How to Start your Men’s Clothing Business
Why men’s clothing business? The fashion industry has been one of the booming businesses for over the years. It has gone through lots of changes and raking billions of dollars for the industry players. And recently, the internet has further increased earnings in the market, bringing the customer closer to the products and services. Starting a clothing business has become much easier nowadays than it was some years back. You can now increase your profit potential as the market has become diverse and easily accessible.
Our focus will be on starting a men’s clothing business, another hidden goldmine in the industry. You will agree with me that the women’s clothing line may seem more than a profitable prospect of starting a men’s clothing line. But we are taking into consideration the women’s market saturation and the need to consider the lack of attention given to the men compared to the women in fashion. The men’s clothing business ideal will bridge the gap between the men and the women’s fashion world.
Thus, there is a considerable potential to make money, starting a business to cater to men’s fashion. Although this area is not as unsaturated as you may be thinking from the introduction, it still has more potential to reach out and make something out of the market.
Steps to start a men’s clothing business today
Like any other business, we have to be strategic from the onset in setting up a men’s clothing business. With proper research about the fashion industry, using a sound business model, and experience from those who have been in the business, we have set up the following steps and guide in starting the business. Follow each step as discussed judiciously and watch your business boom.
- Decide your business aim and direction.
Before you start your Men’s Clothing Business, you must consider what you want to achieve. Are you going to focus on a niche, say providing quality sportswear for men? Are you going to promote a particular brand or your design? Or will you be dealing with general men’s fashion outfits? For the business’s onset, you have to decide where you will start from even if you have the mindset to expand in the future.
It is advisable to understand the needs of the market before you start the business. Research about the trending outfits for men, what item has a high sales rate, what is influencing the fashion industry, popular fashion icons and understand if there is a need not being met in the locality or niche. You should note that at this point, you should be considering the offline and online aspects of the business in your initial plans. With the offline physical store, you are concerned about the demographic, culture, and age of the male gender in the area. While for your online store, you are thinking on a global scale, so you may want to experiment with a variety of styles and outfits.
Also, at this point, it is vital to decide on going online or offline. You should bear in mind that the industry has become much digitized as more sales are being recorded online than offline by top industry players. So in any situation, you must consider an online store in your business plans.
It would help if you had a guiding principle as you set your mission statement for the business. The business should be known to satisfy a goal or an objective pertinent to the customers’ needs. You should either be providing top quality wear or focus on a particular niche, say sportswear for men suits. The customers should know your brand for something unique as you grow your business.
- Draw a business plan
Now that you understand your aim and objective of the business, you can develop a suitable business plan, including its purpose and goal, the company’s scale, your targeted market, funding, capital, and the business’s expectation.
The business plan will give you the direction of your men’s fashion business. It will help you focus on your goal and guide you towards making a profit in the industry. There are various formats of writing business plans online, or you can get an expert writer to draw one for you.
One vital use of the business plan is to seek funds from investors. In the process of starting or expanding the business, you may have to consider sourcing of funds from outside sources. A good business plan will help you convince willing investors to trust in the ideal of the business.
- Determine your target audience
It would be best to consider a range of target audiences for your men’s clothing business. Do you want to meet business people’s needs with suits, trousers, long sleeves, shirts, shoes, and other formal items dominating your fashion store? Or want to dedicate your Men’s fashion store to men who love sport, selling jerseys, tracksuits, boots, hats, jumpsuits, and other fashion accessories? Or do you want to sell all categories of men’s clothes? The choice is up to the needs determined by your business research or your passion. However, you should be able to determine the pros and cons of your decision based on these chosen targets.
The advantages of focusing on a targeted audience for your men clothing business include:
- You get known for a specialized brand or type of clothing, which improves your specialty or knowledge in that area.
- People get to trust your men’s clothing shop for being unique and an expert in that area.
- It makes people quickly locate your business when they are searching for a particular product.
- It improves your fashion store’s popularity as people get to know you for a particular fashion line.
- It makes it easier and faster for people to find your business online.
While going for general men merchandise in your men’s clothing store also has its advantages, which include:
- You may increase sales by meeting the needs of everyone.
- Men can find whatever they need in your store since it considers the fashion needs of men.
- The sales of all men’s fashion accessories in your store give room for the expansion of your business. It is easy to add more categories of fashion and accessories lines to your business when you are offering general sales.
However, using any of these strategies is peculiar to your business plan and design, with its advantages and disadvantages.
- Business strategy for your men fashion business
The fashion industry is saturated, and before you start a men fashion store, you have to come out with an ideal business plan and strategy. There are some questions you have to input in your business strategy. For starters, we already know that you are targeting men, then after determining the brand or type of fashion we wear, we have to draw out a suitable business strategy.
First, you should consider where to get men’s clothing and fashion accessories for your business. Are you going to design what you will sell, buy products from top brands, or promote high quality fashion accessories in your store? Some may even consider selling used or second-hand clothing in their stores.
If you are a designer and can come up with your clothing line, you can consider opening up your men’s clothing store. You can come up with great designs and promote them both offline and online. At the same time, those that want to promote top clothing brands can get their products at wholesale prices from the manufacturers and sell at retail prices.
In today’s fashion world, we can draw up two significant points of sales of fashion items: the offline or the physical shops and the online stores for your men fashion store strategy. With the offline sales point, you have a physical shop where you seek your men’s clothing products to your customers. While the online stores involved building an e-commerce website where customers can browse through your men’s fashion wear, buy, and pay online for the products.
- How to fund your men fashion business
The funding of your business is another vital aspect of the company. And it is dependent on your business plan and how you are going to start up. It is best if you start up small and grow the business gradually as you increase your customer base. Starting a men’s clothing business requires a substantial amount of money. Otherwise, you plan to start small or open an online store, and you may need significant capital to start up.
If you are operating an offline store, you may have to consider some recurring expenditures:
- Payment of rents and salaries.
- Maintaining the store, cleaning, and upgrading of hardware.
- Buying your clothing products
- Buying sewing materials if you are making your clothing line.
You will need a business plan to seek capital in running an offline shop if you want to start big, especially if you want quality clothing products and brands for men in your shop. Starting a men’s fashion business at home may not be as profitable as opening a store, so you must invest a reasonable amount to make a good profit for the company.
However, you may use a lesser amount of capital to start up your online men fashion business. If you are opening an online store, you will not need to pay rent or workers to run the store. You will have to spend on paying for opening the e-commerce store, which you can do by yourself or get a professional at a considerable price.
Online stores can also reduce the capital of starting up the men fashion business to consider drop shipping service. You do not have to spend money to stock up your shop with products for this kind of service. You can promote the products on your online stores without actually having them in your store. The company providing the dropshipping services will be the one to deliver the men’s fashion products or accessories posted on your fashion store to the customers on your behalf for a considerable amount.
The dropshipping services will further reduce the capital in running your men fashion business and making a profit. If you do not want to run an offline shop, consider the dropshipping service to start your business with the minimum funding. You can fund the online stores easily from your savings or help from family and friends.
- Organization of your business
The fashion business needs a good organization and management of the company to keep the store attractive and well organized. The men fashion business needs a good planning organised to keep the business running smoothly and appropriately managed in the following areas:
- The location of the men fashion business is vital to the success of your business. You have to choose a site that will attract your store’s traffic with the products displayed adequately for customers. Get a location that has a high volume of traffic, preferably in a popular market.
- Find a suitable name for your business, one that will look catchy for customers in promoting your men’s clothing store. It would be best if you branded your business with this name creating logos and other designs like banners to promote your business.
- Get an accountant to run the business’s financial aspect as they will help you keep your books in order. Also, they will help you with updating your taxes and other financial needs of the company. The accounting section is an integral part of the business to keep it going.
- The store should be designed appropriately to look attractive and make it easy for customers to browse through the store, searching for the men’s fashion items or accessories. For example, jeans and trousers should be arranged in a section, with shirts and polo in another sector, while other fashion items and supplements are appropriately positioned.
- Make the environment neat and adequately designed to look appealing to customers.
If you are building an online men’s clothing store, you should consider the following:
- Building a user-friendly e-commerce platform that the customers can navigate through the platform.
- Stock your online shop fully and research the products’ prices on other shops to fix reasonable prices for your customers.
- The payment of the domain name for your website. It would be best if you got a name that suits the registration of the business name. Thus it would be best to research the availability of the business name online before naming your business.
- Creating social media handles on the necessary platforms, you will need in promoting your business.
These are the steps you will take in the organization of your business. You should cover the points discussed above to determine the success of your business.
- Promoting your men’s clothing business
Setting up your store with top quality men fashion items and accessories is not the end of the business. More work is to be done to promote the business, reach out to your targeted audience, and make sales. The men’s fashion business is specific to a particular demographic, so much work needs to be done in targeting the men who will be interested in such fashions and accessories.
We will divide the promotional aspect of this business into two – the offline men fashion store and the online men fashion stores. If you are running the two simultaneously, you will have to take the two aspects into practice. However, you can run one without the others and still make a substantial profit in the business. The promotion of the men’s clothing business is a crucial aspect of ensuring the company’s profit and sustainability. And we are going to discuss all the factor involved in the promotion of the men fashion business:
- Your store is the first contact of promotion for your men’s clothing business. It is the contact place for your business and should be adequately designed to portray the company. There should be a signboard with your business name and logo displayed outside at the store’s entry. The sign should indicate the business and what you can get in the store. You can get a graphic designer to come up with a properly designed signpost outside your shop.
- Another strategic way to promote men’s clothing business is through television adverts. The use of television adverts has been known to be successful for most online fashion stores to targeted audiences. To attract men, you should consider shows or sport events men love watching. And it will help create awareness about your fashion business to the targeted customers. The use of television adverts is a traditional way of marketing and has proven to be still useful in some ways.
- Creating your website or e-commerce store is an ideal way of reaching out to your target audience online. Nowadays, every business is going online to remain relevant, with the new trend of shopping. It is easier to shop online, so more people embrace it rather than go to the physical shop. Because of the increasing trend by customers in shopping online, it is possible to create only an online men fashion store and still be able to become successful. Furthermore, there has been software that has made it easier to create websites by you. For you can easily drag in the necessary tools you need to make your online store functional with the features present in these do it yourself platforms.
- Another angle of interest that will be suitable for the promotion of your men fashion store is social media marketing. Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have been instrumental in targeted audience marketing. With the appropriate use of the data available on these platforms, you can tailor your online marketing to target men that will need your products. Social media marketing has been known to increase awareness and sales about business, especially in a competitive industry like the fashion industry. And these social media platforms offer you the opportunity to showcase your fashion wares with great images and videos.
- Runway shows are popular with brand promoters; if you want to promote your clothing line. It is a significant advantage if you go on the runway and other top brands to be a substantial boost to your fashion line.
- How to keep the men’s clothing business afloat
The fashion industry is competitive, and to remain relevant, you have to meet up with the new trend for customers. In the industry, the customer is the key to sustaining your business, for you have to know what they want and desire. To keep the business running successfully for a long time, you have to consider:
- It would be best if you determined what the customers need for your platform to improve. To achieve this, you should provide an avenue for customers to share their experience by dropping reviews. And these feedbacks will be a source of knowing the need of the customers as you structure your business to meet these needs,
- It would help if you considered implementation of easy and faster ways for customers to reach out to you whenever they need to discuss it with a representative. With the use of social media platforms and contact forms on the websites, you can create effective channels for accessible communication by clients. The platform should also contain the phone numbers, email addresses, and contact address of the company.
- Study your competition and copy the successful strategy they use in attracting customers. Also, stay in tune with the latest trend by providing the newest clothing style on your platform to keep customers happy.
- You should ensure to keep your store stocked up by finding a reliable dealer or dropshipping company for your online stores.
Conclusion
Starting a men’s clothing business may require capital from as low as $100 to over thousands of dollars, depending on its scale and strategy. By focusing on dropshipping services, you may need less money to start-up an e-commerce platform and find a reliable drop shipper. While opening a brand or fashion line for men, fashion will require thousands of dollars to set up.
You can use this guide to start up a men’s clothing business for any scale of the company. You must consider the fashion needs of your customers if you want to keep the business going. The fashion business is more about sustenance than starting, for there is lots of work needed to keep the company afloat.