How to Start a Clothing Line For Free
Today’s top designers might be household names like Chanel and Calvin Klein but they all had to start somewhere.
If you’ve always dreamed of having your own clothing line like them, you might be wondering how to do it, especially if you don’t have a lot of cash in your startup fund.
The good news is, there are lots of resources and tools available that can help you kickstart a clothing line of your own, to make your wildest dreams come true. If you’re working on a limited budget though, the process can be a little different, but that doesn’t make it impossible.
So, how do you start a clothing line with no money?
After you’ve established your brand profile, you’ll need to come up with some designs, and enlist the services of a print-on-demand dropshipping business. They’ll allow you to only make what you sell so there’s no initial investment required, but it’ll have to be marketed properly and made well to be a success.
If you have dreams of becoming the next huge thing in fashion, this guide is for you, with a cheap or free option to take it every step of the way. We’ll show you how to start a clothing line from virtually nothing and ensure that it’s a best seller, all without needing a huge chunk of startup cash.
The Cost Of Starting A Clothing Line
To answer the question of how much it costs to start a clothing line is like asking how long is a piece of string. This all depends on variables, including the type of clothes you want to make, how much product you want to start with, and what parts of the process you need to outsource.
For an independent clothing brand, you can expect to outlay anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars. This includes designing the clothing, printing a bunch of t-shirts to get started, marketing your product, and storing it all somewhere while you run the business and try to make sales.
On the other end of the scale, you could spend a lot more, and it’s usually only a luxury that’s afforded to people with money to spare. There’s a huge risk that you won’t be successful and all of your hard-earned cash will be wasted, so you can see why people are more eager to do it cheaply or for free these days.
Can You Really Do It For Free?
The notion that you can start a clothing line for free would be preposterous 20 years ago but today it’s becoming more and more normal.
There’s nothing stopping you from creating a clothing line and selling your garments online, even if you don’t know how to sew, have no idea about fashion design, and don’t have access to manufacturing equipment.
With options like print on demand garments and dropshipping, the initial investment is lower or zero, and the risks are low.
However, you still need to be business savvy and have a good product in mind for it to be successful and make sure the resources and services you’re relying on are good quality as well.
Starting with selling t-shirts is the simplest approach and one that still lets you flex your creative muscle. Once you’ve established a brand and have some cash, you can expand your range until it’s a fully formed clothing line.
Dropshirt: Our parent company produces t-shirts in bulk. For all company uniforms, staff shirts and merchandise. Get a bulk quote here.
Coming Up With Your Brand
Before you can start looking at pretty designs and choosing colours, you’ll need to establish your brand. When you think about any memorable brand you’ll be able to see what its profile is, the purpose it has, and the type of customer it’s trying to create for.
This is exactly what you want to figure out for your brand and clothing line.
The first step is creating a customer persona that you can use to form the rest of the brand, so come up with your dream buyer.
From this, you’ll establish who your dream customer is, their likes and dislikes, and how their lives influence what they wear. From there, you can create a clear brand image always with the customer in mind, and everything you make will be for them.
Free Design Apps To Try
Next, you’ll want to start playing around with designs, thinking up slogans or logos, and experimenting with different colours for your t-shirts.
This part of the process will take the longest and it shouldn’t be rushed into, so be prepared to spend some months testing out your design skills and finding looks that meet your brand’s image.
There’s no need to be a fashion designer though, as you can choose from a range of downloadable design apps for low or no cost.
Hop onto your preferred app store and get started playing around with some looks, or utilise our free design software to help you to make some basic designs.
Get at least three different designs that you would like to see printed on a t-shirt and perfect them until you’re happy.
Dropshirt: Our parent company has a unique design tool that lets you design it online. 100’s of fonts and stock art to choose from. Personalise a t-shirt here.
Building A Website
Any good business these days needs an online presence, and especially if you’re selling goods on the internet. Although social media is helpful, it should not be the basis of your online presence, so you’ll want to have a website.
Getting a website built for you is not going to be free. Unless you are a web developer. Even then, it will still cost you something for hosting.
Get a professional e-commerce store – build for t-shirt drop-shipping – on your own domain
There are loads of free website builders like WordPress and Wix, and options to upgrade to something more advanced if you need it. However if you want to have your own domain name (recommended) it’s not going to be free.
Besides, most of the free website builders don’t have an e-commerce option available with the free plan. Bigcartel is the only platform that offers a free plan. Free up to 5 products.
We also have a dropshipping integration for Bigcartel for easy order fulfilment.
Other options for selling goods are with online marketplaces like Etsy and eBay, but make sure you do your research and find one that suits your brand. There are different options for payment, but Etsy will only charge $0.20 per listing and sale, so you aren’t out a whole lot.
Or you can create a free listing on our t-shirt shop. A great place to start if you want a free listing and then hands free order fulfilment when the time comes.
No matter how you do it, you need to be seen online and have a place to link through to your printing on demand service which will come next.
Dropshirt has an Integration for Woocommerce. A place to connect your Woocomerce products to our print-on-demand service. Once connected, we offer an easy ‘click to order’ fulfilment button. Create an account here.
Print On Demand Production
Print on demand services are what make it possible to start a clothing line for free these days, and as the name suggests, they only print whatever is demanded. This means customers can head to your site, order a t-shirt, where it can be sent to them to create.
You’re not wasting money with a bunch of stock sitting there nor are you having to store it anywhere and package it up when it’s time to sell. These sites offer simple plug-ins that work on your website and allows for order automations.
You choose the designs and images, give customers some options for sizes and colours, and they will make it for you once it’s been ordered. As this is their business, turnaround is usually fast and prices are still low enough for you to make a profit. (Good, Fast and Cheap?)
Dropshipping The Goods
The next step in the process is getting your clothing sent out once it’s been ordered and this part is surprisingly easy. Thankfully, some print on demand places also have access to dropshipping services so it all ties in nicely with each other.
When you enlist the help of a dropshipping service, you’re effectively handing the work over to them. They will receive the order a customer makes, see what needs to be made, create the garment, package it up, and ship it out for you.
You pay them a fee for this and then pocket the rest of the money that’s coming your way from customers at your online store.
Dropshirt is where to get ‘Print-on-demand’ merch that is shipped directly to your customer. As a print-on-demand service you hold no stock. Order just one. As a ‘white label’ service. It even looks like you shipped it. Create an account here.
How To Find Your Target Market?
When starting a clothing line, it’s important to identify and target your ideal customer.
- Who are you designing your clothes for?
- Who is going to buy your clothes?
To figure this out, you need to do some market research. Start by surveying your friends and family to get an idea of who they think would be the best target market for your clothing line.
Then do some online research to see who your competitors would be and what they are targeting.
See what they’re doing well and how you can do it better. See what sort of clothing they have in their range to give you inspiration.
Next, you need to figure out what your ideal customer is like? This is called your ‘customer persona‘ and is critical to starting a clothing brand that is less likely to fail.
This is a fictional representation of your ideal customer. The Persona includes, what kind of person they are, what are their interests, values, habits, preferences, age, gender, likes and dislikes?
Knowing all this about your customers will make it much easier to figure out which pieces in your line will be the most popular (and help you create more of them).
Once you have a good understanding of your target market, you can start designing clothes that appeal to them. You’ll also need to create a marketing strategy that resonates with them.
Keep in mind that it takes a lot of hard work and dedication to make a successful clothing line, so be prepared to put in a lot of effort.
How To Get Inspiration For The Design?
The design process can be overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be. For many designers, inspiration comes from other sources – movies, art galleries, nature or patterns that they see on the street or in their home.
However you find your inspiration, it’s important to document your ideas and sketches so you can refer to them later.
To help get yourself started, create “inspiration boards” with images of people who would wear your clothes and scenes that will likely show up in your work. You can also consult the following resources:
Articles on Design : Search online for articles on fashion designers and their work. This is a fantastic way to learn more about what inspires your favourite designers and how they went from sewing in their home to running powerhouse fashion brands.
Books : Books can provide inspiration for future collections or individual garments by showing you the history of fashion and the processes that go into designing clothing. Keep an eye out for articles about designers you enjoy.
Patterns : Patterns can help you understand the construction of clothing and how pieces are made. In addition to garments, patterns can also provide inspiration for accessories or other additions that can go into a collection.
These days it’s easy to find free garment and pattern making software online, so there is no need to buy patterns if you don’t want to.
Cheap And Free Marketing Ideas
With the other steps taken care of, you still need to make sure you’re keeping customers engaged and marketing your goods to new ones.
When marketing is done right and with a purpose, the payoff is huge, but you don’t have to spend a fortune on ad campaigns and pricey influencers just to get your name out there.
To do this for free, utilise social media to stay engaged, send out e-newsletters with special offers, and giveaway a few key items of clothing to get them seen online where possible.
You can get into contact with other businesses to see if they’ll do a group giveaway or attend local networking events to grow your connections.
There’s a lot you can do without spending any money or even having a lot of product on you to advertise.
Pros And Cons Of Starting A Clothing Line For Nothing
With all of the steps laid out, you can start to see how to make this dream come true without spending much money at all.
However, if you want to start a clothing line on a budget the best thing to do is weigh up your pros and cons, so we’ve done that for you.
Pros
- The risks are lower with this type of setup because you haven’t put in much of your own money, so there’s nothing there to lose.
- The on-demand printing market is bigger than ever and there’s a lot of healthy competition out there from top-tier manufacturers all trying to offer lower prices.
- With this aspect of the business taken care of, you’ll have more free time to invest in growing your brand.
Cons
- There may be some costs if you choose a drop shipper or garment manufacturer that is faulty. These will become your responsibility and if there are issues with products, customers will look to you to rectify them.
- Although much of the work is done, there are still all other aspects of a business to consider. You’ll spend a lot of time and some money on things like accounting, customer service, administration, and more.
- Creating a look and designs that stand out will require more work, as you don’t want to get lost in the overcrowded market.
A Clothing Line With Minimal Costs
There are so many great resources out there today that can help the average person create a clothing line on a shoestring budget, from design to market.
Whether you want to cut corners in some steps or do it all for free, it’s possible to earn money selling clothes, and once you start building your fashion empire the world will become your oyster.
Related Questions
Online design services, dropshipping, and free marketing tools are just some ways you can create a clothing line with minimal money upfront.
If you’ve always dreamed about being a fashion mogul but don’t know where to start, these are some commonly asked questions that people like you have asked.
Do I Need A Business To Sell Clothing Online?
In Australia, if you plan on earning income for selling goods and services, you will need to register as a business entity to do so legally. The most common options are sole trader or partnerships, which make you responsible for everything the business does, including paying tax and reporting income information.
What Do I Need To Start An Online Boutique?
An online boutique is run like any other business, so it requires a business plan, marketing, and an online presence like a dedicated website to be successful. A boutique sells clothes from different designers so having access to suppliers who will provide their garments for your website is essential with this type of business.
Can You Lose Money With Dropshipping?
Although there are lots of benefits to dropshipping, it’s a business model that comes with risks as well. Choosing a dropshipper with poor quality products or inferior customer service will reflect poorly on your brand, and because you can’t inspect the goods personally, you’re taking a risk when choosing a provider.
