Fashion products are the best selling products every year. This shows, the need for fashion products is getting higher.
Although the chances of being successful in the fashion business seem bright, the possibility of this business failure is also possible. There are many factors that cause the fashion business to be stuck in the middle of the road.
So, so that you can be successful in doing the fashion business, it is very important to make the right preparations and methods. In this article we will help you to start a fashion business. Ready? Let’s look at the steps below:
Do Product Research
Product research is the first step in determining what products you will sell. This step is important. You can’t just choose the product you want to sell. Also, you also cannot choose products only on personal assumptions.
You need data according to market conditions. That way the product you choose can later be accepted by the market. So, here are some ways you can do product research.
Observing Market Trends
It is very important to know what fashion trends are trending. There are many ways you can analyze fashion trends.
Check on Google Trends
Google Trends is a feature from Google that can quickly analyze the number of searches for certain keywords. You can also compare different types of products to see which ones are more sought after.
Check Trends on Social Media
Apart from observing trends on Google, you also need to look at trends on social media. There you can find various photos or videos of fashion products reviewed by several people or influencers.
Just type in the fashion product keywords you want to search with hashtag (#) in the search tab. In the Top tab you will see keyword products that are a lot of likes (likes).
Consumer Survey
Apart from observing on the internet, you can conduct a survey to find out which products are needed and liked by consumers. Make a simple online survey so it’s easier to do. You can take advantage of several social media to spread this survey and get more respondents.
Know your target market
Knowing your target market when starting a business is very important. By knowing your target market, you can create products that you like and need. Target markets can also help you to create the right product marketing strategy.
However, do you know what the target market is? The target market is the people to whom your product will be sold. Usually the target market will have the same characteristics in terms of habits, demographics, and others.
Then, how do you identify the target market for your business? Here are ways you can find out your target market.
Through Your Assumptions
As the title implies, you only need to assume who is the most strategic target market? For example, you sell men’s formal shirts. Who will buy your product? Office man? College student? Teacher?
See from your competitors
Take a look at your competitors’ products. Then try to analyze roughly who is the target buyer? You can also find a gap and create a product that is superior to your competitors.
Communication with Consumers
Recognizing your target market can also be done by talking directly to potential customers. For that, try asking for advice about the fashion business from your closest friends or colleagues. What fashion products do they need and like? What is a fair price for the product? Are certain colors their choice?
Create a Buyer Persona
Buyer persona is a description of the target market that you are targeting. You can draw this picture with the research and information you have previously gathered. With buyer personas, you can develop products appropriately.
Look at Your Business Competitors
Maybe in your mind you are wondering, why are you so curious about competitors? In starting any business, including the fashion business, you need to study your competitors.
Starting from the advantages and disadvantages of the product, how to market it, to distribution. From this information, you can make a strong competitive product.
To learn about your competitors, there are several steps you can take.
Grouping Competitors.
There are a lot of competitors out there. You can start by grouping them into several categories, namely main competitors, secondary competitors, and tertiary competitors.
• Main competitors are businesses that have the same target market as your business. For example, you and your competitors are both making a Muslim fashion business for adult women.
• Secondary competitors are businesses that sell the same product, but have different target markets. For example, if you have a shoes business for women, then your competitors are shoes for men.
• Tertiary competitors are businesses that are not in direct competition with your target market. However, they produce a product that is still directly related to your product.
Study Competitor Products
After grouping your competitors, you can start to focus on several competitors. Especially your main competitors.
Now, try to learn the products from your competitors. Pay attention to the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors’ products. Take advantage of competitors’ product weaknesses to create a superior product. Because by offering what your competitors don’t have, you can have the opportunity to win the market.
For example, after studying a competitor’s product, you find that the design raw material is not good enough. You can make products with better materials than your competitors.
Visiting Competitor Websites
Visiting competitors’ websites is important. Try to pay attention to every detail of the website. Starting from the appearance of the website, the description of each product, to how fast the website loads. Then, is it responsive on mobile devices? Do they have a special promotional blog or page ?.
From the results of your competitor’s website analysis, you can make a website that is better than your competitor’s online store website.
Visiting Competitor’s Social Media
Apart from the official website, you also need to analyze your competitors’ social media. Find out what competitors’ posts look like. Are they responsive to customer comments? Are they promoting through influencers? If so, who?
Look at Competitor Reviews
It’s not enough to see the advantages and disadvantages of the website and social media, you also need to see how customer reviews are against competitors. From the product review, you will get information about the strengths and weaknesses of competitors.
You can imitate a strategy that gets positive reviews from customers and make a strategy that is better than negative reviews. That way, you can be superior.
Compare Competitor Prices
The price factor is still often a consideration for consumers when buying a product. So, it is very important that you compare product prices with all of your competitors. What is the price range for the same product on the market?
Create a Business Plan
After determining business products, identifying targets, and analyzing competitors, now you need to make a more concrete business plan.
A business plan or business plan can be said as your business concept. This business plan will later become your guide in running your business. Therefore, you should not make it carelessly.
Prepare a Budget or Capital
In starting a fashion business, the role of capital is very important. However, a little or a lot of capital is not the only determinant of the success of your fashion business.
The most important thing is that you must be very clever in managing and managing capital to start a fashion business. For that, you need to make a precise budget breakdown. You need to keep track of all your planned business expenses.
Prepare Your Product
Your fashion product must be in order for your product to compete with competitors, as much as possible your product provides updates and advantages that competitors do not have.
So, it is very important that you present a quality original product. To get an original product, of course, you have to think about the product design, choose quality materials, and start looking for a manufacturer to produce your product.
So, let’s discuss one by one the steps to create a quality product.
Product Design
Creating a quality product starts with a design. Armed with research and knowledge about products, you can make products that are liked and interested by many people.
We have some tips for designing your fashion product.
Create a Signature Style
One of the differences between your product and competitors can come from the characteristics or distinctive style of your product. That distinctive style makes it easy for customers to remember and recognize your product.
So that you can create a strong signature style, try to make a design that is philosophical.
Correct Color Selection
Color is very important for a fashion product. Color selection can be a determining factor in product purchases. Color selection can be done based on the product concept that you have created. You can also specify the product color based on the current color trend.
Choose the Best Material
A good product design is not enough to make customers satisfied with your product. Product quality often determines buyer satisfaction.
Even according to experts, product quality is a major factor in customer satisfaction. So it is very important to choose appropriate and quality product raw materials.
For example, for clothing fashion products, the things you need to pay attention to are the type of fabric used, the color of the fabric, and the fabric motif.
Find a Manufacturer
After designing the product and choosing the best material, it’s time to assemble it into a quality product. If your fashion product is clothes, you don’t need to sew it yourself. You can find an okay tailor that you can rely on.
In essence, you don’t need to have your own factory. You can also look for quality, unbranded fashion manufacturers to collaborate with. You just have to label the product with your brand.
This method has been used by many successful fashion entrepreneurs in the world.
To find the right manufacturer, you need to look at the quality of the workmanship of the product, look at customer reviews, and prices.
Create a Brand Logo Design
Brand Logo Design cannot be taken lightly. Why? A brand logo can be called a reflection or image of your business concept.
Maybe you’ve heard of some companies redesigning their brand logos to convey their new vision and the new image that customers want to see.
In other words, the fashion brand logo must be made as good as possible. Based on research, 93% of the world’s top brand logos are made with simple designs. So that it is easier for customers to remember and recognize.
Take a Product Photo Shoot
Marketing products without being accompanied by good product photos will not attract consumers. That’s why you also need to prepare for your product shoot as best you can. The results of this product photo shoot will later be displayed in the online store website catalog, advertisements, and social media posts.
Make it more professional. If necessary, you can hire a special fashion photographer for your product photos. So, to produce attractive fashion product photos, there are a number of things you need to prepare. Check out the following.
Choose a Suitable Model
Choosing a model for fashion products also has an important role. Just like creating a photo concept, here, you have to determine a model that fits your product’s target market.
For example, the target of your shoe fashion product is the male millennial group, then you have to look for models that are included in that millennial group.
Use a White Background
For product photos in your catalog, use a white background. White can make buyers focus more on your product. Not only that, a white background can also highlight the advantages of your product design.
Choose the Right Photo Angle
So that buyers can see your product as a whole, you must present photos from several angles.
Product Detail Photos
You also need to show your product details. Details such as design, materials, or texture can be the hallmarks of your product. For that, shoot from a close enough distance so that the details are clearer
Create an Online Shop Website
Did you know that there are many successful fashion businesses without having a physical store? With online shop websites and online promotions, many fashion businesses are still growing and are being hunted by buyers.
With an online store website, there are many uses for your fashion business. These are some of the uses for online shop websites.
• Displays your product catalog
• Sell your product
• Displays the latest product launches
• Displays your business profile information
• Create your business contact information
In addition, creating an online store website is actually not as complicated as you think. Moreover, there is a CMS (Content management system) and online store plugins that make it easier for you to create an online store website.
You can make your own using the steps below. Take a look at the steps to create an online store below.
1. Create and register a domain name for your online shop website;
2. Buy the best hosting service;
3. Install WordPress;
4. Install the Woocommerce Plugin;
5. Install a theme that matches your product;
6. Install plugins to add features to your website;
7. Enter your photos and product information.
Product Launching
This is the stage most eagerly awaited when starting a business, namely product launching. Once your online store products and website are ready, your business is ready to launch.
However, before actually launching a product, you need to plan the right time for launching and a promotion strategy.
You can make a kind of pre-launch first. For example, the “coming soon” announcement featuring several products and their offers.
This pre-launching aims to attract buyers’ attention to your product. So when launching, many buyers visit your online store website and the potential for selling your products increases.
Well, in this pre-launching, you can provide information on special purchase promos when launching your product. This trick is considered powerful enough to attract the attention of customers. That’s because everyone of course likes special promos.
Some fashion businesses will usually provide attractive offers when launching products. several promotional methods commonly used by fashion businesses.
Give Discounts or Special Prices
Everyone loves discounts. Moreover, the discount is up to half price. Now on the first day of product launch, you can give special discounts to get buyer engagement.
Buy 1 Get 1 Free
Promotion in this way is commonly used. This method can be used to introduce your new product. Maybe not all products use this promo. You can give this promo to certain products.
Give a Gift
You can also apply a strategy of giving gifts to the purchase of certain items or a certain amount. For example, buy 2 t-shirts for free, 1 hat. This strategy can lead buyers to buy more products.
Free Shipping
The provision of free shipping, aka free shipping, means a lot to buyers. Buyers can save a lot more with this promotion. You can give this promo on a limited basis. For example, the first 50 buyers. That way the buyer will immediately checkout the shopping item.
Give Vouchers
Unlike the gift giving, this voucher can be in the form of a discount for a certain product right away or a discount for the next product purchase.
Give a Giveaway
Some fashion businesses give giveaways to lucky few. Usually this giveaway program is given with certain conditions. For example, you have to follow a brand’s social media account, share posts, and invite others to join this giveaway too. So, your product can be widely recognized faster.
After determining what promotions are right for product launching, you can disseminate this information on your website. Besides on the website, you also need to spread it on social media, bazaar events, or collaboration with influencers.
Promote Online Ads
This step is the final step as well as a step that needs to be done regularly. What is the goal? The main goal, of course, is to increase sales of your Business products.
By advertising your products online, you can reach a wider range of customers. Moreover, using several popular marketing tools. Your ad can be reached directly by the appropriate target market.
Here, we recommend that you use popular marketing tools to promote your business online.
Google Ads
Google Ads is a feature of Google that is used to display ads on Google search results. By using Google Ads, your fashion business ad can appear in search results with certain keywords.
Google Search is the most used search platform. According to statistical data, 91.98% of searches on the internet are done on Google Search.
That means, using Google Ads, your ad is likely to be seen by more people.
Instagram Ads
Why should it be on Instagram?
It should be noted that many Instagram users around the world buy the products they see on Instagram, the age of Instagram users also varies. Starting from the age of 13 years to 65 years. Users aged 18-24 years use Instagram the most or around 37.3% with more female users.
If your target market is among the largest users on Instagram, Instagram Ads can be the right choice for your business ad.
Facebook Ads
Apart from Google and Instagram, Facebook Ads is also very likely to increase sales.
Facebook Ads also has a feature to display ads on target markets that suit your business. That way your ad will be more targeted.
Let’s Start Your Fashion Business!
You also have a chance of being successful like a successful fashion business in the world of fashion. The key is to see opportunities, create quality products, and take advantage of the online platform. If you can maximize all three in your business strategy, it is possible that your fashion business will be successful and last long.
