How to Build a Small Retail Business in Women's Clothing
Building a women's retail apparel business takes time and a proactive attitude. The more you learn about how your business is run by experienced professionals in your industry, the more likely your business will be successful. Retailing clothing is more than just keeping informed about fashion trends. It is a process of constant promotion and readjustment of your merchandising techniques.
You must make it easy for your customers to buy from you. That means you must be selling what they want to buy and you must be located where they want to shop, particularly if you are going to be catering to busy women.
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Things You'll Need
- Business plan
- Corporation
- Location
- Inventory
- Credit card merchant account
Instructions
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Building a Women's Clothing Retail Business
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Write your business plan. The key to making a success of a women's clothing business is research and planning, and one of the most important aspects of any retail apparel business is planning your finances so you don't pay too much for your inventory and end up selling it at a loss. There are markups from manufacturers to distributors and another set of markups from distributors to wholesalers, who add their own markups when selling to retailers.
Before you write your business plan, take time to talk with retail store owners and apparel-industry trade associations to learn the best way to cut your costs and assure profits. This is particularly important if you have been trying to increase profits. Women's fashion changes create many opportunities to purchase samples, unsold lines and overstocks.
Writing a business plan makes you sit down and think about expenses and the sales you must generate to make a profit. It also forces you to think about how you will market to achieve those sales. Once finished, your business plan will be useful in establishing relationships with bankers, finance companies, landlords, accountants, attorneys and suppliers. It will also assist you in creating brochure copy and content for your website.
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Create or update your brand image. The National Retail Federation (nrf.com) presents excellent industry, demographic and trend information that should assist you in making your business attractive to your target customer. Women are particularly sensitive to design in storefront and marketing materials, so consider hiring a logo service or graphic artist to work up your brand image for signage, marketing materials and website. If you already are in operation, you might consider a redesign of your image because unless you look current, you run the risk of looking out of fashion and out of business.
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Develop a location where your shop can be easily found. Whether you will operate out of a store, a website, a flea market booth, eBay or some combination of all these, you must have a visible presence where the women you cater to shop. Before you spend money on a permanent shop in the mall, research all options for your sales location and make sure they will serve to actively attract customers for your business. Most women do the grocery shopping, so locating your shop near a grocery store is a good way to attract walk-in business. Similarly, locating near easy parking or public transportation is smart.
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Develop a source of unique inventory. The American Apparel Producers Network (aapnetwork.net) has an online directory of apparel producers. In the apparel industry, prices differ greatly from direct producer to distributor, so you may wish to spend some time getting advice from many different apparel producers. It is to their advantage to assist you because you may become one of their customers.
Women's apparel stores thrive on repeat business. To be successful, you must try to be the best source for what your customer wants to buy. For this reason, you will need to develop a reliable source for your inventory, even if it is vintage clothing you have been buying at yard sales. If your customer comes to you for your unique vintage clothing style, and you are low on inventory, you run the risk of losing that customer.
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Establish a merchant account. Even though your business may have operated well using a cash or check payment method, your customers will appreciate being able to use their debit or credit cards, and this additional payment method will allow you to sell online via your own website or through eBay. The ability to accept debit and credit cards also adds to your image as a responsible and reliable legitimate business. PayPal offers a good merchant account service for small companies.
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Create a marketing campaign. Word-of-mouth marketing is often the most productive for a small business and women tend to rely on the recommendations of their friends. Market to your local area customers by setting up booths at local events and flea markets or holding make-over parties in your store or at your customers' homes. A more social approach works well in marketing to women as does the personal touch of sending out regular newsletters with fashion news and information on new inventory.
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Tips & Warnings
The American Apparel and Footwear Association (apparelandfootwear.org) is the leading trade association in the industry. Just Style (just-style.com) has an excellent blog on industry trends and issues. These are good places to start for information on how to build an existing women's apparel business or how to start a new one.
Form a legal identity for your business such as an LLC or corporation. Not only will it protect your personal assets from business-related lawsuits, but it will make it easier to obtain financing for your inventory and operations.
