I. START A CONCEPT BOARD
WHAT IS & HOW TO START A CLOTHING CONCEPT BOARD?
A concept board simply refers to a board that has all your inspiration and ideas to be used as a visual guide to help you create your collection. It also makes you realize the visual consistency your clothing brand must-have. This concept board usually starts with a whole bunch of stuff, stuff that is not even related to clothing.
It can be for example a car, and it is for the color sake or you’re doing a retro collection so you are thinking about clothing and lookbook concepts simultaneously, you get the point so there is not a right or wrong concept board, it is only what moves you as a designer in that collection. It’s normal for you to go back-and-forth in this process and edit down to find consistency in your final collection that tells a similar story about the type of collection or brand that you are building.
The best way to visualize this will be, think of the car company Tesla, and think of all the different car models they offer in terms of aesthetic, and now think about the company Ford, and imagine a few of ford cars were to be presented as part of the Tesla collection. Immediately the Ford cars will stick out like a sore thumb looking and feeling like they do not belong.
When creating a concept board or a collection the main goal is to find consistency with your aesthetic of clothing you want to offer that would be visually understood by consumers the minutes they have entered your website or store. The last thing you want when you create a storyline, also known as a Brand Identity or a collection is confusion.
Aesthetically unpleasant and brands that are all over the place in their merchandising normally tend to lose customer interest in the process when a customer comes to visit the store. If a customer is lured to visit your store because of some type of marketing you have done but he/she is not super excited on their first visit, then it’s an extremely high chance they will never want to return.
But when the brand gets the rights then it leaves a signature mark of joy, inspiration and excitement in the customer’s memory therefore not only will they come back but also there is a great chance they become great brand ambassadors and tell friends about your brand.
So when you begin to put together your concept board, start doing all the research you can possibly do, online and off-line such as magazines, Pinterest and any other form of inspirational medium.
This process of gathering data and information starts by first thinking deeply about what it is that you want to say in your design then finding different resources that will enhance your inspiration and get you closer to your ultimate goal of perfectly telling that story.
Remember there isn’t anything that has not been created by someone else in the fashion industry, to think otherwise is pretty much a cliché. The smart and savvy entrepreneur will understand how to identify what is currently on-trend and merge their collection within the current trend concept rather than trying to reinvent the wheel. So step one, now go ahead gather all the pictures and structure aboard until it resembles something like this
II. MERCHANDISE & EDIT YOUR COLLECTION
After accomplishing your first goal, which was to create a fashion design concept board, now is where it gets interesting. The very crucial and important part of this process it’s called editing. Editing is very useful and it is done gradually in a matter of days. This is where you really need to think deep and hard about the following:
IS IT WELL MERCHANDISED?
Merchandising your collection simply means making sure the color story works, it is sale-able, possibly you can rehash by enticing customers to buy things combined like a tee, hoodie, and jogger to maximize your transaction value per customer.
This is not the same as offering a discount model to increase sales but rather imaging if you have a picture showing an outfit that consists of a jogger, a tee and a hoodie which looks phenomenal in the way it’s color-coordinated with great Images displaying the items, which leads to the customer adding all items into the cart without the need to persuade them with coupons and discount, that’s what’s called being on point.
By evaluation, your concept board to identify styles in the collection that retain these values and to have a great flow from one to the other when they are put together as an outfit or when items on your website have been displayed next to each other well merchandised, they play a crucial part in your overall sales. Whether that means customers buying a few more pieces then they came for or buying an outfit because it looks so enticing.
This process is the key to your success and you apply it correctly and learn from it, collection after collection, it will be a road map for you to victory land.
Here are some additional facts, today to create an aesthetically pleasing website on square or Shopify takes a weekend and a couple of hundred bucks if you choose to go with high standard templates, and an amazing product picture that really feels like something you get from a high-end store will only take a few hundred dollars if you know how to grind.
So to not have these touchpoints in your customer experience to not be exquisite is not an excuse but a failure for a lack of determination from your end.
Moving forth, put yourself on the customer’s shoe and ask questions such as does the collection look like something I as a customer would be excited to see in another store or site.
To give you an example if you’ve created ask yourself what looks better, is this appealing to the customer, will he/she enjoy shopping in my store, sticking around to learn more about us, or buy any item, possibly more than one.
Keep these things in mind when you are on a journey to create is a cohesive and consistent collection with a great color story, amazing visuals and design pieces with the same customer in mind, don’t create items for contemporary streetwear and punk rock or product that looks like it belongs Soulja boy video, thinking this is cool, it is not…be consistent and always create for the same customer until you are so grand as a brand to expand into other categories.
The general mistake we normally see with startups is a lack of understanding of their demographic and customer base. If you have clarity who your customers are before you start your collection then the design should come to you very naturally, and so does the collection in terms of color, merchandise, price, and overall storytelling. This is what you called a winning strategy in a well thought of design/business plan.
III. EDITING A COLLECTION
HOW MANY STYLES SHOULD A FASHION COLLECTION HAVE?
There is not a right or wrong answer to this question and also there is no magical number that exists. This is like asking someone how much weight should I bench press? Well depending on how long you have been going to the gym, how fit are you and have you been practicing and building up your weight capacity.
So to clarify this answer for entrepreneurs lets begin with,
● STARTUPS
Beginners, on the other hand, there is this exponential curve that you need to go through to make sure you understand who your customers are and what your customers want from you before you start throwing a bunch of things on the wall to see which one will stick.
Initially, we see more savvy individuals start off by experimenting with no more than half a dozen styles. Rare but also we’ve seen entrepreneurs who understood their customers so well to a point they started off with 3-4 styles and grew their business exponentially from that.
If you are not certain because this is your first rodeo and you also don’t have any industry experience then the best answer for you would be, first start with a few styles say around 3-5 styles a couple of colorways each that would work best for your ideal customers to begin your case study.
EMERGING BRAND
If you have been in the industry and you have been growing steadily then you’ve almost likely been adding a few more styles to test each season from where you were a couple of seasons prior.
HOW DO I KNOW WHAT TO EDIT?
It does require training and understanding by doing it over and over Until it comes to you naturally. What we mean by naturally is, once you have formed a brand and your brand has a specific identity that anyone could point to and say oh this is such and such brand or you yourself look at the brand as a whole and say I see this product being able to belong with our concept or collection will take time.
Even if you are coming from a background of designing for someone else and now transiting to designing for your brand, yes it will be much easier but you will not master it in your first or second collection. But in time once you will form that type of identity that can easily be identified as your brand to you and to your team making The editing process so much easier to do.
Here are a couple ways of improving your chance of work that will sell in terms of the products that you have designed before you invest in inventory.
- If you have a tight budget then you can borrow some of the product pictures from AVmade you’re interested in to put in your concept board then later once you’re done building your concepts and you have the final products you want to proceed with then run a survey to see amongst all that you have selected which will work best by getting your customers feedback. But to be careful who you surveyed, if you do not survey the right customer base with the right demographic, price budget who also like the type of garments that you design then it will be counterproductive as this will throw off your data completely.
- The factories on AVmade all offer a low MOQ to test beforehand to put it in your website to see which takes off then replenish on those who are doing extremely well, steady and slowly moving away from those which are not.
- Get a sample first if you prefer to create your own photoshoot to begin to run your customer case study and other experiments.
FYI: you can not use pics of our factory partners to sell on your website as it is illegal and plagiarism unless it is to only do survey.
WHY & HOW DO I DO A SURVEY?
You can run a case study using software like SurveyMonkey.com to gather data by asking 5-10 key questions such as if your ideal customer agrees with your product choices and see if they like what you’re offering:
● Which styles are their favorite?
● Why those styles?
● Give them three different price points to choose from to see which they would pay for, or ask him what they will pay for it. This is tricky because most of us life worth it to lowball everything so be careful what they might say, if it looks unreasonable it’s it the hidden bias within
● What are the type of brands they shop? This could give you a clarity on the type of price points followed by the question
● What items do they buy frequently? Even further your agenda of learning their spending budget
Remember nothing in life is free so asking for someone to take a survey is no different. It may cost you maybe a $5 – $10 Starbucks gift card reward for participants who answered all the questions. So if you invest a couple hundred bucks, then imagine how much feedback you have now gathered. In case you needed a calculator, that’s 40 people who have participated in the survey and that is great.
Remember no one becomes a millionaire overnight but those who are willing to learn and understand their customers will eventually outperform everyone else and the headache and a the large financial burden as well.
So always think long-term. Becoming a business-savvy individual means understanding what your customers want on every level and always learning to improve. It also helps to put yourself in your customers’ shoes from time to time to understand their ever-changing needs and be a willingness to listen closely, be willing to grind and work effortlessly by moving the needle in the right direction to satisfy their every need.
Oh final advice for beginners is to start with no more than 5 styles, factories on AVmade offers low MOQ, many levels of customization like color, branding, printing, dying, fully customization and so much more with superior quality in mind to help push emerging brands like yourself to succeed.
So get started, go out to learn all about your customer and sell sell sell. This way you are giving yourself a chance to experiment, to give your customers choices so you get better feedback, and to also learn to gather data and make the right decision.
You would immediately know which styles are selling to start preparing yourself to replenish the winner styles quickly and also creating other new styles with the data in mind, keep in the engine running always in all ways.
IV. PRODUCT MANUFACTURING
WHERE DO DESIGNERS GET THEIR PRODUCT MANUFACTURES?
Call designer brands use factory that are high level vertically integrated who produce based on order without any striction such as fabric, color, size brake, finishing and ect… This gives designers a great opportunity to stand out and make their mark as they can offer more diversity always with the highest quality.
It is quite complex, and hard to find factories that operate at that caliber, visit our blog on how to Find the best factory for your clothing brand to learn more.
We have created a digital ecosystem like never before for designers and entrepreneurs to have a place AVmade that you can go to get high quality products made-to-order by the best factories in the USA with a click of a button in any form of customization and diversity in fabric, color, print and so much more you like.
You can manufacture whatever you want with very low MOQ and with over a dozen customization options and any size breakdown and so much more. Since all factories are made-to-order, you will always be able to replenish what you need without the need to compromise.
CONCLUSION
There are many different paths to success but certain paths are temporary and out of the current norm while others look further to the future and follow, learn and adopts the inevitable market dynamic.
The entrepreneurs whose approach is calculated with the long-term in mind will keep an eye open, be hands on in all their business processes, and approach every part of their business practice with calculated and strategic plan.
We strongly suggest for you to continue to push forward the D2C business strategy, also seek for quality products and make sure you stay ahead of the game, on-trend and built customer’s loyalty every chance you get. We have created AVmade with the elite factories in the U.S. to give future entrepreneurs like you an advantage to quality products at low MOQ and less hussle dealing with factories so you can allocate your time in marketing, customer service and growing your brand.
Our mission is to inspire entrepreneurs and empower factories. We want our platform to be an ecosystem to support small businesses and also make it about the journey of entrepreneurs that has what it takes rather than who has the most money or connection. We’ld love to support you in any way we can and continue to help you build a successful brand.
