How To ACTUALLY Start A Clothing Brand In 2024!

A lot of people want to start a clothing brand in 2023, but don't know where to even start. That's why I'm making this video to teach you guys the basics on starting a clothing brand and how to efficiently run your clothing brand. Now, I'd say I have some pretty good experience. I started my clothing brand when I was 17 and was able to scale it pretty fast to a profitable business. So I'd say my knowledge is pretty credible. If you guys do want more videos teaching guys about e-commerce and how to run a clothing brand and all that, go ahead and subscribe and like this video. It helps out the channel a lot. Without further ado, let's get into it. The first thing you need to figure out with your clothing brand is a name. Everybody knows this, but you need to figure out a good catchy name that isn't overplayed and isn't overused. Like right now, we have Motion being overused, Demons, Angelic. Those are the most common used names. You want something original when it comes to your brand name. For example, my brand name is Watch Your Step. You probably never even would have thought of a brand name like that because it's so unique and different. So you need to sit down and just brainstorm something that's different and nobody else is doing. So please, when it comes to your brand name, make sure it is marketable and good. You don't have to rush this process or you could take your time with this. After that, you want to figure out what kind of route you want to go with your brand. You're either going to go the professional clean route or you want to go for like a tacky streetwear route. Those are just two options for example, dude, but there's plenty more. Most people want to do TikTok clothing brands, streetwear brands. So what you want to do is you want to sit there and either design this yourself on Photoshop or Illustrator or hire someone to make your logo for you. And logos are, I can't stress this enough, some of the most important things in your brand because that's your identity right there. When people see that, they'll know. You're like, okay, you see the check. You guys know that's Nike. You see the three stripes. You notice Adidas. You want your branding and your logo to be like and you put the most time into because that's what how people are going to identify you and know you. Next is having a website and a Shopify. Now for the websites, you're going to use Shopify, like I said, but some of you guys may be confused on how to even get a domain name, which is like the www.yourbrandname, whatever and how to do that. So I'm gonna hop on the computer real quick and show you guys how to do that. All right. So what you guys are going to do, you guys are going to go to this website called godaddy.com and then right here, you're going to type in the domain you want. So let's say your brand name is, I don't know, let's say Kool Kid Clothing or something, right? I know it's corny. You search it up and you'll find it right here. You can use koolkidclothing.co for one cent. And I mean, there's plenty of other options as you guys can see down here. We have koolkidclothing.net, koolkidclothing.shop, and it's just a bunch of options you can use. So just go ahead and go on domain, find like whatever it is, we'll just say Heart Clothing. Oh snap, five bands is crazy. I'm not gonna lie. Five bands is crazy for the name heartclothing.com. Basically in Shopify, you'll go to the domain and go ahead and connect your domain to it like this. Like I show you guys right here, you'll connect your domain and all that and that's how you get your website name. All right. So basically what's next after that, you're going to go ahead and get some designs cooking up. So everybody knows the basic Photoshop, Illustrator. Those are the best PC applications, Photoshop and Illustrator. Really simple to make designs up there and I love it a lot. I've been using it for like almost 10 years now. Some people don't have computers and what you can do is if you have an iPad, you can download this thing called Procreate. It's just super simple. I used to use it as well when I was starting out, but I prefer the computer more. But Procreate is a great option if you're using an iPad and designs are fairly simple. You just go on Google, search up a mock-up like a hoodie mock-up. You take that, put it onto the program and just design up there. I mean, it's just all about your creativity. So what I would recommend is you go watch some Photoshop tutorials or Procreate tutorials or even Illustrator tutorials and learn how to design because it's a very crucial asset in your business. Being able to make your own designs instead of paying somebody else will help you save you so much time in the beginning. When I started my brand, I was making my own designs and etc. But now my brand is scaled to a point where I have designers working for me, constantly making me new designs. So I'm not going to talk too much about designing. That's all about your creativity. I just gave you guys the basic programs you can use. Oh, and I heard another thing. If you can't afford Photoshop, which is like $20 a month, I'm pretty sure you can use this thing called Photopea. It's just like Photoshop and it's free. The Google browser app, I'm pretty sure. I've never really used it myself, but I've seen a lot of brand owners do use it. Now, here comes everybody's biggest question. Manufacturing and how can you get your stuff manufactured? When it comes to manufacturing, it's really hard to find a reliable manufacturer and it takes a lot of trial and error and a lot of big brands won't give out their manufacturers for free. And I'm one of them, you know, because giving out your manufacturer is like giving out your sauce. Everybody could be like you, act like you, copy like you when it comes to your designs and all that if you give out your manufacturer. So I don't really give all my manufacturer for free and I know 90% of brand owners don't either. What you can do is you can go on this app called Alibaba. Go ahead and just start scrolling on the app and trying to test out different manufacturers. It's going to cost some money and trial and error, but a lot of them are pretty good on Alibaba. When it comes to Pakistan and Instagram manufacturers, that one you have to be careful because there's a lot of scammers and it can be tough. But the thing I like about Pakistan is their prices are cheaper and they're easier to work with in China. If you guys are interested in who I work with and who manufactures my clothes, my manufacturer list will be in the description below. You guys can go ahead and tap into that. How are you ready to figure out what you want to do? Do you want to do a pre-order or pre-made? These are two different things that are very crucial when it comes to your clothing brand. Pre-order and pre-made. The difference is with pre-order, you're taking your sample and promoting it and then selling your sample basically and you're taking orders, right? Let's say you get 30 orders, such-and-such amount of smalls, whatever. You take that, take the money basically and pay the manufacturer to start producing stuff now. Now the issue with pre-order is the shipping times can take up towards up to four weeks, five weeks most of the time. So it's all about how you want to run your business with the pre-order or pre-made. Pre-made is when you get your stuff made in bulk before and sell it, try to sell out basically. You order 50 jackets, try to sell out 50 jackets. The good thing about pre-made is fast shipping times and it helps your reputation a lot. With pre-order, it can get sketchy with some customers not understanding what pre-order means, especially with like the older folks for sure. But yeah, you just decide what's best for your business and if you have enough money to do pre-made. If you have enough money to do pre-made, always go pre-made every time. But a lot of people don't have that much money to spend thousands on a bulk order right away. So you start with pre-orders. Now I'm gonna go ahead and transfer you guys over to show you guys my storage unit and where I package and ship all my orders. All right, so your boy got mad orders and he got a whole warehouse. So I think you guys can take some advice from me and I think I could be a pretty credible source for you guys. All right, before we start, I want to let you guys know if you are interested in starting a clothing brand in 2023, there's one thing you need to know that this is not an easy industry at all and you will face a lot of hardships. Right now, there's a big trend on TikTok where people are starting clothing brands and thinking they're gonna blow up right away because their egos are too inflated thinking, oh, I have the best pieces, blah, blah, blah. But reality, you probably have some of the worst pieces people have seen. Now, I'm not trying to be mean, but it just comes with practice and time. You're not gonna jump into the game and blow up unless you're really lucky, which is like 1% chance of happening. When it comes to packing and all that, as you guys can see, I have my little packing station right here where I have my shipping labels, all the orders I need to package. We got shelves right here and then this big shelf with mainly all my inventory. But this is empty right now because I just shipped out a bunch of orders and I'm waiting for a new pack to touch down. But you don't need all this to start. You're just starting off. Most of the time, you're gonna run a pre-order like I said earlier. This storage unit, it costs about $150 a month and it's just an expense I have that makes my life easier because packing at the house is kind of age. You don't need this off the rip. Don't let somebody tell you you need to go get a storage unit and all this off the rip. You don't need this, bro. This is not necessary. I didn't get this till recently actually. But packing is pretty simple. I'm gonna show you guys how I pack right now. So usually on Shopify, what you'll do is you'll print out the packing slip and the shipping label right here is the packing slip and this customer wants a rhinestone large. I had changed it because they had told me they wanted to change it. So let's go ahead and grab that. I'm gonna walk over to the shelf. Here's my larges. I'm gonna grab a rhinestone large for them. Go ahead and get that into the package. All right, so I'm gonna go ahead and get this all packaged and show you what I do. So what I'll do is I'll grab the item and I'll grab one of these poly mailers like I'm talking about right now. You can get these poly mailers on Amazon really cheap. Go ahead and put the item in there. You take the packing slip, rip it off, put it inside the customer's order so you guys know, so the customer knows what they're ordering. Go ahead and peel that off. So now you should have a closed poly mailer. Everything's closed off inside. And you take the shipping label, you print it out, and you just slap it on there. And then you go ahead and take this to the post office whenever you're ready. Go ahead and get my bucket. Throw it in the bucket and get the package. I'm gonna do it one more time for you guys just to show you guys. So right here, this person wants a Star Fools in Black. I have one right here. Go ahead and grab it for them. Get the poly mailer and go ahead and put it in there. Go ahead and throw that in the package. Take the packing slip, throw it in there as well. Go ahead and close this off. Throw the shipping label on top just like that. And there you go, another package order. So once you get in the groove of it, you can package these orders pretty fast and get into like a rhythm where you're just packaging, packaging, packaging. And that's what I'm gonna have to do for all of these orders. This is just December, bro. We had a good month for December and I'm just waiting for all the items to come next week and I will be packaging all these orders. Now, another issue with having a clothing brand is defects, bro. I know nobody wants to hear that, but sometimes your product will come defective from your manufacturer and that just cuts into your costs and all that and losses. So don't be demotivated when you guys have defects. Try to work it out with your manufacturer to get replacements and etc. Now that you guys have seen that, I'm gonna talk about marketing. By far the most important thing in your clothing brand business is marketing. When it comes to marketing, you want to go ahead and download TikTok. I know everybody probably has TikTok on their phone and I cannot stress this enough how important TikTok is for clothing brands. It is the number one way to blow your clothing brand up without ads. I have never ran an ad for my business, which is crazy. But when it comes to organic marketing, which I recommend everybody does in the beginning, TikTok is the number one way to grow. If you're not utilizing TikTok, you're crazy. TikTok will literally could literally bring your business from zero to six figures that fast just because of organic marketing with TikTok's outreach. So I would recommend you use TikTok and YouTube Shorts. YouTube Shorts is also a great way to promote right now. Another form of marketing is email and SMS and this is by far my favorite form of marketing and the most effective, but it requires you to build a little bit of a following and traffic to your website. So how email and SMS marketing works is you have a pop-up on your website saying unlock 10% off and whatever and you collect numbers and emails through that and you grow your list up. Basically, what you can do is remarket to these people later in the future and target them later in the future when you're dropping. You'll get a text message or email to their thing, but this only works if you can drive traffic to your website. So TikTok, like I said, you want to drive traffic from TikTok, have that all set up and ready to go. So when you do have the traffic coming in from TikTok, you already have everything set up and ready to go. And I don't want to make this seem like an ad, but I have an agency that does all this for you, sets up the email and SMS for you. So you're able to have all that set up. So when you do blow up on TikTok and you do get traffic, that's all set up for you. So if you guys would like me and my team to set it up for you guys the professional way and have it all set up good and looking clean, I'm going to leave my WhatsApp in the description below to contact me and my team and we can get that all set up for you guys. But besides all that, I hope you guys did learn some good information on how to start a clothing brand and I hope you guys do apply this information and blow up with you guys as clothing brands. I would love to see everybody go crazy. Before I end this video, make sure to subscribe with post notifications on, like this video, comment down below if you guys did enjoy this video. But without further ado, it's been your boy Yad and I'm out.