Undervaluing the necessity of a business plan
Sometimes just going with the flow doesn’t work in business. Especially when you have no past experience or knowledge of the ins and outs of the clothing industry. It’s important to research the various steps involved in creating your own brand. At Swimwear Manufacturers we believe it’s important to do your research quite thoroughly as there really is so much to learn. Every step involved is crucial to making your business work. Taking the time to find out as much as possible will definitely help you in the long run and help you reduce the chance of making silly mistakes.
It’s great to find out about costing, how much each steps costs and plan ahead. When bathing suits manufacturers give you quotes, please remember they are estimates. Prices can go up just as much as it can go down. So remember to always estimate more in your budget costings just in case things do go up. Please note not to get upset at the manufacturer if they quoted you a certain price then the price goes up all of a sudden. The manufacturer will need to do a final sample so they can gauge how much the ‘confirmed’ price will be for the production. At the start they will give you a rough quote but will give you a definite price once they have made your samples and know exactly how long things take to make.
Research into who your competitors are and what they are doing. This allows you to find a spot in the market and how you can improve your brand. Research into what your competitors are doing in terms of marketing. Marketing is a really important factor in creating a successful brand, no matter how great the collection is. It’s possible for it to fail because you have spent enough time doing marketing or you haven’t budgeted enough for marketing. Please don’t forget to include marketing funding in your business plan.
Always remember to ask for help. If you are unsure of what a process is or what is happening at a certain stage. At Swimwear Manufacturers, we provide consultations for our client. If you would like to have consultations where we can guide you through the process and give you that extra support then please let us know and we can help you with this.
Ensure to research what your competitors price points are, look into what they are selling their products and how you can compete with them. Remember your selling point should be decided once you have worked out how much it will cost you to make each style. For start-up brands, please don’t get expect you will make so much profit off the first collection straight away. You need to remember you need to build your brand awareness along the way then make more profits as you grow bigger. You have to be aware that at the start it will be a bit more expensive to manufacture the styles as you will probably be ordering small amounts per style. Therefore you won’t really be taking advantage of the bulk buying price until you start ordering a few hundred units per style as prices do dramatically decrease as you order more units.
Starting your collection too big or too small
A problem that start up brands come across is figuring out how many styles to create. We think its impossible to start a collection with just 1 or 2 styles. Its not very exciting for your customers to scroll through your site and just see 2 options to pick from. Therefore we have a 5 style minimum in order for us to take on your project. We have this 5 style minimum policy as 5 styles is sufficient enough to start a collect as you can split the colour ways and we have to do a sufficient amount of work for it to be viable for us to take on. For those brands that want to have a minimum of 10 styles we drop the MOQ to 50 units to help you achieve this.
We suggest picking the styles that you truly feel represent your brand and is the most exciting to make you stand out against the competition as it is competitive out there. Remember you can mix the styles as well have it available in different colour ways and recycle styles by changing lengths and widths of the styles to make a new style.
Also a common mistake is not having a particular market for your styles. Your brand can become lost and not cohesive. So making your collection suit a wide range of customer profiles can be good but just remember to have a focus as well so your brand doesn’t get lost.
How to avoid starting your brand too big
Remember it all comes down to your budget – how much you actually have to spend and how fast you want your brand to develop. Those who have a huge budget sometimes go overboard so
its important to remember to have at least 10 – 15 styles and start off with that. If you have any more than 15 styles to start off. It can be very costly and requires a lot of work to ensure everything is ready for your launch.
There are several peculiarities that you need to keep in mind if you want to start your own swimwear brand. We ensure that your swimwear must be sustainable and ethically produced and readily available.