Thanks to the internet, just about everyone can start a business without having a brick-and-mortar store to sell to their target customers. A lot of rising entrepreneurs have found success in starting their own businesses online. This includes young fashion designers and clothes makers who have created their own online clothing lines.
Advantages of Starting Your Online Clothing Line
Starting your own online clothing line has a lot of advantages. You don’t have to build an actual physical store or rent store space, allowing you to save more money than traditional business owners.
The average office lease rate in Canada went up to $18.10 from $17.68 in 2020. With an online store, business owners can manage their clothing line right from the comfort of their own home, without having to rent expensive office space for themselves or employees.
Virtually everything you’ll need to run an online store is on your PC, as long as you’re connected to the internet and have a laptop or a desktop. The Canadian tax system makes it easy to claim home business tax expenses so you’re covered in that regard.
One of the most vital benefits of owning an online clothing store is that the business owner can easily deal with the logistics and other processes remotely and not bother hiring people to do all the complicated, physical operations.
Tools like Shopify simplify ecommerce business from start to finish.
Why Start an Online Clothing Line in Canada?
Canada is one of the biggest economies in the world and holds a lot of promise for business owners, online or offline. In 2019 alone, e-commerce businesses contributed a total of $309 million to the Canadian economy. This shows the immense value of online businesses to Canadian consumers.
Now that we’ve got your attention, here is everything they must know about starting an online clothing line in Canada.
How to Start Your Own Clothing Line in Canada
There are several ways entrepreneurs can start their clothing line in Canada. However, it can be confusing for those who have zero experience with running a business online.
Here are some of the recommended steps on how to start an online clothing line in Canada.
1. Know Your Niche
It’s ok to want to sell clothes online but since there are so many clothing types and needs, it’s important to carve a niche for yourself.
Sellers can sell tons of clothing options using their platform of choice. Choosing a niche allows you to create a strong and actionable business plan.
It might be tempting to start out aiming to be the next Target or Hudson bay in a couple of months but you should know that a small customer base has its benefits.
Targeting fewer people allows for more engagement and customer loyalty. You can also focus on offering the best products and nurturing your relationships.
This also gives you the time to develop your product lists to appeal to your specific target market. Having a niche allows you to limit your competition and increase your chances of getting loyal customers in the long run.
Choose What Products The Online Clothing Store Should Have
It can be very tempting to sell everything, but this could cost you your business. Always start off small, pick a handful of items that can be sold online, watch the progress of your online clothing store and then add more.
Think about how fashion fads are changing from time to time. It’s best to start out with the essentials first, then branch out to the seasonals and specials. For instance, you don’t want to start out an online clothing store selling Halloween costumes and expect a boom though out the year.
Establishing a presence with basic in-demand and non-seasonal clothing can be a good way of stabilizing your clothing line. Also, the basics are very flexible and can accommodate so many consumers.
Choose the Proper Business Model
It can be print-on-demand, custom cut-and-sew, a private label, or drop shipping for other online clothing lines. Each of these has its own pros and cons and can affect how the online business would be run, and how many people would be required to meet orders.
Creating The Online Clothing Line
This will involve buying a domain for the site, maintaining the site, and hiring people who can carry out specialized tasks and responsibilities for the online clothing store.
If you’re looking to cut down on website maintenance tasks or don’t have the expertise, you might want to start out with an all-in-one commerce platform like Shopify.
Shopify powers over 1,700,000 businesses worldwide!
Choosing which platform your online business will use will affect how sales would translate to earnings and profit.
Launching Your Clothing Line
At this point, you want to start running promotions, email marketing, giveaways, collaborations with social media influencers, setting up social media accounts to interact with the followers and potential customers, and setting up email marketing strategies and automation for marketing the online clothing line.
Make sure that Google Analytics and Google Ads accounts are set up before driving traffic through ads. These tools give you deeper insight into who your buyers are and will help you know the best way to sell to them.
Generating Traffic to the Online Clothing Line
Email marketing, PPC, social media, content marketing, guest posts on blogs related to the niche, and using influencers are popular methods for generating traffic to an online clothing line.
Those who don’t know how online marketing works can always hire people who can get things done. But to cut down on costs, it’s best to learn to wear many hats, at least until your business takes off.