How Many Garments Should be in Your First Fashion Collection?

The bar appears to be set very high. You want to represent your idea as a collection and create as many options for your potential customers as possible. It’s easy to compare your startup to established high fashion names that produce 200 piece runway shows or drop a collection of 100 new styles on their websites seasonally. But this is not reality and none of these brands that you are looking at started with this volume. Why should you?

Yes, options are great for potential customers, but with today’s 10 second attention spans, you have to make an impression quickly. Sometimes too many products is visual overload and analysis paralysis ensues.

Personally, I would say the sweet spot for your startup brand should be 3-5 garments. This is still going to be a ton of work and you have a big learning curve in front of you. Three to five garments gives you room to play with styling and still be able to call it a collection. 

If you are still determined to launch a big collection, keep reading.

Cost:

Just know that the more pieces you have in your collection the bigger the investment. I have designers that come to me looking for 15 or more garments. This takes time and energy on my part which includes engineering, reworking and fine tuning for production. I try to be mindful of everyone’s budgets but I am up front about what I need to make on a project. When I have to give my cost estimate, even I cringe a little for these type of high volume projects. It’s a lot of money. 

But it’s not just the development cost. You have to pay sampling, for fabrics, and all the components that go into each product. There are so many moving parts. Then there are the manufacturing costs. One component is the pattern grading. If you have 15 pieces and you want to be inclusive that means a big price tag as well. 

Mini rant- I charge industry standard rates for pattern grading. Don’t say that I’m too expensive when you are overproducing garments and sizes. If this is your plan then prepare to pay. 

Don’t expect a deal based on volume

At the factory level for cutting and sewing, yes, usually you can get a better price the more pieces you are looking to produce- but this is for one garment, not the number of pieces you are looking to make with them. The same can be applied to fabric and trims as well. The more you buy the cheaper it is, but only on an item by item basis. 

Startups can be extremely volatile. You may decide that halfway through you need to change your game plan to reduce the number of garments or you may scrap the idea entirely. I know myself and other service providers are leery to give any discounts if we have never worked with you before and/or can guarantee payment. It’s nothing personal. We just need to protect our time investments.

Are you able to juggle?

I’m feeling short of breath for you just thinking of organizing a 15 piece collection. As a designer you are actually only going to be designing for maybe 5% of the project and the rest is decision making and project management. Just finding the fabric for one garment can be a massive search and many, many emails. If you are working with only one fabrication and just different colors this lessens the load slightly. However, there are still 15 garments that need to have patterns made, garments sampled, fit and reworked to your specifications. Then you have to find a manufacturer for these garments which is not always one stop shopping. Oh boy! Hang on to your hats for your to-do list.

Anything and Everything Will Go Wrong

No matter how seasoned you are in the garment industry, there will always be a kink in the plan somewhere. Imagine, everything is ready to go for production but then the fabric gets lost in shipping. Everyone is waiting. Or a component arrives to the factory that is not correct and we have to start from the beginning. Or the garments are rolling out of sewing and they are measuring small. 

All of this or something similar will happen. I actually had a job at one time where we produced for one of the toughest QA standard brands in retail.  Everyone knew exactly what they were doing and how to prepare for production, but things still happened.  My job was to just wait for whatever issues one of the overseas factories had overnight to enter into my inbox so I could help them solve it and to make it right with the customer. It was like and ER unit for production problems. 

These sorts of situations can be stressful, so make sure you are up for the task. 

But you have a runway show to prepare for! What will you show?

Prepping for a runway show generally requires a good amount of garments- enough to fill the time allotted. Runway shows are just PR opportunities. They do not mean that you have “arrived” or makes you officially a designer. Most runway shows for startups require you to pay to play. Yes, you may get some photos but what counts is who is seeing these garments. Are there buyers in the audience? Maybe people that can help build your brand? Probably not. I could be wrong, but either way make sure you have goal in mind for participating. It should not be just for an ego boost. 

I would say forget paying for a runway show and instead invest in good photos for your website. This could include hiring a stylist, renting a space and hiring a professional photographer. With photos you can use these for your website, social accounts and whatever materials you need to share your products. 

Will you be able to keep up with this investment level consecutively?

Don’t expect much of a break between collections, especially if you are producing seasonally. You will always be behind schedule and sometimes even working on two collections at once. This is just a fact of life in the business. Gaining extra lead time is always the goal. If you are working with enough pieces that are manageable it should not be a problem. 

Apparel brands are generally not overnight successes where products sell out. It takes time to build your brand and make money. There are a lot of up front costs to pay even before you sell the product. This is a fine balancing act. Even large brands work with third parties called factors to help front load the bills before the product sells. 

You should always focus on growth

Would I like to see you get to the level where you can be adding more pieces to each collection? Definitely! Three garments won’t sustain your brand forever and loyal customers will be wanting more. The point is that fashion production is hard. Don’t bite off more than you can chew. 

Start small and analyze what sells and gather customer feedback. These factors should play into what you will produce next.