Looking to start your brand and become a manufacturer? Let's take a look at the 5 simples steps to launch your brand.
1.) Register Your Brand
Like with starting any business, the first thing you need to do is file paperwork with the state and federal agency to register your company. You can head to this link to learn more about which type of company you should register for, but chances are in the very beginning your will be a sole proprietorship in the very beginning. If you feel you have an incredible name and you don't want anyone to steal it you can also trade mark it. Whether you trademark or not you will also need to create a DBA (Doing Business As) you can usually just file in the newspaper that your business is a DBA with so and so brand and this is usually good enough to bring to your bank so that the checks assigned to that DBA can also be deposited in your personal bank account.
2.) Design
With everything registered you will need to create designs. I'm sure you already have a concept but how can you turn those thoughts and imagination into the real thing? Adobe Illustrator and Photoshopare still the top two design softwares utilized by designer to create their designs. Once you have your jpegs or pdf's there are many sites out there that offer easy printing solution on all things apparel. Custom Inkand many other similar websites allow you to take a simpel PDF design and apply it to shirts, sweaters, socks, etc. and that is a great way of jump starting your brand. If the designs are something more intricate then you will need to find a manufacturer.
3.) Finding a Manufacturer
Back when I was young you had to know someone to get a China manufacturing connection. These days you can head to Alibabaand find hundreds of willing suppliers to manufacturer your products. The immediate issue you will run into is minimums. Minimums is a term that simply refers to the amount of units required my the manufacturer to create the product you want to make. IE. if you have an idea for a pair of shoes and you want to manufacturer 10 of them for your store, think again, you will likely need to start with 240 pieces to even get any Alibaba manufacturer to work with you. There in lies the issue with manufacturing, yes people have lots of great ideas and designs but do they have the finances and sales distribution to go with it.
4.) Financing
Finding someone to finance your start up brand is insanely unlikely, 100% of the time most brands start from self-financing. Thus you will either have to save up a lot of money or get a small business loan to start your brand. Now that money has entered the arena, you want to make sure you are going to be successful and not put the rest of your adult life in a money pit of debt. That's why reading step five will be crucial because before you put a penny into any of your designs you want to be sure that you will sell it and there is a customer for it. To finish off with point four on financing, so long as your credit is good and you are in good standing with a bank there is a possibility of getting a small business loan that will more then be enough to produce a couple manufactured items.
5.) Who To Sell Too?
Most manufacturing is a process of risk aversion. IE. brands create a product and produce that product with close to 100% certainty that it will sell, they do this by working hand in hand with the buyers or retailers who want this product produced for them. The retailers have certainty because they have expensive buyers and analytics that tells them how much to bring in and what. So how can you find buyers for your products or work with retailers? That's really an open ended question and hard to answer. Out in the world are trillions of dollars being transacted on a yearly basis. It's your job to pick the market you want to infiltrate and understand everything about it. Like who are the buyers, sellers, brands and what is being offered currently that you can adjust or enhance.
On simple terms imagine you walk into a clothing boutique and simply ask them, how can I make you more money? Their response is if I have cheaper or better products then I could possibly excite more customers. Now ask yourself if you did that to 20 boutiques and found a way to excite them with a product you are brining in and get a commitment to purchase (purchase order) then this would be a great place to start for your manufacturing brand.
The good news is, is that you don't need to travel around your state searching for 20 boutiques. You can meet hundreds in one place at Fashion exhibits. Build your products and brand, set up a booth and get those purchase orders! This is the key to the success and yes it will take some up front costs and investments for the prototypes, booths and workers to get this ignited before ever landing that first purchase order.
Best of Luck!