Like most business ventures, starting a new fashion brand begins with a great design that gets other people excited and makes them want to have “it”. Fashion brands absolutely must have that “gotta-have-it” factor if they’re to take off. Think Tory Burch and those elegantly simple Reva flats or Diane von Furstenberg with those snazzily cool wrap dresses.

But that’s just the beginning. Once the design has been developed and sketched out (artsy friends could be of enormous help here), the next step is making the prototype. A great idea has to be shown to prospective buyers. Prototypes are rarely cheap – materials have to be paid for, and the higher the quality, the higher the price tag.

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Take the example of a T-shirt. People who’ve designed one and really want to get their brand out there will need to do a good deal of legwork. Such people, who probably see themselves as indie designer-entrepreneurs rather than amateurs, will have built up a small repertoire of good designs and may have the money to buy designs from other designers that catch their eye.

They may already have done a fair bit of startup donkey work, like sourcing the materials to find fabric stock that meets designer requirements (and, crucially, budgets). They will have researched websites like MakersRow.com to identify a suitable factory capable of producing the designs in volume, but may not have sufficient money to have their items custom made. They may already have done a fair bit of startup donkey work, like sourcing the materials to find fabric stock that meets designer requirements (and, crucially, budgets). They will have researched websites like MakersRow.com to identify a suitable factory capable of producing the designs in volume, but may not have sufficient money to have their items custom made. Many will have opened an e-commerce site or chosen to ride on the coattails of established players like Shopify. Shopify is a complete commerce platform that lets individuals start, grow, and manage a business. The subscription-based software allows anyone to set up an online store and sell their products. The best part about Shopify is perhaps that it allows SMS integration, which can allow sellers to respond to customers faster and increase satisfaction. Moreover, sellers can automatically send notifications at each stage of a Shopify order with the help of the SMS integration offered by firms like Heymarket (https://www.heymarket.com/integrations/shopify/).

Anyway, those who do ride on the coattails of Shopify and its likes might have a website built to promote their products and sale/display events. Those who can’t code and design their own websites might consider getting one professionally built. Also, if they want to maximize customer satisfaction, they would need professionals well-versed in web development (navigate here for options) who can upgrade their websites to have a responsive web design that would allow content to fit into the screen size of the device they are being used on. The entire process might cost them somewhere between 650- 1300, but it’s an investment well worth the expenditure. These websites will have the ability to allow payments from customers all over the world due to the services provided by companies like FastSpring (https://fastspring.com/global-payments/) for a variety of payment options, meaning that their products speak out to a wide range of clientele.

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To take the next step and really grow the business, designer-entrepreneurs will almost certainly need to attract investors to their brand. Around 300 may be enough to print a fair number of shirts, but 6 – 6,500 would enable designers to get hold of a silkscreen carousel and begin their own in-house printing. From there, an indie can turn pro, seriously promoting and advertising the brand, expanding the range of products to include not just T-shirts, but jackets and denim, too.

Seasoned investors are going to be critical at this stage. Take a look, for example at veteran businessman and investor Fahad Al-Rajaan’s Director profile. This is the kind of investor who not only has a wealth of wealth, but also a wealth of business knowledge. The kind of money needed to take this kind of step typically starts at around 15,000 to 16,000 and, depending on returns and success, can head for the stars to continue brand expansion, including to overseas markets.

Designers moving from indie to pro really need to think hard about the quality and professionalism of their products and the amount they can realistically produce. A T-shirt, for instance, will look considerably more professional if it’s produced using softhand ink on high quality fabric and has custom printed size tags and embroidered labels – all of which increase the cost. Launching a new fashion brand takes ingenuity, artistic flair and entrepreneurial determination. But the rewards can be fabulous.

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