I want to start a clothing line for infants/toddlers/young men. I have a name brand (example: babyphat, tommy hilfiger etc.) in mind but I don’t know where to start and where to end to get the line designed and into the stores for sale.
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Jay’s Answer:
If you have an idea, but no design, start by contacting your local fashion school, and hiring a student to help create your design (if you have the $, hire a professional designer).
If you have a design, but no clothing, hire a seamstress to create samples of your designs.
Stores buyers will be interested in your clothing lines if: 1) your designs will sell and 2) you can consistently produce quality on schedule. Most important, you need to prove that people will buy your clothing. How? Start selling the designs yourself. If you can prove the market, then they’ll be interested. By doing it yourself, then you’ll also prove that you can produce quality.
Alternatively, take you design concept and try selling it to a name brand. This is extremely hard, since you’ll basically be selling a concept, which is extremely hard to protect (they may see your idea and be inspired to copy it).
Before you start the long process, contact local buyers for your department stores. Set up informational interviews with them to find out how they find clothing lines, and who they work with. You might benefit from working for some of the companies they work with to learn the business.
