How To Start Your Own Sportswear Brand (From Scratch) Beginner's Guide

Transcript (auto-generated)
What's up design family and welcome to another video on this episode we'll be looking at the FittDesign beginner's guide on how to start your own sports wear or lifestyle brand. I'll be taking you through step by step and running you through what is required to get your own brand up and running. I hope you guys are ready this is going to be an amazing video.

STEP 1
When starting your brand is you need your logo there are two components of a logo to consider number one is the word marks the actual word and number two is the emblem or this symbol it's very important not to skip over this step as your logo is your icon it's what people will recognize you by for many years to come so come out the gate swinging there are many ways to make a logo but the easiest way would be to use one of the many free logo makers that you can find online that allow you to make a basic logo with a great font and a nice icon. You can make a free logo using one of the many free logo makers out there or if you want it to make something a bit more advanced you can look at tools like procreate for iPad and Adobe Illustrator on any Mac or Windows machine and you'll be able to put together some form of symbol and word mark together some fonts to look at for this year that our trending are definitely sans-serif fonts bold sharp and wide I have a couple up on the screen with the actual names of the fonts that you guys can look at and that would be a great starting point. Or you can pay someone to make a professional logo for you.

STEP 2
Step two when starting your product line is your items your actual physical product what are you going to make the best way to go about this would be figure out what time of year you want to launch it obviously fashion is somewhat dependent on the time of year we wear for the environment that we're in so if you're gonna launch the winter it's very different than if you're going to launch in summer figure out when you're gonna launch and then roll with it from there once you know when you're gonna launch to figure out the different types of products you want to put out let's just say you want to launch in winter you're gonna have a nice pair of fleece joggers you're gonna have to zip up and you want to have a long seat crewneck all four men already you've laid out your three different items that you want to design from their inspiration creating your own visual mood board pinterest.com is a great place to start it's like an image search engine where you can go and search certain terms and just give you a ton of images and you be able to essentially build a mood board for every item that you have in mind based on reference images and inspiration images so it's as simple as this you go on Pinterest create a board for every single you know for each product you have for the hoodie for the joggers for the long seat and then pin by searching on Pinterest pin images that you like that relate to that product to that board and from there you'll build like a visual directory of all images that are related to that board and it's free and you don't need any tools all you need is laptop all you need is an iPad whatever it is and you're able to build a visual board once you have your ideas or designs you want to build a tech pack.

STEP 3
What is a tech pack? I'm not gonna get into too much detail because that's a entire other topic for an entire different video but a tech pack in short is a construction document that tells the factory how to make this customized apparel because that's what we're making we're making customized apparel not off-the-shelf stuff that you're just printing a logo on a great place to put together a tech pack is www.techpacker.com and you'll be able to essentially lay out the different boards required in the tech pack I'll run you guys through what a tech pack typically contains and that should serve as the basis for your tech packs you need to have some form of markup in there the material specification you need to have the colorway schedule the different colors that you're using some form of sizing chart a technical sheet with some idea of the technical details of the garment on a spec sheet that has all the different detailing as well off the garment the zippers what types of zippers what trims that are used all that information is very important and it should be included in your type pack you want to make sure that one you say detect back to the factory it's as accurate and as thorough as possible so that they don't make any mistakes that's why I pack is key

STEP4
Now that you have your tech back you want to find a supplier to make the garment according to your attack pack this is probably the scariest part for most and I can see why but it doesn't have to be there are a couple places to find reliable suppliers a great place to start despite what you may have heard is WWE Baba comm you can sort through the suppliers based on the rating their trustworthiness you can even check out some reviews obviously read the reviews you want to make sure that those reviews are not artificial and from there you're even able to request a sample sometimes they have stock samples of their products that they've already made that they can send to you or you want to get them to make this customized sample my opinion always get them to make customized samples why is that some suppliers may play sneakily and they may send you examples of the work that are not actually don't work so the benchmark of quality that you have in mind is very different and you only see what the real quality is like after you place your order so always get a sample of the goods to make sure that they can create what you're looking for there's also another website called wWOZ register.com that has a ton of great information on there in terms of suppliers and their their locations it's just a matter of finding the right supplier for you at this stage since this is the beginner manual you want to go for a cut and sole supplier that can also supply you with the fabrics the any trims that you need and any packaging and label so you don't want you wouldn't be able to go out and get that yourself that is a whole other video in itself as well so stay tuned for the advanced manual where I'll run you through the intricacies of creating a supplier Network and essentially killing the supply chain but here we're just focusing on the cut and sew supplier that's who you want to work with they're minimums will range you'd be looking at somewhere between 100 and 500 in the lower end so minimum order quantity what is that I'm sure that that's a term that you've heard before and the minimum order quantity or the MOQ is what the factory will require of you in terms of purchasing in order to honor a specific given price or even in order to be able to accept an order and that number is based on this style style refers to a specific color of a specific design of a specific product so that's what style refers to once you've communicated with the factory request a quotation based on the 10-pack you've sent them and the MOQ that you're requesting approve the quotation make sure to get a quotation first before purchasing any samples that way you know that what prices are giving you is in the price range that you're willing and comfortable Payne once you receive the quotation asks for a fit sample most factories will charge for this and that's fine you'll want to pay them for it there is a certain amount of time and labor involved in creating a customized sample so you'll find that there's a balance of what you're paying for and what you're getting you want to ask for a fit sample so that you can receive this garment see your customized design and try it on a person and then from there you're able to make any changes that you need communicate those changes and from there you'll be able to place your order for the dog or once you have that order in the typical time will differ from factory to factory in our experience it's around two to three months and that involves obviously the fabric sourcing time because very mind the factory's sourcing your fabric in this case so they will be able to start cutting as soon as you place your order they'll have to place an order from their own supplier for whatever trims packaging and fabrics they have for your specific order so that's something to bear in mind once your order is finished there are a couple ways to get it delivered to where ever you are the main two would be shipping and air freight at a smaller scale where you don't have the luxury of time and the luxury of pre-planning you want to go with the air freight it's gonna cost more per unit but at the lower quantities you're really not gonna see as much cost-saving and you're gonna benefit from the faster times from there you want to know where you're gonna store it you're gonna store it at your apartment you have a small warehouse wherever it may be get it into there.

STEP 5
Now the next step is get a website up and running an e-commerce store. You want to look at getting a simple-to-use ecommerce store there's a ton of different platforms that are free to use and obviously you may pay for customized features or whatever maybe but websites like W Shopify calm Squarespace all offer great options or you can choose to work with a customized design agency that's able to give you something that is a hundred percent äôt so it obviously depends on what you're looking for at the time once you have your website up and running you'll want to register with some form of third-party label generation app because once your order comes in you'll want an easy way to print out a shipping label so that you're not having to fill those out by hand based on your customers order details and where their shipping address is there are a couple great options and I'll put a couple up on the screen right now so that you guys can try them out see what they have to offer

STEP 6
Is your shipping partner who are you going to be shipping with now that you have your product you have your website your going to make sales you want to get this amazing product to your customer so that they can try love it and order more and tell all their friends about it obviously there are a couple of great options depending on where you are the most global are DHL UPS TNT if you're in Europe FedEx USPS in the US they all vary depending on their location their efficiency their pricing but you'll want to meet with a corporate manager from there to discuss rates beforehand a pro tip is to always negotiate your race with these shipping managers they will always promise you that these are the best rates that you can and they can give you but it just takes a little bit of finessing and a look a little bit of back and forth and you're able to negotiate on this rate it's very important to not take the first rate that they give you as they be all end all.

So that's a wrap guys these are the six steps towards starting your own customized brand seems like a lot of work and in reality it is but believe me it is super worth it and you'll be so thankful that you actually did it until next time guys thank you so much for tuning in stay awesome and we'll see you in the next video.