
Ask HN: Advice for starting a fashion brand? - tuxxy
My partner is a talented designer and wants to start their own fashion brand and I&#x27;m curious to see if any of y&#x27;all have advice relevant to this. Perhaps funding or marketing tips, book recommendations, etc?<p>Thanks!<p>Someone asked, &quot;What makes the brand unique?&quot; Here&#x27;s my partner&#x27;s answer:<p>&gt; I create futuristic, gender neutral clothing for people who are looking for something other than the tired trends that get rehashed over and over again. It will be versatile enough to wear casually on the street or in a board room meeting. My target customer is the investment shopper who wants to create their own signature look and a reliable wardrobe without feeling pressured to buy more and more clothing each season.
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rodolphoarruda
Tips from my personal experience. I've been into bridal fashion for 8 years
now, have 3 street shops and work with a handful of international brands.

\- creating cool things without market appeal won't take you anywhere. so you
need to test designs/products/ideas with your target audiences and see how
they react. I found a good way of doing this by posting photos in Facebook and
promoting them. Audience response varies from 10 to 1,000 likes, and we use
that not only to decide which wedding gowns are catching more attention, but
their attributes (style, color, luxury etc.)

\- don't mind about producing/making products yourself in the beginning. once
you know what the markets at your reach are interested on, you can start
buying and selling products from vendors. by doing this you can save energy
($) for more marketing/selling per se. as you get more into your customer's
brains and know what they want, you should be able to see gaps in your
vendor's collections. this is when you can start designing and producing your
own products to close that gap.

\- find a good (and real) digital influencer. this was key to the first two
years of my business. I found an influencer who was specialized into budget
weddings. She helped me put my business on the map, which is not easy in the
very beginning.

\- don't lose any night of sleep because of the competition. they are missing
as much as you are in many things and there is room for everybody in the
market. the main reason you are not selling is YOU, not THEM. this is key for
stress management.

Good luck!

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sharmi
Tips from my experience

* Whatever you do, try to talk to customers (not friends) as early as possible, and try to keep them in the loop when taking critical decisions. Frequent feedback can keep you on the right direction and also not lose morale. (Nothing like a long release cycle to invite self doubt and other self destructing emotions.) \- Try to find the venues (online or offline) where people who can be potential customers hang out and interact.

Apart from other recommendations below: (Blue Ocean Strategy, Expanded
Edition: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition
Irrelevant )[[https://www.amazon.com/Blue-Ocean-Strategy-Expanded-
Uncontes...](https://www.amazon.com/Blue-Ocean-Strategy-Expanded-Uncontested-
ebook/dp/B00O4CRR7Y)]

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rchaud
Do your competitor research. Which is the closest brand offering what you're
offering. What kind of brand voice do they use when communicating with their
customers? What are they doing right? Are there any gaps in their designs that
your brand can fill?

Talk to customers: \- Look up fashion subreddits to see what people are
wearing, what they like and what they don't. \- Reach out to Instagrammers
that fit your customer profile. If they have a large number of followers, see
if they'd be interested in trying out a sample of your designs. \- Get an
advertiser account on FB/IG and use their hyper targeting ability (geo, age
range, favorite brands, etc) to get an idea of the size of your market

Test out different platforms that you'll use to sell. Shopify, Etsy,
Squarespace etc all offer ways to sell online, but the prices, levels of
service and reliability are going to vary.

Try to forecast your production volume accurately, so you don't accidentally
take orders for items you no longer have inventory for.

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barry0079
Just an idea. How about creating a social media "Brand" presence? Show off the
fashion with it being unavailable. Get feedback, gauge who your audience is
and put it in peoples minds. You can see how viable it is and gather feedback
before committing to anything too big. Maybe offer social media models samples
in exchange for advertising?

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gadders
The only think I know about this is that I believe Nasty Gal got caught out by
not doing their clothes on a size curve: [https://www.quora.com/How-can-I-
make-a-size-curve-for-clothi...](https://www.quora.com/How-can-I-make-a-size-
curve-for-clothing-retail-so-I-can-determine-what-quantity-of-each-size-to-
order)

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Kinnard
I think this lacks the "leverage" that excites a lot of the people on HN and
which people (around here) believe make a business worth doing.

>"Startups offer anyone a way to be in a situation with measurement and
leverage. They allow measurement because they're small, and they offer
leverage because they make money by inventing new technology.

What is technology? It's technique. It's the way we all do things. And when
you discover a new way to do things, its value is multiplied by all the people
who use it. It is the proverbial fishing rod, rather than the fish. That's the
difference between a startup and a restaurant or a barber shop. You fry eggs
or cut hair one customer at a time. Whereas if you solve a technical problem
that a lot of people care about, you help everyone who uses your solution.
That's leverage.

If you look at history, it seems that most people who got rich by creating
wealth did it by developing new technology. You just can't fry eggs or cut
hair fast enough. What made the Florentines rich in 1200 was the discovery of
new techniques for making the high-tech product of the time, fine woven cloth.
What made the Dutch rich in 1600 was the discovery of shipbuilding and
navigation techniques that enabled them to dominate the seas of the Far East."

>"If you want to understand startups, understand growth. Growth drives
everything in this world. Growth is why startups usually work on technology —
because ideas for fast growing companies are so rare that the best way to find
new ones is to discover those recently made viable by change, and technology
is the best source of rapid change. Growth is why it's a rational choice
economically for so many founders to try starting a startup: growth makes the
successful companies so valuable that the expected value is high even though
the risk is too."

I recommend reading these:

[http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html)

[http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html)

and especially zero to one:
[http://zerotoonebook.com/](http://zerotoonebook.com/)

First chapter is free online.

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Kinnard
Could you add what will be unique and innovative about the brand to the
question? It will help with answering.

~~~
tuxxy
Done!

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cimmanom
What will be gender neutral about it? How will you account for the different
body shapes of men and women?

~~~
tuxxy
From my partner:

> Most garments don't have a lot of difference when it comes to body types.
> They don't need to be constructed that differently (although they are when
> you go to the mall). I also use very forgiving fabrics to account for people
> who have more curves in their body. In general, my clothing has a more
> androgynous fit. I also use fit models of various body types to ensure
> flattering fits for varying body shapes. If required, a garment can be
> constructed while taking into account breasts/hips and still maintain a
> gender neutral aesthetic.

