Archive | April, 2011

Everyone Wants Your Money!

Let’s talk about how you see your money vanish before your eyes!

Every consultant, vendor, seller, whatever, gets word that you’ve got something going on or that something’s happening with your company and you will not believe who and what will come out of the woodwork. Your phone will ring off the hook with calls from everyone from the credit card merchant account services people to the phone company business service account manager to public relations companies to branding companies to printing companies to graphic designers to photographers to lawyers and accountants and business consultants and companies that provide “factor” financing and the REASON they all come calling is because they all think they can make money off of you.

After you get done paying some or all of these people, you’re going to wonder what happened to all of your money and THEN, you’re going to be in a situation where you don’t have the money to produce your next garment and there won’t be anything you can do about it.

THIS is all by way of saying… BEWARE when you pick up the phone or answer an email! You’re going to have all kinds of people blowing smoke up your ass and telling you how great you are or how incredible your product is and it’s the coolest thing ever or whatever it is that they’re saying to try and establish a relationship with you. Reality is, this is business and everyone wants your business because they think you’re successful and think you have money and they’re more than willing to help you spend it, presumably on them.

This is not to say it’s a bad thing, it is only to say that you have to be VERY CAREFUL about how you spend your money and with so many people out there willing to help you spend your money, you have to act like the bank is closed and was just robbed the night before. The standard answer to everyone, should you choose to answer the phone or an email is that you don’t have any money. Quickly, people will go by the wayside once they believe you don’t have any money and it’s THOSE people who are still around when they don’t think you have any money that you might want to consider working with (assuming of course they know what they’re doing, which is entirely a different matter).

MISTAKES TO AVOID

Where do we even begin with the list of mistakes you want to avoid int he process of starting your own fashion business. The list is endless because every person, company and product are different and everyone brings something different to the table. In the posts to come under “Mistakes to Avoid”, you’re going to get insider information from companies willing to share their deep, dark secrets, meaning mistakes they’ve made that they aren’t likely to discuss in public but are willing to do so in our Premium subscriber forums. This is the place you need to be if your company is already operating, you’ve launched your product or you’re getting near ready to launch.

Subscribe now to get access to the “Startup Corner” Forum.

Who’s Got “Skin in the Game”?

The magicians…

Let’s talk about how you see your money vanish before your eyes!

In the beginning of your new business, something might happen where you actually get a bit of press coverage. As a result of the viral nature of the internet, it is possible that some small blurb about you in a blog or somewhere else will find its way around the world. Right after this happens, you phone will likely be ringing off the hook or your email inbox full with solicitations from people with services they want to sell you.

Every consultant, vendor, seller, whatever, that gets word you’ve got something going on or that something’s happening with your company and you will not believe who and what will come out of the woodwork. Your phone will ring off the hook with calls from everyone from the credit card processing companies, cellphone providers, public relations companies, branding companies, advertising companies, everyone and their brother all wanting to sell you something. They think because you’ve gotten a little bit of press coverage that somehow you have money and you need to spend it all on them. There is no regard for what your needs actually are AND no regard for the fact that you’re a small company with very limited funds that have to be spent very carefully. In addition and most important, there will be no recognition or acknowledgement from any of these people that you might not need their services at the time they are calling you. They see what they think is an opportunity and will do everything they can to get you to buy their services.

You will not believe how much time you spend on the phone with people making their sales pitches, trying to build some kind of relationship with you so that you’ll buy their services but you will soon find that they are offering you nothing that you need in that moment and taking up all your time telling you how great they are and what they can do for you and how much they can help you build your company. You will get to a point where you won’t even answer the phone anymore because every call will be a sales call. This is particularly acute right after you get press coverage. You will find people from all over the world calling you tell you how great your product is and what they can do to help you grow your business or save you money, of course paying them all to help you do these things. This is the point when you need to be especially disciplined about what you’re doing, where you’re going and how you’re going to get there. If you’re not, you’ll find yourself spending all kinds of money on people who make you feel good about your product but aren’t necessarily going to do anything for you.  This is not a mark against anyone who has something to sell you, what it is is a cautionary tale of how you need to be aware of what can happen following some kind of press coverage and how to deal with it.

You will find that the people you most want to work with are the people who aren’t selling you anything OR if they are trying to sell you something, they will wait until you’re ready and in the meantime, they will honestly be trying to build a relationship with you. In this business like any other, it’s all about relationships and not cold calling from salespeople. The relationship is about building trust in and with the people you’re going to do business with because there is too much at stake to work with people you can’t trust.

Another thing you have to keep in mind is that there are a lot of people out there more than happy to help you spend your money. This is where the whole issue of having “skin in the game” comes in. No one knows your business and product better than you do and sometimes, even the people you trust the most, will make recommendations about doing things that are not in your best interest. For example, if you start experiencing growth in your company, you might have consultants suggesting that you do certain things, take on growth plans that could potentially put you at financial risk. A lot of consultants will want you to look forward at your potential growth and want you to plan for it BUT what they don’t consider is that it’s easy for other people to suggest what you should do because when you don’t have any “skin in the game”, you don’t have any risk. For you as the business owner or creator of the product, YOU are the only one at risk in this and all of your decisions have to carefully take that into consideration.

Perhaps the best advice is, manage your business as though you are going out of business. This means that you’re watching every penny and making sure that you’re not spending a dime anywhere that is not absolutely essential to the operation of your business. Take your consultants advice as feedback and evaluate it through the question of “is this essential for me to do”, “is there any way that I could potentially lose a lot from what is being recommended”, in evaluating things this way, it will cause you to take the time you need to evaluate every decision and ultimately result in decisions that are about the person who has all of the risk in the business – YOU.

New Emphasis on Local?

http://fashionablymarketing.me/2011/04/the-changing-face-of-apparel-production-new-emphasis-on-local/

Story in today’s fashionablymarketing.me about re-emphasizing producing locally.

The author of the article makes handbags that retail for $142 in her online shop.

What does it cost to produce locally as opposed to overseas?

What kind of margins are people

For people selling products

Fashion Bloggers

Getting the attention of top fashion bloggers can make all the difference in the world to your success as a new fashion business. These bloggers are on top of everything that’s going on in the world of fashion and they’re writing about it every day. They are the new “movers and shakers” in fashion and wield tremendous influence over the consumer’s shopping preferences and habits. All it takes is getting a handful of these bloggers writing about your product and the rest could be history.

Some of the fashion blogs getting attention right now are:

21 Top Fashion Bloggers and Designers on Tumbler: http://hipsquare.wordpress.com/2011/04/27/21-top-fashion-bloggers-and-designers-on-tumblr/

10 Favorite Style and Fashion Blogs for 2011: http://www.blogs.com/topten/10-favorite-style-and-fashion-blogs-for-2011/

New Fashion Websites You Need To Bookmark: http://www.refinery29.com/new-fashion-websites-you-need-to-bookmark#slide-1

And on July 2, 2011, the following list of the Top 99 Fashion Blogs was posted on Signature9, a great source for information on fashion bloggers. You can check out the list and click on any of the bloggers listed which will take you directly to their individual blogs.

 

 

 

Twitter

If you haven’t heard of Twitter by now, you have probably been living under a rock! Twitter is an ESSENTIAL part of any business’ marketing efforts and it’s something that if you’re not using it now, you better get with the program and start using it!

A great story was written by Mary Hall, author of the very influential blog, The Recessionista and contributor to the Huffington Post, about Arlene Battishill, founder and CEO of ScooterGirls, Inc. whose brand, GoGo Gear is a line of highly fashionable protective safety wear for motorcycle and scooter riders. In the article “Behind the LAScooterGirls’ Tweets: One Designer’s Savvy Use of Social Media“, Ms. Hall interviews Arlene Battishill about her use of Twitter in building her company’s brand. It’s almost a “how to” guide to using Twitter in brand building.

You can find both Ms. Battishill and Ms. Hall on twitter at the following twitter addresses: @LAScooterGirls and @Recessionista, two people on twitter you should definitely be following for a free course on how to use Twitter to your maximum advantage!

Facebook

Facebook is one of a company’s best friends in terms of cost effective advertising! Consider this, you can go into the section of facebook where you create an ad and simply create a sample ad (one that you never post or pay for!) and get all kinds of data on facebook users. So for example, you can see how many people use specific words in their profile. It might be, “skiing”, “fashion”, “social media” or any of millions of other words. You can target your advertising OR more importantly, get some understanding of exactly how important certain things are to people simply by the way they describe themselves in their facebook profiles. This information is key in any advertising you might do on facebook and it’s a quick way to determine just how big the market of facebook users might be of people who find specific words to be important enough to use them to describe themselves. You are then able to estimate what it would cost to advertise to that specific group of people on facebook. Consider that you are also able to continue narrowing your target audience by whether they are male or female, how old they are, what level of education they have, where they live and myriad other identifiers. Once you’ve selected all of the identifiers, you’ll see how many people on facebook meet that criteria and THOSE are the people you want to be spending your money on. Our experience in using facebook ads has been extremely positive and traffic and sales to our website have proven that advertising on facebook CAN be effective and profitable.

Think about it for YOUR business!

LinkedIn

Linkedin can be your best friend in terms of letting other businesses know you’re out there AND can offer you a wealth of knowledge from people who are expert in any particular field of interest. For many people signing up for and using linkedin today, it’s about job hunting and it can be an effective tool for that, but for the small business who is trying to gain some traction in the market, it’s a place where you can get important feedback on your business, product or ideas from people who are more than willing to help.

On Linkedin, you have the ability to create Discussion groups where you can invite people to become members of your Discussion group. Your group will go out there and be available to anyone who might find your topic interesting and the great thing about these discussion groups is that you will often connect with someone who can be extremely helpful to your business, either directly OR through a referral they might provide you.

The other great thing is that you can invite someone on Linkedin to be part of your network. Even if they never accept your invite, they will still look at who you are to determine if the want to join your network. THIS is a form of free advertising because everyone wants to know who’s contacting them in case that person can be of some benefit to THEM so the point is, make sure your profile says EXACTLY what you want to communicate to anyone you are interested in AND make sure to include your website address for your company or product.

Remember, with all social media use, you only get ONE CLICK from a prospect so make sure that your profiles on ALL of your social media accounts says something compelling about you or your product. If you do, you just might get a second or third click from that person of interest and next thing you know you might get a phone call!

Grading Rules

One of the most difficult aspects of designing and manufacturing clothing is the grading. Now what is grading?

Grading is the process of creating the measurements for each size, going up the size chart and going down the size chart, starting typically with a size 8. You start with the first production pattern and size it up and size it down all relative to the first pattern size. Grading is an important part of production, so the grader must be experienced. Production samples of these graded sizes are sometimes made to test the fit, and specifications are written for each garment and each size. This ensures that in production the garments are sewn exactly as the approved production samples.

So how does anyone know what the size should be? Or put another way, in fashion industry lingo, how does anyone know what the grade should be?

Well, this is one of the most frustrating things for a new fashion business because this is where you have to commit to the “fit” of the garment, meaning, is your garment only going to fit tall and skinny people, or will you allow for a person to have curves or a little extra in the tummy area, YOU are the one who has to decide who your customer is going to be. You can’t be all things to all people which means you decide right from the start who your customer is going to be and make the garments to fit that specific customer. So, what you might choose for your grade is each size will be two inches bigger or smaller than the one before it. So, you would say you’re going to do a two inch grade. When you say this, every technical person and factory will know what this means. So for example, if you are making a men’s jacket and have a size 40 as your based size (meaning this is your reference size), your next size up will be a size 42, then 44, then 46 and so on. The same thing applies going downward, so if your base or reference size is 40, the next size down is a 38, then 36 and so forth.

In outerwear, you will be more likely to have a three or a four inch grade between sizes because these are garments that are worn over other garments and therefore you need to allow for extra room inside the garment. In addition, you’re likely to see sizing like what you see in t-shirts, Small, Medium, Large, X-Large, etc.

You will often hear people talk about grading rules, but the reality is, the word “rule” is what trips up most people. The rule is more like the ruler, how many inches are you going to use for increasing and decreasing the size of the garment. There is no “rule” in the way we typically think of rules, as in, there is a specific way that something is done. Toss out that kind of thinking and replace it simply with deciding how many inches up or down do you want to go with your sizing.

You can choose to grade your garment in any way you want, you just have to commit to a specific number of inches in both directions and THAT is your grade rule, simple as that! The tough part is knowing what those inches should be.

One way to select a grade for YOUR garment is to just go and do some shopping. Go to a store that carries a garment similar to the one you want to produce. But a few sizes of the exact same garment and measure it. See how much of a difference there is across the chest area. You’ll quickly identify the grade they’re using for their sizing. Again, simple as that.

This is not to suggest that determining your grade is easy, it’s more just a matter of understanding WHAT grading is and then deciding what is going to work for you.

Many people will be reluctant to select the grade because they’re afraid they’ll make a mistake. Well take heart, you’ll get through your first production and you might discover that you need to change the grade. If that’s the case, just make the change based on the new information you have about the people actually wearing your garment and you’ll know whether or not you need to increase or decrease your grade.