Things to consider before starting your own fashion business

2017-10-16

Whether you’re just out of school or you’re working for brands and now you’re thinking about starting your own fashion business, I think that there are a couple of things that you should be aware of before making this big decision.

Please do not consider these points as a discouragement. I’m a huge supporter of people who want to make the big step and launch their own company. Both if it’s in the beauty, fashion, jewelry or blogging industry, I think that entrepreneurs are always courageous but also motivated and strong people. So if you want to start your own fashion brand I think that it’s a great idea. These are just things that you need to consider before starting your own fashion business according to BoF to make sure that you’ll start the best way possible and that you won’t give up in the first years.

1.You’ll live, eat, breath, sleep your business

When you start your own company you are the only one who is responsible for the business. Especially at the beginning when you’ll be alone you’ll have to manage everything yourself. You’ll think about your business constantly every second of your day.

2. Learn by doing

Don’t wait to know everything about every aspect of your business. Consider what you need to know at the beginning to start and just do it. You’ll learn all the other things by doing. You can change your decisions an maybe consider that your first investments are not correct and you may need to change something while doing, but this is fine. You cannot know everything about all the things at the beginning so just start, you’ll learn the rest with the time.

3.It takes a lot more money than what you thought

Capital and money don’t guarantee success but without them running and growing a fashion business can be really difficult. You’ll need money to hire people, for the production, for the website…There are different ways to find money but for sure they are necessary if you want to start and run your own fashion company and usually the amount of money needed is often more than what people do really realize.

4.It takes time

This is not a fast industry in terms of growth. Growing a fashion business takes lots of time. It’s not like launching an app where people can get millions of users in just one night. Be patient and work hard, it takes time but it’s normal for this industry.

5. You’ll spend only 10% of your time designing

You’re first an entrepreneur and then a creative. Even if you’re the creative person of the company, you’ll manage lots of other things like accounting, finance, HR, marketing. Especially at the beginning, when you’re the only one so you’ll have to do everything your own. If you want to spend all of your time designing, you may think about working for other brands. But if you want to run your own business you’ll need to look after all these things.

7. It’s competitive, be tough

This industry is extremely competitive, now everyone is exposed to the fashion industry because of the social media so even more people want to start their own fashion business. You need to be motivated and don’t give up. Be focused on what you want to achieve and work hard to make it happen.