Last week, i discussed Passion, Target audience, Study the system in your industry, Have a clear vision, Start small and Think Big.
6. GROWTH
Focus on growth, not success.
Growth is a process of learning and being.
MR NIGER D
Do you remember this in your secondary school days? In biology, i was taught that living things have some characteristics that made them up.
Movement
Respiration
Nutrition
Growth
Excretion
Reproduction
Death
An honest advice or suggestion from me would be "focus on growth", not success. Growth is a road that is always under construction, a path that leads to greatness. Hold to your heart very dearly the principle of growth, make it your religion, make it your culture. When you learn, you will grow.
Become the best you can be.
It is not possible to separate oneself from ones business. It is not possible to be a person with bad character and poor manner of treating people or lack personal discipline yet have a successful business.
No one is perfect, so our job is to work hard to become a better person. The better the person you become, the better your chances of success in your clothing line business.
8. INVEST IN MACHINERY
Continue putting something in the business.
Machinery is also something you should carefully invest in. Well, it all depends on the kind of clothing line you are planning to begin. I will use example that i am familiar with, my own experience in the urban clothing: t-shirt/casual/branding industry.
It is usually:
1. 3 industrial sewing machines
(straight sewing, whipping and fold-up machine)
2. A computer
3. Plotting machine
4. Pressing machine
5. Mesh, Balcomade and other screen printing materials
Investing in machinery should be something you do a step at a time. The above list of machinery or equipment are at least what you will need but you may not have them all before you start. As a street boy, in my humble beginning, i had no cash to buy most of these on the list, how i went about it is a story for another day. But you can look around for good print houses where they do good jobs, you can always go with your own artwork and the t-shirts and they will print on them. You can also contract the sewing projects out, look around for some good tailors or buy some ready made t-shirts from the market. The only disadvantage is that you have less control over the outcome of the projects you contract to these parties. If you are not buying all the machines, then you have to do more of administration.
9. THINK LONG TERM
Good things take effort and time.
Think and plan long term. Fashion business is not buying and selling, it is not stock market, it is not science, it is an art. And like every other artistic projects or say any good entity that will stand the test of time.
Sometimes people quit a project even before they actually started the project, that is because they expected the project to start yielding result sooner that its due time. Fashion business needs a lot of innovation, brand positioning, packaging, marketing and good product quality.
It will take time to get off the ground, 5-10 years will be a good time to look at. Be patient.
10. BRAND YOUR BUSINESS
Create a unique business different from the rest.Create an identity for your business , lots of people run businesses but very few of them take branding/identity seriously, many do not even understand it at all.
Branding or brand identity has to do with how you want your customers to see and percieve you?
Branding entails cteating a great simple logo, colour, letter headed papers, business cards etc. Anyting that will always remind the people of your business. Branding makes you unique and professional.
Might have to continue with Part C, next week.
Thank You.
Written by: Alli Quadri Olalekan (Light)
CEO, Quadoowear
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