Scaling Your Fashion Business
Doing all the things is kind of your thing right? You are the designer, pattern maker, sewer, sample maker, shipping and order fulfillment, marketer, and all around girl-Friday for your own brand. I get it, when you are first getting started this is the best way to do things. It’s the only way you can budget for bringing your brand to life and ensuring your vision is exactly what you want it to be.
Bootstrapping is how a lot of fashion entrepreneurs start their business, where essentially there are no outside investments being made into bringing a brand to life. It is entirely up to the designers' own resources to get their business off the ground. I would also say it’s about doing as much of what you physically can yourself which cuts down on expenses. But is it really saving you money and is it a good formula for growing your business? How do you get from doing all the tasks to living your dream ?
I know how tired you already are. There is so much on your plate, you can’t find the right people, or don’t know where to start, and sleep has become something of a luxury as you struggle to keep up. Anxiety over your workload is an every day thing. And for those of you still working a day job– gosh, I feel you! Taking on every task isn’t a long term growth strategy and that death grip on all the tasks has to change.
But trust me when I say I’m not asking you to totally shift and give up everything, because that’s crazy to do it all at once. Instead, I think small changes along the way and perspective shifts can help you get out of your own way so your business can start growing.
Consider how successful designers work
Let’s be clear. Stella McCartney is definitely not sewing her own samples. Kim Kardashian has absolutely no background in fashion, but she is making her own brand work. Tom Ford probably doesn’t even have to touch anything. He’s just the idea guy and definitely not shipping out orders. Now, granted, all of these people have outside capital invested into their brands, but still your thinking needs to shift. Imagine the first designer who you admired and really wanted to emulate. What would it look like for you to get on the road that they are on?
Spend some fantasy money in your imagination- if you had the cash, what would you invest in your for your brand? Even if you don’t have the resources, daydreaming about what you could do is essential in order to make it happen (manifestation anyone?) Otherwise it’s easy to get stuck in your permanent mindset of limited resources and time. If you don’t identify areas where you could potentially change, more than likely it’s just not going to happen. Your hamster wheel will keep going.
Find tasks you can outsource
Let me just tell you that you are not alone in doing it all yourself. I have monthly meetings with a business advisor and it always comes up as “Betsy, I want you to think about what you can start letting others do.” But I find every excuse in the book as to why I have to do everything myself- because it’s always the way I’ve done things. For me, it is hard, because I’m decades of industry knowledge wrapped up in one person. I can’t teach someone overnight, it would have to be over time and even then… You see what I mean? But this year, I’m definitely doing outsourcing in terms of my bookkeeping and accounting, because that’s soooo not in my wheelhouse and something I really do not like doing at all. I just want someone else to figure it out for me.
For yourself, what do you hate doing or just would love to be able to hand off to others to take care of? There is always something. A good portion of my client work revolves around this where I do the pattern grading because my clients have an ok understanding of how it works, but they don’t have the bandwidth to dive in further, or the interest in the tediousness of matching every single seam and every single notch for every single size. But I do, so I’m happy to help out!
Maybe it’s not even big jobs, just small things along the way like cutting out your daily orders, so they are ready for you to sew and then having this person drop them off at the post office. In small businesses everyone needs to wear all the hats so find someone that can be open minded and flexible enough to help you make it work and to take things off your plate.
Give others a chance
Your product is a success because you have your own personal touch on every aspect of it and that is why your customers love your brand. But I’m pretty sure that your customers want you around for the long term and burnout doesn’t make that happen.
It’s not up to you to figure everything out. There are lots of skilled professionals who know so much more about what you need done than you do. Sure you can watch some Youtube videos or read some books on what should be done, but the time you spent in research and then trial and error, you could have already been done with the step that you needed done.
As a pattern grader, this is super frustrating to me because I’ll see a potential client, or former client brag on social media how they are doing it themselves when I know for sure it’s taking them days if not weeks to get a pattern graded and their methods are not accurate. You want to know how long it takes me? Average pattern grading time is about 1 ½ hours. That’s it. Yes, I do have a queue of work where others are awaiting their project, but still, that’s mental bandwidth you don’t have to spend.
The same goes for sample makers, they intuitively know how a garment can go together and can whip something up in a matter of hours. How long does it take you between answering emails, shipping orders and making dinner, to make one garment? Dedicating jobs to specific individuals who are hired to basically sit in one place, not multitasking like you, to get the job done, can greatly improve your productivity.
Outsourcing takes time
No one will ever do it better than you can, right? Probably not because no one will ever think exactly the same way that you do about your product, but that’s ok. Unique points of view will also help your business grow as others demonstrate how things can be done better or more efficiently. Maybe you have been spending a lot of time doing something the hard way. Wouldn’t you like to be told that it can be easier?
Now passing off your work is a big deal, and it’s rarely an overnight success. But this goes back to viewpoints. If you hire someone to do the work, you are asking for their expertise, but they don’t necessarily know your standards, your concerns or your vision unless you clearly explain it to them and work on fine tuning the relationship overtime.
If you have been doing all the tasks you have in your mind exactly how it needs to be done. But someone you are outsourcing to doesn’t necessarily know that because they work with a lot of other clients and do their best to guess what your expectations are. If you get work back that is not exactly what you envisioned then it is up to you to say something. Rarely is anyone trying to take shortcuts or screw you over. They just don’t understand what you want. Or if you find a mistake, ask them to fix it. No one is perfect.
The relationships you build to outsource some of your work take time. I can tell you that every single one of my clients works differently from each other. No one workflow looks the same, but I work with them to come to a common understanding. This doesn’t necessarily happen perfectly on the first project. Nope, the first project we are bumping around trying to figure out what the other means, needs, and how best to communicate. When I look back to the first meetings with my oldest clients I’m always amazed at how far we have come together and how efficiently we work together now.
Plan a growth strategy
The goal is for the day to finally arrive where your clothing goes viral online or a retailer contacts you and wants to place a large order. What will you do when that happens? It will be a lot of work on your shoulders and you may not be able to finish everything you need to on time. Orders and confidence can be lost.
Even if you don’t have the resources at your disposal to hire out the work, it’s never too early to start looking and finding people that can be good matches for getting you the help that you need. For instance, finding the right factory partner can take a lot of time and trial. You can start talking and discussing minimums and requirements. Perhaps even pay for a sample to be made so you can review the work and see who you would like to work with going forward.
Maybe you are fine on your own for the time being, but you know there will come a day when you need an assistant to help with the daily tasks. Start making lists and thinking of how you would want to teach someone new to join your team. Getting started on the right foot is essential so if you have employee guidelines in place, workflows charted out, and repeatable tasks documented on how to do them, it will help make the transition easier.
I encourage you to attend trade show and networking events to discover how things can be done better and more efficiently for your brand.