that are too fancy and flashy and charge too high for the quality of clothes that are not worth it.
Never do misguided branding that makes your social media profiles ‘feel’ cold, stiff and too fancy like a haute-couture magazine editorial photo (unless you’re targeting the middle and upper market, adjust branding based on demographics).
3.Brand Development
This is the process of creating and strengthening your brand’s professional services. There are three steps in building a good brand:
Create a brand strategy that is in line with your business objectives.
Develop all the necessities and tools you need to communicate brands such as logos, taglines and websites.
Strengthening a brand that is still young or revitalizing.
The steps to building a successful brand in the eyes of consumers are as follows:
Define how you want your brand to be perceived by consumers.
Think brand identity and personality. There are 5 dimensions of brand personality; from sincerity, excitement, competence, sophistication and ruggedness.
Choose the brand personality that best suits your online shop style. As a case study, the Coca-Cola brand has a combination of brand personality of sincerity and excitement. They give off a cheerful and sincere aura from social media advertising campaigns such as the “Share a Coke” campaign. For excitement, Coca-Cola is often associated with youth and innovation.
Organize your brand based on the promises you make. Consistently improve yourself
4. Production
This is a very important step. At this stage, you will decide whether you want to sell clothes by buying ready-made inventory from suppliers or building your own production team from tailors, designers and others.
Buy Dress-Shirts
If you have limited capital, we recommend buying clothes from a supplier as your inventory. This means that you will be buying ready-made clothing from a wholesale center, so they are giving you a small price when you pick up large quantities.
Apart from that, we recommend Alibaba and Aliexpress, you can also try Amazon and Oberlo as your apparel suppliers
If you want to do some more in-depth research, you can take a look