How To Start a CLOTHING BRAND on a BUDGET! ($100) Step X Step Guide

what's going on guys if you're looking to start a clothing brand and it's very easy to follow 10 step guide we're going to show you guys how to do it with under a hundred dollars now over the years I've launched a lot of different types of videos on my most popular one was how to do this with less than fifty dollars but that was back in 2014 we're now in 2023 with inflation prices go up but the information also gets better so if you're a new visitor to this channel make sure you subscribe as we drop some gems and starting a clothing brand and growing it through Marketing sales and much more now if you're watching this video you're probably a new brand owner and you're maybe wondering okay well what legalities are involved with starting it what design things do I need to know where do I make my products what store should I use how do I even get online we're going to be answering all these questions and we're also going to be diving into tips and resources that you guys can immediately access as we watch this video so you can get started now it doesn't matter if you have a 50 or a million dollars there's three things that you need to consider if you're starting a brand the very first thing is how authentic is it to you in order to start a brand it has to be authentic to you the second thing you need to be able to do is build a community or around it you see this is why it's important that it's authentic to you because in order to create a community you need to be able to reach out to others and ask them to join you need to be able to create content that makes them want to join and the third thing is a connection to the products now if it's authentic to you you have a community now you need to be able to create products that connect to that community in order for you to sell a lot of times people want to launch a brand and they just want to do it and say hey how come I'm not getting sales how do I better Market you're not thinking about it in the right way so with the following steps we're about to dive into we're going to help you guys establish the foundation but keep these three things in mind how authentic is a brand to you the community that you can build around it and the connection to the products for that Community now if you want some bonus features we also included a free download right down below we call it the apparel playbook in that Playbook we give you guys some incredible gems and resources to help you navigate from where you are right now to where you want to go and of course everything that we mentioned in the video is going to be linked right under that subscribe button so just expand that description and you can follow along now to start a clothing brand it's much more than just slapping a name or a logo on a product and saying this is your brand there's a lot more that comes into it and it really begins with the name that you decide to go with now a lot of times people are wondering how do I come up with the best name there's all kinds of different ways that you can do it but probably the most iconic brands that we know today are either reference in biblical terms Greek mythology or some historic event it relates to people in a long-term way it's not something that's trending a lot of times brand owners will create a name of something that's trending like money boys or a hustle hard those things are trending they're popular yes but they're played out Nike meant victory in Greek mythology right what do you think fear of God came from I want to bet it was from the Bible right so there's all kinds of different ways that you can create iconic names but if you're just blanking and you don't like to read the Bible or go to church or do anything about history then a really easy way to do it is just to start looking at name generators and those name generators you could pop in a couple of different names and it spits out a couple of different ideas but honestly whether you go through the name generators or whether you decide to do it through the Bible or some Greek mythology or some historic events however you decide to do it what's important here is to decide on 10 names that really Vibe with you it has to be something personal and meaningful to you don't just create something and then try to make meaning of it later narrow it down to those 10 names that you're like yo I really Vibe with these one of these is going to be my name because the next thing you got to do is you got to check for the availability of whether you can own that name just because you came up with an incredible name doesn't mean that you can actually legally use it so the next thing you got to do is go to uspto.gov now once you go to uspto.gov you're going to want to go check for trademarks now this is a very simple way to do it is just by entering your brand name here now you're going to want to do these for all 10 names that you come up with and chances are a couple of them are already going to be taken the more creative that you are chances are nobody's come up with it start throwing them into this database and it'll spit out a couple different findings now with these findings what you're going to want to do is just kind of click on a couple and see if any of them are owning it for apparel once you validate that yes I can own this name move it to the next phase and that next phase is going to be can you own the domain name can you own the website now when it comes to launching an e-commerce store you'll need to purchase a domain name now a domain name is essentially how customers are going to find you online and a great option to secure a branded domain name is by using a DOT store extension now a store extension allows you to get better branding for your eCommerce business as it allows you to secure your brand name without having to add any hyphens or misspelling of your brand now I was able to secure the domain hustling.store and this is just one example of how it can legitimize your brand the best part is that it's used by businesses celebrities and influencers that are all selling products online it reminds your customers of what time it is with over 900 000 e-commerce store using a store extension including Michelle Obama who's selling her merch line and she's even promoting her taurus take a look at that it even looks like she's got herself set up with a print-on-demand business here Shakira who's got her tour merch Discord for their products and one of my favorite YouTubers Mark Rober who's creating videos and educating people on science and he's selling stem products online now a store extension gives you the ability to secure a domain with better branding ability for your store and in a few minutes we'll be diving into the details of how you can buy a store domain at a discount and connect it to your online store but before we do that let's jump into the next part and that is legalizing your business so in a few minutes we're going to be diving into the details of how you buy that domain and connect it to your online store so let's jump into the next part and that's in the legal realization of your business and no this isn't like legalizing anything illegal it's just making you legit and what this means is getting your LLC versus sole proprietor getting your wholesale license getting your EIN and your DBA and if all this information right now sounds really confusing give me a few minutes I'm gonna be breaking it down for you to be able to be a master a lot of times we talk about business structure it can get really confusing so I created this really easy to follow illustration that I'm going to show you guys right now on what it means to be sole proprietor versus a limited liability company now when it comes to Sole Proprietor the most common way to think about this is like an Uber driver when you're an Uber driver they don't ask you for your business license they don't ask you for your business entity or all this other information they just say Hey where's your driver's license what's your social and do you have car insurance that's essentially what doing business as a sole proprietor is everything is going to go under your name so you represent your brand now when it comes to doing business as the DBA part of it doing business as just means that hey if my name is John Santos but I want to do business as Street crafter I'd have to file a doing business as name for Street crafter to register a sole proprietor it's pretty low cost in Nevada it's 20 and to register a doing business as name is usually around 10 to 20 as well per name that you want to register so sole proprietor to keep it simple means you're like an Uber driver you're just gonna launch a business you're gonna get paid everything's gonna go through your name when it comes to the LLC this means that you have a limited liability company and what this means is that you as the owner are protected you're shielded by this LLC here because this LLC is what's actually going to own your brand name and all of your business assets so what this means on a very on a very diluted level because I'm not an attorney and this isn't legal advice you should always consult your attorney or CPA on what business model works for you but LLC essentially protects your entire personal liability sole proprietor is the easiest method but if you know hey I got a plan I got some money we're gonna be investing I'm gonna be doing a lot of Investments I plan to hire I plan to grow this then an LLC is the best place for you to start now of course LLC start anywhere between 400 plus meaning depending if a lawyer does it they might draft articles of organization and all this other stuff that's going to cost you a couple hundred if not thousands of dollars so keep that budget in mind if you do it at the lowest cost way it's about 400 and we're going to be adding some resources to the description that'll also help you kind of custom costs and help you navigate this process because it could be a little confusing regardless of what entity you end up using guys what you need to get next is an EIN number and that means an employer identification number make sure it's the dot gov you see that right there apply for an employer identification number now from here you're just going to hit apply online and you literally fill out this little this little application you answer some questions at the end of this survey you literally have your employer identification number now the last step to legalize a business is to get your wholesale license now the wholesale license is also known as a sales tax permit in that sales tax permit essentially allows you to collect sales taxes now if you're wondering what does this all mean John what this means is you're going to be able to buy products at a discounted price because in order to access certain suppliers sometimes you need to have this wholesale certificate available because that supplier doesn't want to have to collect your taxes make sure that you have a wholesale tax sales tax permit pretty much the same thing so now you've legitimize your business it's time for you to get online now earlier we mentioned about how you can get and reserve a brand name through dot store so I'm going to go over to store to connect it to a Shopify account after checking out with coupon code johnstory at checkout you'll be taken to a dashboard and this is where we'll have to change some settings to point it to Shopify now this will allow you to have a custom website name like www.yourbrand.com and it's pretty easy to do you're going to start by clicking on your domain name and then click on manage DNS in your dashboard click on ADD an a record what you're going to add here is you're going to point it to shopify's IP address which is [Music] 23.227.38.65 then you will add a cname record in this area you will need to grab the domain name that Shopify gave you in our example it's hustlingharder.myshopify.com we're going to copy and paste it right into this area and then you're going to add www to the hostname and then you're going to hit add record and after this is all completed head on over to your Shopify dashboard and connect your domain and hit verify if you type your domain name on a browser and you see this Shopify landing page that means it will successfully added and you are officially online now if you get it through Shopify itself it makes it really easy to connect because you can just buy the domain name straight from Shopify and now it's Associated to your account if you end up deciding to go with DOT store you can get it for 99 cents for the first year by using the coupon code John store at checkout now this makes it it saves you guys a couple bucks which means that for launching your online store all you gotta do is pay one dollar so we're gonna add that to the budget right now the next important thing that you got to think about when it comes to selling online is what theme to choose now Shopify comes with like about 10 to 14 different free theme options and free theme options are great if you're just getting started but if you're really looking to do business and actually get sales and convert customers you're going to want to look at the paid themes guys at the end of the day paid themes have a lot more detail associated with them they have a lot more features that help you convert one of the best themes that are available if you're going to go on the paid route is they beautify now they beautify does come with a free theme option as well and it's great out of the box with free but if you go with the paid option they level up your eCommerce store and they literally give you thousands of dollars worth of upgrades all included so that's the best part about day beautiful is because not only do you do a drag and drop type editor but you can also have app add-ons and Integrations to help you chat with customers that help you capture leads that help you upsell cross cell bundle even give quantity discount breaks all of this stuff is not available on the free themes and very little paid things on the Shopify store give you access to this so if you're thinking about actually building a business and growing a brand Shopify domain name they beautify it kind of comes in a package so now you're ready to sell online so everything that we mentioned in this video is going to be linked down below now the next part that we're going to dive into is designing product so the designing of products is really important guys because the graphic designs to the things that you create is going to be what actually sells your product to customers so when it comes to designing I know it could be a little complicated and there's all kinds of different tools so what I want to share some of the best tools that you should consider now the very first one is procreate it's only available on a tablet so if you have a tablet great you're good to start using procreate and that costs about ten dollars and it's a one-time fee another program that you should consider something like canva canva does give you options to do t-shirt designs and Graphics but some of the downsides with canva is that it doesn't necessarily export them for print production ready files in order for you to create graphics for t-shirts common question that happens is what's the best graphic design program it's going to be Adobe Illustrator or photoshop I don't want to confuse you guys on the two options but illustrator is definitely more for Logos and hard designs so let's say you're doing some like font based things or some really solid color Graphics we'll throw some examples right around here because it gives you Vector images now Photoshop is more of the procreate style of design it definitely gives you more of png's svgs things that are pretty good for production and you can create some incredible size artboards that'll allow you to go to production now Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop is a great program but it does have a pretty high monthly cost at around 55 60 if you're a university student you can get it for around 30 but again not all of us are students at a university so it definitely is inaccessible to a lot which is where a program like Kittle comes into play now the really cool part about Kittle is it's like canva on steroids that's literally what a user from our community said when I asked him what they really thought about it and a really cool thing that they really enjoyed about it is the fact that it literally gives you the options of Adobe Illustrator but with the easiness of use of a canva drag and drop editor now proper art is crucial to a successful brand and oftentimes as brand owners we're challenged with creating designs which is where Kittle comes in after you create an account through the link and bio down below you'll be taken to a dashboard that looks like this from this dashboard you can create new projects from scratch or search through the library of mockups to get a starting point and inspiration now when it comes to t-shirt printing it's important to start with the right size board for the intended shirt designs now we linked a couple of the common sizes you could expect for most t-shirt jobs in the description right down below I'll start with the dimensions of 11x9 for this project as this design is going to be something that I'm creating for me and my daughter as we head to the beach this summer and since it's a beach design I'm going to search for something that's a little more surf I really like this one here what's really cool is that you can actually ungroup all of the different Assets Now you can actually move each of these assets to a specific part of the design we have a saying here that we say it's called you have everything you need now Farm here what you could also do is you can you can actually distort it at different angles and then since it's actually showing on the entire artboard what we want to do is we actually want to clip content by doing click content we're actually putting it into the the actual words now we're not keeping it in the whole artboard is going into the design but because kiddo allows you to fully customize like all the textures and grunges and colors of icons you can add almost anything that you that you can think of this is probably one of the most powerful features that Kittle has is that you can just go into this button here and click on mock-up once you click on mock-up you can see it on a variety of different products so this one is a black shirt I want to put it onto a yellow shirt so you can actually increase it download the mock-up you can use this on your eCommerce store you can use it for promotion you can use it for anything that you're going to need to get your idea up now we're going to download it you can also increase the DPI 150 is pretty good for print production if you want to go to 200 that's fine and then you could also just download as a PDF or a PNG ideal for prints as an SVG you want to make sure that we remove background you don't want to have any white on the back that's the most important part about downloading art for production guys you want to have a transparent background so what we're going to see here and go to PNG you're going to see this grayed out design when you see this grayed out design that means you have a transparent background as long as you also confirm that the remove background button was hit all of your settings are now ready to upload you gotta have a budget for this and we're going to budget 14 towards the 100 that you need to start now once you have designs one of the easiest low-cost ways for you to create products is to make them yourself now historically this meant that you either had to have equipment a screen print in your garage or use a cutting machine and vinyls to get the job done but I want to tell you that there's an easier method now and it cuts out all the hard work but gives you full control of the products that you create and it's available through streetcrafter.com and once you have your production ready files from Kittle You're simply going to upload them onto this website and you'll get sent press art sheets that look like this all you got to do is unroll these sheets cut them out and then you can heat press it onto literally Any Garment whether it's polyester Cottons denims you name it it works on it you can quickly create physical samples to start marketing and even get your first order done within a few days so we're using a heat press you could do this with a home iron home irons work great we're using a heat press because that gives you consistency in your production we're going to pre-press this the goal is to have firm to medium pressure now we were talking about using Kittle to do Vector art and as you can see here this is the vector art that's clean lines and edges now the reason for that is because you want to be able to peel easily you want to be able for it to last long on a T-shirt and Vector Arts is also what's required for screen printing so think of using DTF as a screen printing this is a little quick tip what we want to do is we want to get the center of the design so regardless of how you cut you know that your Center is between the Y and the S on the design so what we're going to do here is we're going to kind of fold that top Edge very sharply there that gives us a center line on our on our design that Center Line we're going to center with the shirt we're going to throw the Teflon sheet on there and we're gonna press now when it comes to pressing you want to do 315 for 15 seconds that's pretty much a catch-all but you also want to verify with the Fabrics that you're working with lighter Fabrics Cottons polyesters may be a little different but when it comes to Cotton the magic number 315 15 seconds now sometimes you can get a second press it can last for 50 plus years you could press it again or you could just press it that one time there is another way for you guys to start and this is the third option and the third option is working with a print-on-demand company or a supplier that's more local to where you're at you don't need to go overseas to buy all these cut and so blanks and do printing over there you can literally get it somewhere local from a print shop or a print-on-demand companies like somebody like a Pleak now a Pleak allows you to do custom print on Demand right from your Shopify store so if you started with Shopify and now all you want to focus on is design and marketing all you got to do is upload your art to the oblique platform it connects to your Shopify you now have product listings and your customers can start buying products from you and the Pleak makes it and ships it for them that's probably the best method if you don't want to do anything yourself and you just want to job it out it's a lot safer to work with a print-on-demand supplier for this budget we're going to give it a 40 budget because you can buy some press art sheet for 30 bucks you can create a Bella canvas maker account that we're going to link in the description right down below Bella canvas has some incredible resources for wholesale blanks that you could literally pick up for like four ten fifteen dollars depending on the cuts and Silhouettes that you want with a wholesale blank and with a street crafter order you're now able to sample your products hopefully those forty dollars your designs are good enough for you to be able to turn a profit on that and now you just are able to self-fund this launch it doesn't have to be that complicated because a lot of times we make it overly complicated and that's the reason why businesses never start as long as you got some artwork and a design idea you're ready to start printing some products now that you got those products made photography is the next thing now when you think about the photography what really comes to mind 99 of the time is a camera like this and a camera like this can be kind of expensive and if you don't know how to use it you got to pay somebody that knows how to do it because you could be spending two thousand dollars on a camera but if you don't know how to use it the photos won't look any better than the photos that you take on your phone it comes to grading photography for your brand there's some very low cost methods to do it that don't require an you invest into a camera but we are going to jump into some details of how you can leverage this at a very low cost rate but to start one of the resources you should consider if something like placeit.net placeit allows you to actually place your art onto models that then are wearing the products in in a real life type of setting now a place that works great for print on demand but it doesn't look legit for a real brand or a real eCommerce store Cody once said it was a really good analogy it's like a real duck looking at a decoy duck something's off about it doesn't look like it's completely legit and that's kind of how your customers are going to be looking at mock-ups that you put on other models that are just in random sceneries and places you could fake it enough to make it look pretty decent but again you're going to want to take real photography of your products if you want to actually establish and grow up clothing brand another great option to do this is with something like uh like this right here your phone what's key about taking photography whether it's lifestyle or product shoots from your phone is to just have the right lighting guys even if you don't have expensive studio lights you can literally just put it by a window put it on a surface that doesn't have too much happening like a table have minimal shadows and then you can import it into a program such as canva that automatically removes the background or a program such as photo room which also does something similar so to begin with it's just important that you either use place it or that you use resources that are very low cost like the photo room option but your best option to have if you're starting this and you want to take it serious is to actually work with a photographer that's going to be able to help you take these photos now you may be wondering John how do I get a photographer if I don't have the budget for that start networking with people within your own Community within your own city or state and a great way to do that is to join a community of people that are literally on a similar path everybody shares resources and helps each other out because we all need help in establishing and growing a brand so in our ftgu app I think one of the coolest things that we have that that's happening there is that people are literally locally meeting so we have people like meeting in groups of five six and they're having little workshops on their own weekends they coordinate dates and they have all this really cool stuff happening so just be ready to offer some type of value certain things that are that are really unique and special to what you do everyone can work together and collaborate and literally do photo shoots for close to zero as long as you pay for lunch so for this budget we're gonna give it 25 and that brings us to our total of one hundred dollars to start your brand but we're not finished yet guys we're about to jump into the details of how you're going to take these photos and videos to the next level to help sell your products and that's in promotion now the promotion of your brand is going to be what makes all of your work actually pay off remember at the beginning of this video I mentioned how important it was to consider the three things authenticity to your brand the community you build around it and the connection of products to that Community right this is where promotion comes full circle and all of the work that we just laid out starts to make sense or I hope I'm gonna make sense of it so in order for you to actually promote remote and be successful with it it should already be authentic to who you are and what I mean by that is you as a Creator you as a person you as a human being should already have some social media channels established a lot of times what I see is that brand owners will literally launch an Instagram page or a tick tock or a social media account with zero followers right they got zero followers on it they got no posts on it and it's just a random brand name that has no connection to who they are or what they're even about and then they wonder why nobody's following why nobody's watching why nobody's clicking and they're not getting any conversions the reason for that is because the Creator isn't promoting it at all you want it to just be a self-promoting thing and be behind the scenes but in reality people are doing business with people and that's what you need to consider and keep in mind at the top of your promotions is that it's going to begin with you you watching right now have some kind of following whether it's 50 followers 10 followers or a thousand or fifty thousand or a hundred thousand and the reason that you're not promoting or potentially the reason why you're hesitant to promote is because it's not authentic to you the brand that you're creating is not authentic to you the promotions must begin with you from that you're going to be able to activate local or influencers within your own audience base right so if you have friends family and people that have some sort of following you're going to want to create a list of who they are put it in an Excel sheet or a Google doc create a little list of your top followers and how many subscribers they have so you can send them a message send them an email give them a phone call let them know what you're working on send them some photos in real time and let them know hey look I'd love for you to be a part of this project this is something that's passionate to who I am I've been following you for x amount of time can you promote when I launch right and it's going to be a simple conversation like that and a lot of the times they'll either ask for a budget or just free product and this is where the street crafter method comes into play because you can actually sample something and send it off to them at a very low cost in order for you to establish the brand social media page you should be thinking about which posts should you be putting before the launch even happens so you should be creating a Content calendar for this to work now a Content calendar is essentially going to lay out the days you should be hosting leading up to the launch and then the posts that are going to happen after the launch right and it's going to be a continual work guys it's not going to convert on the first post second post third post it takes an average of seven messages for somebody to even look at what you're doing so don't feel bad if nobody knows what you're working on if you haven't at least promoted it 7 to 15 times nobody's gonna know what you're doing okay so you need to create a Content calendar that leads up to the launch so get creative and come up with topics that will start to engage your audience on your personal page and that you could also start sharing on your Brands page there's a lot of different ways to do the pre-launch but the most engaging methods are surveys it's going to be product sampling when you actually start to sample and you get some feedback from people now in the official day of lunch you're going to want to have photos of the actual collection this is the lookbook that you created this is the video that you made everything is going to roll out through the formats that the social media platforms prefer right now reels are big stories are still supported and photos come right after right so you have to have a calendar of at least 14 of 15 days after launch guys don't just launch it that one day and say hey I didn't get any sales how do I better market and then more importantly never stop promoting that's probably the biggest thing that you have to do is every chance that you get to talk to anybody at the store anybody on social media anybody anywhere you should be talking about what you're doing and the reason for this is because you never know who you're talking to there's all kinds of deals that can come when you start talking about it and that's really what you're going to be learning throughout this process is as you launch as you promote as you talk with people as you start getting customers you'll understand your Niche and you'll understand your audience and you understand what they want the better you understand that the better you're going to be able to design and sell products to them so then in a year or two you're going to be in a whole different place than when you than when you started watching this video As Long as You Follow the steps that we just did the last step in this in this process is to reinvest what you make just because you make some money doesn't mean that you should go out and buy a car now it's literally what people start doing as they start making some money they say hey I got some extra profits let me just go buy a car let me go splurge on it and then when your business doesn't get the sales it needs you're out of business now you should always be reinvesting into the brand and having a little a little savings for it for you to reinvest into products into Talent into the next phase and chapter of what you're going to do businesses an ever-growing thing it's not something that just starts once and then that's it but in this video my goal was all about showing you guys how you can get started for a super low budget getting started as a first channel is the first phase of you actually starting this journey which I feel sometimes people don't want to share all this information with you they don't want to give you all of this up front because they'd rather you learn it on your own but I'm here and this channel is all about helping the underserved get the opportunity to build something from the ground up that's what this channel was started with that's what this channel was founded on and that's how we're continuing to grow and assist you guys so for those of you guys watching till right now if you enjoyed this video consider hitting that subscribe button and remember if you're looking to start on a low budget make sure you consider using streetcrafter.com which we're going to link in the description right down below that's our personal site and our whole goal and missionaries to empower the youth and Empower everyday entrepreneurs to start t-shirt printing businesses that they can literally make a living off of for there to assist you through supplies blanks and everything else that you need to start start a business from home and if you're interested in designing a clothing brand for less than 200 check out this video here where we dive into the steps that are going to show you how you can create a full collection for less than 200 and we're going to be walking you step by step so click on this now and I'll see you guys in that one foreign [Music]

Channel: John Santos

Views: 775,265

Keywords: how to start a clothing brand, how to start a clothing line, online business, how to start a clothing brand with no money, how to start a clothing brand in 2023, clothing brand, how to design a clothing brand, best programs to design clothing, how to start a clothing brand on a budget, how to start a tshirt business, how to start a clothing brand step by step, how to start a clothing brand from scratch

Id: t2B0FR8-szc

Length: 29min 28sec (1768 seconds)

Published: Sat May 13 2023