Starting your own online clothing store

Selling clothes online is booming, and that success is giving entrepreneurs ideas as they search for an interesting niche. The Covid crisis was extremely beneficial for stores that were already established, and e-commerce is still reaping the benefits today. Indeed, many potential customers used to browse physical stores to take the time to feel the fabrics and try on clothes. That period, during which France came to a standstill, made them discover just how practical online shopping can be. As a result, the online sales curve keeps climbing. If you’re thinking about joining this growth, here’s our advice on how to start your own online clothing store.

What products to sell in your online clothing store

Before you get into the technical side of building your online clothing store, you need to take the time to define what it will sell. If you jump in blindly, your chances of breaking into this market are slim.

You need to think about a concept or a range that stands out from your competitors. Take a look at what’s currently out there, observing what works and what doesn’t. Also think about your own tastes and aspirations.

Define where the clothes you want to sell will come from.

Original designs

Selling original designs is a real asset, since your pieces are rare, even unique. You can make the clothes yourself or handle the sales for a designer.

Print-on-demand

Print-on-demand sits halfway between original designs and ready-to-wear. You offer original designs that you create yourself or by working with a graphic designer.

You print, or have printed, only on demand, which means you avoid holding stock.

Ready-to-wear

Ready-to-wear means setting yourself up as a retailer for a wholesaler. Since your clothes are manufactured on a larger scale, choose your supplier carefully to make sure the products will appeal to your target audience.

Dropshipping

Dropshipping is the easiest option: you hold no stock at all and simply act as the link between the manufacturer (or wholesaler) and the customer. This is the safest solution, since you don’t invest in stock or in premises to store it, and you’re not responsible for shipping either. In exchange, your margin is lower, which means you need higher revenue to generate a profit substantial enough to live on.

Market research and the business plan

Building a business plan that includes, among other things, market research is essential.

Market research

Once you’ve decided which type of product you want to sell, you need to carry out market research. It defines your customer base, confirms that the market exists and isn’t saturated, and checks whether (or not) your target audience’s financial means match your offer.

The business plan

Market research is part of the business plan. Putting together this comprehensive document, which paints a full picture of your online clothing store, is absolutely essential before investing a single euro in your e-commerce business.

The business plan starts with a written section that lets you explain your choices and define how you’ll operate. It also includes all the financial figures that let you assess how much money you’ll need to get started.

Finally, the business plan lays out your sales strategy and all the resources you’ll put in place to get noticed.

This business plan is a powerful tool for convincing investors to back you, starting with your banker. The document will also serve as your roadmap for your first years of business.

If you’re not familiar with market research and business plans, get trained, because they are the guarantee of your success. These documents prove that your project is viable. Thanks to the financial tables in particular, you’ll know whether your selling prices are set correctly to cover your costs and generate enough profit to invest in growing your store and to pay yourself.

You can find free resources online to learn how to put together a business plan.

Think about your future accounting software for your online clothing store

You also need to get trained in accounting and management if you don’t already know the subject well. You’ll need to equip yourself with invoicing software for your online clothing store. By choosing software that’s easy to use, like Bizyness for example, you won’t have any trouble issuing invoices and drawing up statements to declare your income, but you still need to understand the finer points of accounting to manage your store.

The mistake many first-time entrepreneurs make is failing to account for all their costs and overlooking the running expenses of their e-commerce business. Don’t take the accounting side lightly, and you’ll give yourself every chance of success.

Building your website

The tools to build your online clothing store are available online. You’re free to train yourself to use them, or to go through a website-building professional.

E-commerce CMS platforms provide all the modules you need: the store itself with your product listings, the cart and secure payment methods, the about page, the terms of sale, the blog, and so on. These include Shopify, WooCommerce, Prestashop, Magento, Wizishop, and others.

You can also build your store starting from a standard site, WordPress or any other CMS, and enrich it with the tools you need to design your sales funnel.

If you don’t have enough time or aren’t comfortable with technology, hiring a professional guarantees you a site that’s attractive, functional, and technically solid.

These three qualities are essential to your store’s popularity. Good design and smooth navigation make the user experience more enjoyable and unconsciously build a climate of trust. Conversely, a sloppy site with tedious navigation not only puts people off, but also creates a climate of suspicion. And you’re going to ask your visitor to hand over their card number. Without trust, there are no sales.

The technical side of the website matters both to visitors and to search engines. A well-built site is fast, and its clean layout allows for smooth navigation. On top of that, your payment system needs to be perfectly secure. Google and its competitors analyze both the substance and the form of your site to rank it in their search results. And only a good ranking lets you gain visibility.

Fine-tune your site and only launch it once it’s fully operational, so you make a good impression from your very first visitors.

Get the word out!

Launching your website is only the beginning of the story — now you need to get the word out. If you followed the steps above, you’ve already laid out your sales strategy in your business plan.

There are many ways to promote your online clothing store. Here are the main ones.

Social media

Social media is now inseparable from having a website. It has become an important part of marketing and is a powerful tool to get noticed, build strong connections with your audience, and earn recommendations.

Be present and active on your social media. For online clothing sales, you should naturally focus on visuals.

Search engine optimization (SEO)

SEO relies mainly on your site’s written content. Create a blog page that you’ll regularly update with articles of your choosing, built around your theme.

Offer engaging, well-illustrated articles that make people want to check out your products.

Paid advertising

Google AdWords and Facebook Advertising are the most popular channels for getting noticed. Set aside a reasonable budget for advertising, and above all, analyze every campaign very closely. These platforms give you access to a wealth of statistics and insights, so make the most of them. This lets you fine-tune your ad campaigns to make them more effective.

Email marketing campaigns

Your visitors’ data is valuable. You should collect your customers’ email addresses, which is easy thanks to the account they need to create to check out.

To grow your mailing list, offer a gift on your site, run contests on social media, offer a survey, and so on.

This list of email addresses lets you send out a newsletter with your latest offers, upcoming promotions, discount codes, and more.

Managing your business and accounting software for your online clothing store

Choosing the right accounting software for your online clothing store plays a big part in your success. It needs to bring together all the tools to help you manage your business, without eating up too much of your time. It’s just as essential that it be quick and intuitive to learn.

You can rely on software like Bizyness, which is designed for online selling. It automatically syncs with the most popular e-commerce platforms, including Shopify, WooCommerce and Wizishop. It also syncs with your bank account. You get smart tools to automate various tasks and save time on your admin work. You can also connect Bizyness with Zapier to add even more automation.

The software handles VAT calculations as well as foreign currencies. To discover its full set of features, you can try it out during a two-week free trial.