How to Start a Clothing Business by Buying Wholesale online?

How to Start a Clothing Business Online on Shopify

The covid-19 pandemic may have slow down the annual growth rate of the online clothing industry, however, according to Business Research Company, the industry is expected to jump back significantly with revenues reaching over USD 650 billion by 2023.

Well, this means that if you are looking to start an eCommerce clothing store, Just Do It!

There are literally endless possibilities for eCommerce clothing stores to sell, with Etsy, Facebook, Instagram all offering great platforms and features to display and sell clothes.

But when it does come to running a professional online clothing store in the USA with little to no technical knowledge; Shopify is your best bet…

Why?

Well because the whole idea of Shopify is to offer entrepreneurs a convenient and easy to manage a platform where they can develop a professional online store without any technical knowledge and if you are intimidated by the idea of starting an online store yourself you can also hire someone to build a Shopify website for you by giving essential details which you need to implement in your store.

That’s the reason why in this blog we will be looking at everything you need to know to start an online Shopify clothing store on Shopify. It is going to be a long post, by hey just hang out there and I am sure you won’t regret it!

How do I start selling clothes business online in the USA with Shopify?

Now, before we actually get into the details of why Shopify is the best web development platform to create an online store; let’s just pull back a little and see how you can actually create an online clothing store on Shopify in the USA. We have broken the process into simple steps, so you can easily comprehend each step and grow early.

Read Also  How much does it cost to start an online boutique? 

Step 1: Choosing the right theme

When you go on Shopify, you get yourself some pretty amazing themes, professionally designed to meet the unique needs of different businesses. So, the first step you need to take is to choose the right theme for your clothing store. Now, Shopify does offer some free themes as well, however, most themes are premium with an approximately USD 180 price tag.

Here are some great Shopify themes you can choose for the clothing store;

1. Brooklyn (Free)

While Brooklyn may be a free theme, it doesn’t compromise on the quality of design or functionality. It’s an exclusively designed theme for online apparel stores and is also one of the most popular choices for many clothing stores. The theme does allow users to display some pretty darn amazing banner images, along with a fashion collection to mesmerize users as they land on the homepage.

2. Impulse ($180)

Impulse is another great Shopify theme for clothing stores, which is exclusively suited for high-end clothing lines. The theme enables users to create custom promotional content for fashion lines, as well as, custom collection sidebar filters.

3. Broadcast ($180)

If you are looking for a modern trendy design for your clothing store, this amazing theme is just what you need. The broadcast theme comes with some advanced functionalities like the homepage videos option and displaying customer testimonials. The theme also offers a “color swatch” for products, which means that you can easily showcase the different colors of your clothing line.

4. Gemini ($45)

Gemini is yet another great theme designed exclusively for apparel stores. The theme is especially great for sellers who wants to sell through social medial pages as well.

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Step 2: Get your products and collections added to the store

Well, once you are done with choosing the theme for the clothing store, you now need to add products and items to the store. So, even before you get into the complexities and intricacies of designing a home page, you need to start adding your collection.

Now, with Shopify, you got the option to add apparels with variant images, as well as, product variants. This means that it won’t be difficult for you to add a product with different colors, and sizes. Shopify also allows store owners to integrate third-party apps to further improve the functionality of how you want to display your products on the store.

Read Also How is Shopify a good eCommerce platform for startup businesses?

Step 3: Create a mesmerizing homepage

Only after you are done sorting and adding all the clothing items, and products to your store, you may move towards creating a homepage.

Remember, apart from the technicalities of running, or managing a store, the design of your store’s homepage can make or break the business for you.

As a clothing store, you need to astonish and mesmerize people users with exquisite and spectacular images. For this, you need to create some professional-grade awe-inspiring banners that display your best collections, so as soon as the user lands on your homepage, he is convinced to buy from you.

Also, you can’t overlook the importance of a logo for your store. Remember, your business logo will eventually become the face of your clothing store and that’s why it’s equally important for you to come up with a dazzling and bewildering logo. You may easily add the logo to your store through Shopify’s Editor Board.

Oh, and how could you forget to keep your site mobile-friendly. Now, with Shopify you don’t have to worry about mobile-responsive themes (all themes are mobile responsive), however, you need to ensure that the end-design of your store looks equally dazzling on mobile screens.

Step 4: Setup some attractive discount codes

Who doesn’t love some freebie? In fact, online shoppers are always after some tempting discounts or gifts they may qualify for purchasing from stores. This becomes an even more pressing need for online clothing stores since there is a massive business competition.

Fortunately, Shopify does allow users to easily set up discount codes of gift cards through Admin Dashboard. You can create as many different discounts or gift cards as you want simply by accessing the “Discount” tab from your Admin Dashboard.

Step 5: Don’t forget to daze users with eye-catching pop-up

See, the secret to success for any clothing store is its ability to dazzle and daze users with various marketing elements. And pop-up surely is a great marketing tactic to get eyes rolling. You can add the Call to Actions (CTAs) button on the pop-up like asking them to register to your email lists for some discount or other promotion campaign.

Well, there you go! With these simple 5 steps, you are all ready to launch your online Shopify clothing store in the USA.

Why Shopify site is best to sell clothes online?

Now that we know how to create clothing stores on Shopify, let’s move on and see why Shopify is the best choice for clothing stores and what features and functionalities do the platform offers to businesses in the clothing industry.

1. It’s a completed eCommerce solution

As mentioned earlier, what makes Shopify stand out amongst the other web development platform is the convenience and features that enable almost anyone (even someone with zero knowledge) to create his/her dream store. Online businesses can leverage powerful and intuitive backend features to easily personalized everything they want from the design to products, and from managing customers’ data to orders, to analytics and marketing strategies. It’s simply a one-stop solution for eCommerce business needs.

And just to make it even more tempting for you, Shopify is host to the second most number of online clothing stores, which just goes to show its aptness for starting an online clothing business.

2. You don’t need to buy hosting and domain

When we say that Shopify is a one-stop solution, we mean it and it even includes a solution for domain and hosting (SSL included). With Shopify as your preferred platform for an online clothing store; you won’t even have to worry about purchasing and maintaining Shopify hosting, or domain. You simply pay one flat fee (Shopify Fee) for the package you choose (starting as low as $29) and you get everything bundled in your package.

3. Inventory tracking

Inventory management and tracking is an important aspect for all online stores; clothing stores aren’t exceptions. Now with Shopify businesses can easily track inventory with its powerful “Inventory tracking” feature. It allows businesses to view and manage inventory counts to avoid out-of-stock inventory. You can also set up automated inventory management to order directly from supplies when specific items reach a minimum threshold.

4. Shipping and delivery

For online clothing stores in the USA, Shopify offers a “Shopify fulfillment network” (SFN). This feature help stores streamline the shipping, while also reducing the cost of order fulfillment. All you need to do is to apply for the SFN, once approved, you can simply send your clothing items (inventory) to Shopify’s fulfillment centers and they will handle the rest easily.

Also, while you will simply avoid getting into the shipping and delivery process, you will still be able to manage all critical business and customer data including shipment tracking and others through your Shopify Admin Dashboard.

5. Shopify POS

If you already have a brick-and-mortar store and looking to integrate it with your online clothing store, you can easily achieve it with Shopify POS. The POS system from Shopify enables businesses to sync all critical business data from brick-and-mortar stores to online stores, thereby improving efficiency and productivity for businesses.

6. Shopify SEO and marketing solutions

You definitely need marketing and SEO features to get your store noticed by users, right? Well, Shopify doesn’t disappoint you here, as well. The platform comes with a massive ecosystem of third-party marketing and SEO apps that can easily be integrated with your store to improve sales and revenues.

There are tons of SEO and marketing apps available at the Shopify store, each offering unique features. Merchants can easily integrate apps of their choice to improve their SEO ranking and marketing tactics to attract more customers.

Also, Shopify does offer its built-in “On-page SEO Basics” that can help clothing stores to easily optimize meta-titles, meta-descriptions, image optimization, image tags, and other on-page SEO elements for higher search engine ranking.

7. Sell on social media

Why restrict your sales to your website, when you can also sell on social media platforms? Well, with Shopify, online clothing stores are able to integrate popular social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram, and others to generate potential leads and increase store revenues.

The platform can also be integrated with other major eCommerce platforms like Amazon, and eBay (you would need Shopify integration services for that) to maximize your business expansion possibilities. In fact, you can also migrate your store from other popular platforms like WooCommerce, or Etsy to Shopify (you will need professional Shopify migration services).

How to Choose Your Online Clothing Store Niche?

Well, by now you must have realized that Shopify is by far the best platform to start an online clothing business in the USA. However, just before you get started, you need to sort out few important business aspects to ensure business continuity in the long term.

When you want to start an online clothing store in the USA, the first important aspect (even before choosing products) is to consider your clothing niche. Choosing the right niche is important since your whole business will revolve around it including your business plan your target audience, potential shoppers, and others.

The best way to choose a clothing niche is to be very specific and precise in your selection. This will ensure that you are able to target the right market and gain a strong footprint in the long term. This will also help you to choose the right and best-selling products for your store, thereby, giving you the competitive advantage to increase customer retention with an extensive list of highly targeted clothing collections.

For instance, if you decide to choose “Pop Culture” as your niche, you would have to design the entire store keeping a theme that signifies boldness, nerdy, and strong expressions. Also, you would only choose clothing items that match your niche of Pop Culture.

Now, how can you choose your online clothing store niche? Here are some aspects to consider when choosing your online clothing store niche;

• Choose a unique niche – it will help you gain a competitive advantage to stand out from the crowd
• Only choose a niche that actually moves you and for which you are passionate about
• Before finalizing a niche, consider if and how you may position yourself as an authority in the niche
• Make sure the niche you choose is trendy with high earning potential

How to Choose Your Online Clothing Store Business Model

Once you know your clothing store niche and subsequently know which products you want to sell, next you have to come up with a definite business model for your store. Now, to keep things simple for you, most online clothing stores broadly falls within one of the four different types of business models including;

• Custom cut-and-sew
• Private label
• Print-on-demand
• DropShipping

Now each business model comes with its own sets of strengths and limitations, and thereby the final choice of the model will depend on your skills, goals, and budget. Let’s see what each of these business models brings to the table for businesses;

1. Print-on-demand business model

This is by far the easiest, cheapest, and most widely used business model. Not to forget, there’s a massive potential market for this business model as well. Just to give you an idea about the numbers we are talking about; only the custom t-shirt printing is expected to become a USD 10 billion market in the next 5 years.

The primary target market for Print-on-demand online clothing stores are people looking to get customized logos, emblem, designs, and all sort of other artwork printed on apparel.

And with a massive market, businesses do get to keep the model cost-effective even for small orders; thanks to the massive variety of colors, and types of prints.

The only downside of this business model is the lower profit margin for store owners as compared to other business models.

2. Custom Cut-and-Sew Business Model

This is an ideal business model for an online clothing store that’s looking to launch its private clothing line in the long term.

Now, in this model, businesses are required to do everything from the scratch including Shopify web designing, manufacturing, and shipping. This also means that it’s an intensive business model and one that includes a high cost of entry. Also, there’s a lot of management and administrative work that comes with this business model; since stores will solely be responsible to source, manufacture, and fulfill orders.

However, the biggest advantage of the custom cut-and-sew model for a Shopify online clothing store is that in the long run, it yields higher profits; since you will establish your store as a unique and individual brand offering customized clothing/fashion line.

3. Private Label Business Model

Now, this is essentially a mid-point business model between custom cut-and-sew and print-on-demand business models. Private label businesses offer a greater level of customization as compared to a print-on-demand model, however, it needed less budget and resources to operate compared to the custom cut-and-sew model.

In this model, you will essentially be purchasing wholesale clothing items online or from the market, before adding custom design, tags, labels, or other stuff to the articles.

Since you won’t be designing and manufacturing clothes from scratch, the model needs a significantly lower amount of capital to start, as well as, involves a lesser amount of administrative, or managerial work.

Some of the drawbacks of this model include having to manage inventory and track inventory. Nonetheless, certain applications and platforms can help such businesses to streamline the workflow processes for Private Label online clothing stores.

Dropshipping Business Model:

Dropshipping is one of the business models which are low budget but high in demand these days, especially dropshipping in UAE is getting quite famous where the world’s most diverse group of people live. It has its own advantages and disadvantages. For example, you get paid before you deliver the product but the quality control is out of your hands which could become a great hindrance to your sales.

Outline Your Online Clothing Store Business Plan for Shopify store?

Ok, now that you have selected your specific niche, sourced the products, and have the right business model, now it’s time to create your business plan. Here are some key components that your online clothing store business plan should cover;

• Target market
• Products
• Competitors
• Business model
• Fulfillment strategy
• Branding/marketing strategy

For any eCommerce store including an online clothing store, you would want to cover all of the above-mentioned components in your business plan. This will ensure that you have a clear vision for business continuity and growth in the long run.

Another important component of your business plan is pricing. It’s essential to precisely budget the price of products after inculcating all costs including;

• Cost of development (store hosting, domain, design, development, Shopify platform cost, etc.)
• Cost of product sourcing (production, designing, printing, etc.)
• Labor and transportation
• Material costs; and
• Product handling and Shipment costs

Once you are able to figure out the actual cost of products, only then you will be able to work out the profit margins. An important consideration in this regard is that your profit margin should be at least 10% (the greater the better) for your business to survive, and expand.

How to implement DropShipping Clothing Store Business Model on Shopify?

DropShipping is perhaps one of the easiest, and cheapest business models to start a clothing store online. Recently, DropShipping business model has gained much popularity among young entrepreneurs looking for an easy way to start an online business with minimum capital.

The biggest benefit of starting a DropShipping clothing store online is that you won’t have to invest in product sourcing, stocking, handling, or fulfillment. All you got to do is to create your clothing store on Shopify, source some reliable and consistent partners (whose products you are going to sell), and start selling. There is no limit on the number of sources you choose for DropShipping (just make sure the manufacturer you choose is able to fulfill orders aptly).

How can I buy wholesale and sell online in the USA?

There are various wholesale suppliers of clothing from where you can buy clothing items to sell online in the USA. Some of the best platforms to buy wholesale clothes for online selling in the USA include;

– eBay
– loffer.com
– Warehouse115.com
– Bjs.com
– Ssactivewear.com
– Americanfreight.com
– Rosewholesale.com

How much does it cost to start an online clothing store on Shopify store in the USA?

The final cost of starting an online clothing store on Shopify in the USA will depend on your business model. For instance, you may start a DropShipping clothing store on Shopify for as low as $1000 to $10,000, whereas, starting a custom cut-and-sew clothing store on Shopify may require investment anywhere from $50,000 to $150,000.

Where can I sell my clothes for the most money?

Some of the best platforms where you can sell clothes online for the most money in the USA includes;

• eBay
• ThreadUp
• Tradesy
• com
• Poshmark
• Crossroads

Where do online boutiques get their clothes from?

Some popular platforms for online boutiques to buy wholesale clothes include;

• Tasha Apparel
• Sugarlips Wholesale
• Magnolia Wholesale
• Bloom Wholesale
• LA Showroom
• En Creme

Is it worth it to sell clothes online in the USA?

Yes, even though the market has seen some decline due to the covid-19 pandemic, it is expected to reach over USD 600 billion in the next few years.

How to choose a top Shopify App development in the USA?

The best way to choose a top yet affordable Shopify development company in the USA is to consider its review and ratings on third-party sites. Also, you can ask the companies to show their previously Shopify apps (at Shopify we are pleased to show customers our previously completed projects for Shopify app development).

What does a Shopify migration company do?

A Shopify migration company helps online stores to migrate from other eCommerce platforms like Etsy or WooCommerce to the Shopify platform.

How much does it cost to build a Shopify App?

The exact cost of Shopify app development will vary depending upon the type, size, and market. However, in general, a basic Shopify app in the USA will cost around USD 5,000 to USD 10,000 to develop.

Do I need a business license to sell on Shopify?

No. There is no requirement of having a business license to sell on Shopify. However, you may need to check with your local authorities regarding licensing requirements for ecommerce businesses.