Determine Your Business Plan

Determine Your Business Plan

A well-thought-out plan is a must for starting any big or small business — and a good business plan goes far beyond “sell items, make money.” Instead, it delves into the specifics about how your business will operate, including:

• A high-level executive summary that provides an overview of what your company hopes to accomplish.
• A company description, including products, customer demographics, and plans to remain competitive.
• A market analysis that looks into the data and statistics of the marketplace, including average sales, the number of other sellers, and projected growth rates.
• A competitive analysis that focuses explicitly on competitors in the same space, including their strengths and weaknesses, and ways in which a new company can gain the edge.
• A description of management and the organization of the company.
• A breakdown of products and services offered.
• A marketing plan covering details of online and offline marketing strategies.
• An examination into planned sales strategies.
• How funding will be obtained, including how much funding is required and how it will be sourced.
• Financial projects both for the near future and from a long-term perspective.

A big part of creating your online retail business plan involves choosing a Ecommerce. Selling clothing can be handled in a few different ways, so you need to ask yourself how you’re going to start and what model will allow you to grow the fastest without draining your bank account. In the ecommerce clothing retail world, there are four common choices:

• Print on demand.
• Custom cut and sew.
• Private label clothing.
• Dropshipping.

1. Print on demand.

A print on demand business prints or otherwise alters pre-existing clothing based on customer orders. This can be a custom process — for example, company logos — or based on a predetermined selection of designs. When a customer places an order, either you or a third-party printer will create products as ordered.

There’s no stock of products ready to sell in a print-on-demand business, outside of t-shirts, pants, or other attire which designs can be transferred. For stores that use a third-party printer, overhead can be very low.

2. Custom cut and sew.

Custom cut and sew, as the name implies, refers to companies that design and sell their own products. This can be a costly venture and requires a significant investment in the acquisition of materials and manufacturing space, but can be the best opportunity to launch a truly unique brand.

Some custom cut and sew businesses produce all clothing in-house while others outsource to plants outside the country. Starting this kind of online clothing store can require more funding and a true understanding of design principles.

3. Private label clothing.

Private label clothing companies partner with established manufacturers to order unique products marketed under their brand. These products aren’t usually designed in-house but rather designed, produced, and branded for individual sale by a selected third party.

The investment in private label clothing is higher because it requires finding a reliable manufacturing partner and paying an upcharge for branding. However, this method can allow for more flexibility in batch size and sampling, letting stores evaluate products and fine-tune strategy without breaking the bank.

4. Dropshipping.

Dropshipping is arguably the easiest of the business models. Dropshippers essentially act as middlemen; when an item is ordered, the dropshipper then orders from a third-party company for delivery directly to the customer. Many dropshippers work with sites like Alibaba and Wish to have access to low-cost products that can be sold at a markup.

There’s little investment required to start a dropshipping business as there’s no inventory kept in stock or a need to spend money on orders in advance of customer activity. However, it’s often hard to stand out from the crowd as a dropshipper as products are generally not unique and can be purchased from other vendors.