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Entrepreneurs – How To Establish And Market Yourself As A Fashion Designer

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Article Overview: You’ve been to college or have the fashion skills and you now want to establish yourself as a fashion designer, so how do you get started?

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Entrepreneurs – How To Establish And Market Yourself As A Fashion Designer

You’ve been to college or have the fashion skills and you now want to establish yourself as a fashion designer, so how do you get started?

1) Set up your brand to ensure that you and your designs are recognisable. Establish a good label on your items.

2) Design a few small items that you can give away or sell cheaply. These will be your introductions to your brand.

3) Set yourself up a website with good photos of your designs. This is your shop window.

4) Set yourself up a store on etsy and eBay. Set up a regular advert on CraigsList. Mention your website in both stores and the ad. This is to give you good links and get you internet exposure.

5) Get yourself a market stall or mall kart to sell more. Attend regularly to establish your brand image. This gets you know locally.

6) Get yourself a good brochure designed. Use a photography student if need be - they get good exposure, a reference and a portfolio and you get no cost photos.

7) Offer small items to big charities etc. This gets you exposure.

8) Offer talks to local large clubs and set up a small table with your brochures and small items for sale. This is called "back of the room" sales.

9) Set up adverts offering bespoke tailoring. Connect with wedding planners and similar to offer couture.

10) Get a business plan together and explain what sponsorship and sponsor remuneration you are seeking within the plan.

11) Keep making small items to introduce your brand and range. Send some off to potential sponsors with your brochure and an Introductionary letter and your business plan.

12) Contact big companies and ask if they want to sponsor a fashion show. Offer a fashion show to charities. Send them your brochure. Offer charity auction your small items to auction.

13) Keep expanding your range as you can afford.

14) Contact small boutiques and offer to supply their shops.

15) If this is in your area then offer uniforms to businesses, clubs and sports clubs. Do an internet search and tender for this work.

Put the above into a marketing plan, make your own personal adjustments and work on it weekly and daily. Good luck.

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Article Tags: business plan, designer, entrepreneur, market, marketing plan, marketing strategy



Related Forum Posts
Re: Fashion Re: Fashion - Nana, At you choice you may choose to research the fashion industry a bit more. There is obviously a Business side to it as well as a creative side to it. Find out all the types of roles that exist in the industry. Some that come to mind merchandiser, Window dresser, floor plan organizer (someone needs to determine the layout of a retail store to best sell the goods), fashion consultant (Yorkdale mall has fashion consultants that take you around and tell you what looks great on you - you also get a cut from the sales). This is what I've observed from the business side, you may know more. All these roles I've written about will help you grow as a business person and make the contacts in the industry...possible stepping stones. But further more you'll also notice that you need to develop some business acumen possibly tailored to the fashion industry. When I was at Ryerson I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur someday too. I knew I needed some basic business courses to get a foundation to build from. I was in a Tech/Business Major (I'm sure Fashion has something similar - Fashion/Business Major) and then started to create my own minor. Here are some of the courses I took: Marketing, Law, Entrepreneurial, Management, consulting.. and a few more . Also, I'm sure that within the Fashion Major there are also courses you have to take where you can use your creative side and create designs. Typically within a Major there are focuses you can choose - ask the program coordinator. Your next step is to do some research. 1. Visit Commercial retail outlets like H&M, Banana Republic, or jacob. Tell the Manager your doing some research for University and would like to know what types of Corporate roles exist aside from the roles on the retail floor (like sales associates). If she asks you to elaborate then you can use some of the roles I mentioned above. 2. With this information in hand you can visit the Ryerson Fashion department and inquire with the Program Coordinator on what focus within the Fashion Degree would help you the most. In my program there were 5 different focuses within the Tech/Business program. Just a quick aside. A good friend of mine too has a dream of fashion. he want to create a niche fashion line tailored to skinny men (I can't mention the style). He's in Business school but not in the Fashion program... He's in International Business but all his Minor courses are tailored to running a successful business ... similar to the ones I mentioned above for myself. I have no doubt in my mind he'll make it 'cos his vision is that strong.
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