Latest / Exploring Fashion Futures With Dr.HB / Fashion Designer. How To Build Your Own Fashion Company?
Transcript
- mehr: ⁓ it does. Welcome to my podcast again. I'm Dr. HB. Today, in this episode, we will talk about fashion entrepreneur. ⁓ my next guest, she is a fashion designer and also a solo entrepreneur. Most people think about fashion designer, having your own business. ⁓ I'll never gonna make that. ⁓ only a few can do that, or ⁓ it's something's so unachievable. But I'm going to meet with one of the ⁓ fashion entrepreneurs next week. As we are preparing for that episode, I want all of us to think about what does it really mean by being a fashion entrepreneur? What kind of skills, what kind of work do they have to do to get their business going? If you really think about it, you know, I know how to sew, I I know how to draw, I like design. That Doesn't make you become a fashion either designer or entrepreneur or owner of a new brand. There's so much more behind that scene that just you knowing how to make a garment is not enough for you to be an independent fashion entrepreneur. Let's think about it. Many of our students come to our program thinking, one day I wanna have my own ⁓ fashion boutique store back in my hometown. Especially larger cities, you'll see those like fancy fashion stores, you know, clothing stores. And they think it's a pretty easy thing to do, but the reality is if you want to be a owner of that kind of store, first of all, you have to be the trend forcaster. You need to know ⁓ what consumers will like, not necessarily what you want to wear, but it's like your target. What does what do your target consumers will like to wear? So you have to be the forecaster. You also need to buy enough to being able to make sales and make profits so you can pay the bills, essentially. What style are you gonna buy in what size is in what color? That's planning job. Like so you got you gotta be a buyer, you gotta be a planner, but then you also need to sell because you're the solo entrepreneur. That means you also need to make sales. You need to be able to know how to talk to customers and what they want and and listen to. them and their needs and wants. So that's also a salesperson. You also need to know the finance. Like how much how much money do I have? How much money should I allocate to buying these products of the right amount of products? And then how much do I need to sell them for so I can also get the markup or margin. So with that money you can also pay yourself and pay the bills and utility and cost of the good souls and all of that. So that's you also need to be a financer. You also need to be a marketer, social media. Nowadays, as so many business owners are relying on social media for their marketing. How do I talk to my customers that I have this new product? So come on over and buy this from me. Instead of going to the mall or a large stores with the large brands names, why would they come to you? You need to have to position yourself, you have to market yourself, you to do the social media, you know, all that stuff, communication, right? Also, you have to be a lawyer. I mean, am I saying things in the right way or a legal way so I'm not using somebody else's intellectual property without knowing it? Or, you know, the the sales law and business law, tax law. So all of that, you know, from Forecasting and buying and planning and selling, customer servicing, taking care of returns, also setting up an ⁓ business, like whether it's ⁓ limited liability corporation, LLC or S Corp or whatever corporation, and then finance and taxes. It it is actually so much more than you think. And you should know enough to realize that you need help. Like I need to work with the lawyers, I need to work with the accountant, I need to work with the finance people. But also need to tell social media people what to do, how to do, and all of that. And if you don't do it yourself, you also have to pay them. So that increases cost, right? So it sounds easy to have my own store. The reality is you gotta know everything. In the case of designer, so I know how to design and I love designing. I wanna have my own brand. Okay, that's a cool idea. So now I have a design. Then what? How are you going to scale up your business? And then somehow you need to have a sales front. Back when I was in New York, I was a student at FIT Fashion Institute of Technology. I was getting an associate degree there in the fashion buying and merchandising area because I had already had a bachelor's degree from Seoul National University in Korea. So I didn't have to get another bachelor's degree, but I wanted to have a quicker, shorter, concentrated degree to get to know more about US market instead of Korean market that I learned. At the time I had a few friends who were majoring fashion design. And one of those friends actually, you know, she was really driven. She worked so hard. So she designed and very creative about it. And then she made a collection of enough samples to have a whole collection the storyline. And then she decided to sell some of those samples that she made at the local flea market. So what a great idea. You know, it's it's a pretty ⁓ relatively cheap to sign off for local flea market on one Sunday or Saturday. So she registered as a vendor before she does that. She also had to set up a business at the time in LLC. Using that LLC she signed up as a vendor for a one weekend flea market. And then she had to pay for a small, like a tent looking area, you know, small square footage that they will give you. And then she set it up. So that's a visual merchandising. Because she also needs to display her samples and collection looking pretty, right? So she set that up and then she sold them over the weekend. I mean, then she became a salesperson. So then You know, she's talking to the customers what do they like, what they don't like. She brought those lessons back at home and she's gonna make ⁓ again the next weekend. I mean, actually it wasn't a weekend, it was a once a month 'cause she was also a student, so she only making clothing at night and weekends. So she couldn't do that all every day. So she did it w once a month or so. And then somehow she did it enough because she was making all by herself. She was designing all by herself. She was buying fabric over there in local market. So she did it all and it was enough to do that every month and she worked like crazy. But then the demand got bigger and bigger and she just couldn't do it all by herself. She hired some people, seamstress, and then she also hired somebody to selling, you know, sales for her. And then once a month became twice a month. And then her company her demand and sales was grow ⁓ slowly getting bigger and bigger. But but then she kinda hit the ⁓ ceiling is that you can't you can't make them all from your teeny apartments, right? So she needed to rent a factory, but the factory's too big and too expensive. It was just so daunting. She somehow found family members back in her country. She was also from Korea. She found a family member who said, Hey, I can ⁓ set up a factory here in Korea and I I c can make garments for you. So she thought, ⁓ that's my one of my family members, you know, they can do that. That would be awesome. It's gonna be easier to make ⁓ there and cheaper to make ⁓ there so they can ⁓ ship ⁓ to me so I can sell ⁓ more here. So I can design and sell here and my a family member can make the clothing for for me. But unfortunately sad to say that within like six months or so she had to close her business because all the money that she sent over to her family member in Korea at the time, somehow that person took the money and never actually made any garment and didn't know where he gone and you know she couldn't find that person and basically she got cheated. Okay. It was a sad story, but I remember having very distinct conversation about how do I have this design skill and I can sell them, but how do I make them, how do I build the whole supply chain behind it so I can really make this bigger because I can easily buy more slots in flea market by, you know, or if this gets bigger, I can even rent a storefront, right? She can envision how her business can get bigger. But then there was sort of no production behind it. And that's where she got stuck. And I remember production is how important it is. But you know, when I became a production manager and traveling all over the world, the reality is a lot of factories they want to have a big order. Like n nobody wants to make ten pieces of garments in a hundred units. She was able to sell just about a hundred pieces of a month. Even if for her, a hundred units was a lot. I mean, that was a big money for her for a one person designer. But no one wanted to do that. So who can then trust me and give me that opportunity and make a small unit of production and we can grow together, which was not an easy thing to do. And then, you know, and then she trusted one of her family members or friends. That didn't work out. I remember it was being very, very challenging a way to set up a business, her design business, right? Today there's some micro sourcing idea, especially lots of factories in China they try to do though this type of e sourcing. You know, somehow the factories have figured out how to make small run in a very efficient way. Sometimes it's a robot making clothing or sometimes or digital printing so you don't have to worry about minimum of the fabric production much. Those microsourcing idea then It's almost like a matchmaking service, like a small run factories set up put up their profile on the this type of digital marketplace. So they upload their profile basically. We can make small runs for this type of product, yoga pens and ⁓ denim products or whatever. They they can just put up their pro profile and then small designers or brand new designers, they have a design idea, they have a business idea and they need a production capacity and they can also upload their profile. ⁓ we're envisioning this type of product, this is my brand identity. I want this type of a factory. So you put that up in the profile and then somehow eMarketplace can match make, you know, between two of you, then you two talk and you pay. So that's possible, but it's a still it's it's Hard because you don't you've never been to the factory. You don't know what kind of business partners they are. This type of opportunity tends to be more with the factories in China. But that doesn't mean that China's the only ⁓ country does that. But it's doing business with somebody you never met and you know, especially not even within your country, that could be really daunting and challenging. So are there any other sort of a third person third party who actually know this factory and endorse them but it's not the easiest way to do it at this point. So again, ⁓ being a fashion entrepreneur, whether I wanna have my own store. So that means I need to go somewhere and buy somebody else's product. And then I now need to sell them on behalf of ⁓ those people who actually created and made. Or the other one is I'm gonna make it and gonna sell it. Or I'm gonna make it, I'm gonna sell it to consumer directly, or sell them to another retailer. So either way, you should have your vision. Which market are you servicing? Where's the demand and w how can I address to that demand? Or can I create a whole new demand just for? you know, by having my own idea. You came up with the name, you came with the design. So now how you how you gonna find a company who will make for you? ⁓ do the testing, especially if you deal with the children's wear. Like if you ever wanna buy children's clothing so that you can sell ⁓ in your store, ultimately you are responsible to make sure your products are all tested, safe and fit under the federal regulation. So clothing, ⁓ children's clothing has to meet a lot of legal requirements, like for example, flammability, choking hazard issues, meaning small parts. You shouldn't have small parts because those kids can take it out and swallow and then choking hazard, you get sued. So things like that, drawstring issues, the fabric peeling, fabric strength testing, you need to do all of that. And so If I'm a small business owner, especially boutique store, and I wanna sell children's clothing, I wanna buy ⁓ from very, very reputable producers because otherwise you essentially you don't know what you're selling and that's really dangerous and it's kind of scary. That's why you also need a lawyer to protect your business as well. It sounds like having my own company always sounds great. I'm gonna buy all my product. I like to buy what I wanna wear. But the thing is what you wanna wear, other people don't wanna wear. That means you need to buy what you can sell. What you need to buy what your customers ⁓ wanna buy. So that it's that is a very one part of being a small business owner. It's just very one small function. Everything else is just who's gonna open the store, how are you gonna pay the rent? ⁓ what's gonna be my marketing? Who's gonna make my social media post? So from forecaster, the buyer to marketer to customer sales and accounting and finance and legal, that's a lot. Also, just because you know how to design doesn't mean I can have my own fashion brain. It's it's it's a lot go behind it. Not only the production. So the example that I shared with you in her case, she faced the cealing when it comes to production capacity. But my other example, I I haven't seen them directly because I didn't know them, but I did hear from I did learn from my professor at the time was that especially fashion design, it could be very easy to copy someone else. So like sometimes without intending, somehow you just come up with a design idea that could be very similar to someone else's design that's already out. I mean you've seen a lot of example of like which one is a dupe and which one is a copy. Sometimes a big you know, luxury brand suits ⁓ mass market brand and saying that you copied my design. Copyright disputes happens a lot of time. And obviously if you are a big company and with money and big legal team, they tend to do that more. And if you are smaller, like I'm I'm you know, just started and sometimes I might copy unintentionally with somebody else's design or sometimes a big company might copy my design, you know, knowing me, but because at least they have a big legal team so they think they can fight you, but then I don't have money to fight them, right? Because a fashion design can be really tricky in terms of what is really authentically new design versus what's not. So how do I really know this is my own true creative product versus someone else? And You know, a lot of people say, you know, I was inspired by so and so's design and then I edit that and then that and then I made my own, but that final product could still be too similar or sometimes ⁓ it causes confusion in consumers mind. And in that case, that's a copyright violation. Legally, if you create confusion in consumers mind from your own design creative product, then it's considered copyright infringement. And then suddenly it's illegal, right? So so it's not a a ⁓ simple or straight forward process than you think. And that's why we have a whole department, we have a whole degree program. Our students have to learn for at least a minimum four years to learn about everything between ins and outs, legal aspects of it, e ethical aspects of it, technical aspects of it, scientific aspects of it, as well as creative side of it. So most of our students. Initially go out and learn from someone else, and then maybe one day you can have your own business. That's our typical advice because doing everything all by yourself, all by myself from scratch, ⁓ from the beginning is really challenging. I do see though some of our alumni and graduates, if they grew up. with in a with the family, like a household where they had boutique stores or retail stores or design company, they tend to then either make a second store or second design company or take over that business. That I've seen, but doing everything from scratch is very difficult. But I over the last twenty years, I would say about three or four people that I know, they really started from like scratch. Scratch that with no one else's help. And I will be interviewing one of those next week. And she is a wedding dress designer. And she has a very unique wedding dress design company. And I think you will be fascinated by her stories and her journey. And through that, you can also start thinking about if I ever want to be like her, what would that be? And so you can start thinking about it. So I can't wait to hear from her and learn from her and find out how her current business is doing. I look forward to seeing you next week. Bye.