Starting a clothing line is a great business opportunity as long as you have creative designs combined with excellent quality clothing material. The business idea is easy to conceive but there is one big hindrance in making it happen: the upfront capital investment. Your starting capital is critical to everything you do for your clothing line. It dictates your business size, material, number of units to produce and all other aspects of clothing manufacturing.

We completely understand that dealing with budget for a clothing line is overwhelming, especially when you are just starting out. First off, you need to identify the important components what you are going to spend your money on. In a clothing line business, these components are basically product development costs, manufacturing expenses and marketing cost. Once you have set your budget, you can easily work around these components and allot your money accordingly.



Product Development Costs
Product development in clothing manufacturing can be relatively complex given there are a lot of aspects covered from design conception all the way to the trims, cuts and other details needed for the clothing product. The more complicated the design gets the more expensive the product development costs become. We suggest for you stick to a particular budget for your product development and not spend beyond the number. Furthermore, you should start out with only one or a very limited number of items or designs.

If you are in a tight budget, you can use the DIY approach for design conception and it helps if you or your friends have graphic design skills. This will allow you to save off from paying a professional graphic designer to create your design on the computer and add these details to the tech pack. The most important factor in product development is the tech pack creation because this will serve as the basis for the manufacturer during sampling. As long as your tech pack is all done right, then repetitions and alterations can easily be avoided. You should get some help here to at least review your tech pack before going into production.



Manufacturing Expenses
To calculate for manufacturing expenses for starting a clothing line, focus on the cost per unit when producing in bulk. As the quantity of your orders rises, the price also goes down and vice versa. However, if you are a small-scale clothing manufacturer, research on standard retail prices around the industry for your products and similar ones. Since you are not capable of producing in bulk and avail of the lowest cost per unit possible, it is up to you to find manufacturers being able to avail of the lowest price possible.

Don’t focus too much on the unit price for the first very small order, because this should rather be about testing the market and not about making money. It’s perfectly fine if you just break even at the beginning. You can make your profit with a following larger order when you are more confident about your concept.

The cost per unit of your clothing product eventually serves as your basis for its target market price. Simply add up the production costs and other expenses before including a reasonable profit to it. Manufacturing expenses also cover other payable services involved as part of the production process. Services such as warehousing, delivery and shipping must be included as part of the manufacturing expenses.

Marketing Campaign
The most efficient and effective marketing platform we have these days is the internet and social media. Gone are the days wherein we have to rely on traditional advertising for our marketing campaigns. With social media, you can sign up for accounts for free and use them as your official page/site with different social media channels to market your clothing product. If your budget allows, you can boost your posts for a small fee and further expand your marketing campaign to a wider yet more specific audience.

Your marketing campaign also depends on the method of distribution your clothing line will implement. If you have a physical store, then traditional marketing may also apply given the traditional method of distributing your products. For e-commerce stores, it is advisable to exclusively stick to online marketing since your store itself is on a virtual setting. At this day and age, there is no need to allot an outstanding amount of money in marketing most especially if you can get away with free marketing as long as it is done right.

Conclusion
Starting a clothing line on a budget doesn’t have to limit your flexibility by much. It is important for you to know and understand these limits though to make sure you can work around your limitations without sacrificing aspects of clothing manufacturing that are important to you. The most important virtue is to uphold your quality and make sure your customers are satisfied with your clothing product despite of releasing them with a limited budget. Lowballing on quality simply to release clothing products and establish a clothing line won’t do good for your company in the long run. Make sure to work with a reliable small quantity clothing manufacturer like this one: https://intrepidsourcing.com/solutions/garments-production-package/