New Zealand fashion and lifestyle blog

A Guide: Starting a Successful Online Fashion Business

You have great business acumen as well as an eye for quality clothing — it’s about time you combined your entrepreneurial streak with your passion for fashion and started your own online business in the industry. No matter what attires and outfits you make available via your platform, if you do everything correctly, there will always be a customer base out there for you. Everybody likes to treat themselves to new clothes every now and again!

To do everything by the book in this sense and maximize your profit potential, you’re going to have to put the advice laid out below into practice.

Select your enterprise platform

Right off the bat, you need to choose the enterprise platform on which you will grow your business. Be warned, though, that this choice cannot be made on a whim. The platform that you choose will have a major impact on your profit potential going forward. Quite simply, you have to take care of this all-important decision to ensure that you choose the right platform for you and your store’s needs.

In this instance, your first task should be to compare Magento with Shopify Plus — being the two enterprise platform market leaders, your search should begin (and end) with them. If you have lofty aspirations for your business venture, you’re going to want to choose the platform that will allow you to make changes to your business without risking the scalability of your overall architecture. Your customers won’t expect your business to remain the same. They will want to see additions to your product line regularly, and they will want their experience on your site to improve over time. With its own massive architecture to fall back on, Shopify Plus will always fit the bill in this instance. Opt to use that particular multi-channel enterprise software, and you will be able to enjoy high-volume flexibility without the hassle of an on-premise solution.

What I wore today. Silk dress Karen Walker, purse Mi Piaci, lipstick MAC Heroine.

Hone in on your niche

Once your enterprise platform is selected, you have to really hone in on your niche. Aside from the fact that it will allow you to go ahead and choose and stock your product line, having a niche will also provide you with a target demographic to focus on. What’s more, it will provide you with a fashion season that you can base your selling endeavors around. Should you choose to hone in on a summer-wear niche, for example, you will give yourself an audience (holidaymakers) to market to, as well as a time period (springtime) in which you can begin to roll out your advertising campaigns.

Choose a specific business model

When you enter the fashion industry, there are four specific business models for you to choose from. These include:

  • Custom cut-and-sew
  • Private label
  • Dropshipping

Each of these models differ in the sense that each demands a different budget, set of skills, and overall business object. Depending on how much you are willing and able to devote to this cause, it’s down to you to choose the model that suits your store the most.

If you want to start a successful online fashion business, it’s imperative that you take all of the above advice. If you do, you’ll be sure to hit the ground running and be set up for long-term success.

15 July 2019

Disclosure: This is a collaborative post and the author’s views here do not necessarily reflect those of the blog owner. Threadnz.com occasionally receives monetary compensation or other types of remuneration for mentioning and/or linking to any products and services from this blog.