Start a Fashion Company

Summary: If you have knowledge or experience in fashion designing you can start a company making clothes, shoes and accessories and selling them to specialty stores or in your own boutique. Our basic guide will help you discover what you need to know about starting a fashion company.

Fashion generally refers to the prevailing style at a certain period of time, but most often people associate it with clothing and accessorising.

It is an important part of our culture so that it has become a multi-billion dollar industry. Yearly, fashion shows are held in fashion capitals of the world like Paris and New York. One can start a company under this industry as a clothing designer, accessories designer or footwear designer. What you need to have is knowledge of fashion, textile fabric and ornamentation, maybe from a university or design school or from working in a fashion designing company. Better still if this knowledge is supplemented by a degree in business or marketing. Visit The National Association of Schools of Art and Design for a list of accredited institutions that offer art and design courses.

Starting a Fashion Company Big or Small

If you are planning to start a fashion designing business, you must first determine how large your business should be. Of course, it would depend on how much capital you have. Determining how big or small your business would be will clarify what will be your function in your business. If you have considerable experience and is starting big, you can be a lead designer for a staff of technical designers. As such you become responsible for creating the designs, and choosing the colours and fabrics, but it is the group of technical designer that should do the work of turning into final product the designs you made. It means you will have your own patternmakers, tailors, hand sewers and dressmakers.

If you are starting small, which may mean alone with just an assistant, you do most or all of the work, from designing to patternmaking to sewing the clothes. You can design clothes made of high-quality, expensive textiles sewn with top-of-the line expertise for individual clients or you can do original work for specialty stores, or retail your work in your own store. You can start this project as a home business. What you would need are fabric, sewing machines, lightings, need-craft kits, scissors and cutting tools, and pattern making tables. Fashion designers can earn up to $80,000 yearly.

Miscellaneous Tips for a Fashion Designer

• computer-aided designs are gaining popularity, but keep your sketching ability as they always remain useful for a fashion designer
• keep yourself updated about what's going on in the fashion business by associating with people within your local fashion industry and reading from magazines what others are saying about coming trends in fashion so that you will be able to make designs that are relevant to the times
• create a fashion look that clients could identify as being your work
• develop a strong sales and presentation skills – you’d need this as much as your fashion designing skills in bringing your business to success