How do you find a manufacturer for your clothing line? …especially as a new brand without many industry contacts? In today’s episode of Factory45 TV (!), I’m sharing 5 tips to finding a clothing manufacturer for the first time. My best tip — that I haven’t shared before — is saved for #4 so make […]
In the lead up to becoming an entrepreneur, I was a waitress. I’ll clarify: I was a waitress at a rowdy Irish pub turned late-night bar in the tourist district of downtown Boston. I spent the summer of 2009 working six nine-hour shifts a week, serving up to 24 tables at a time — often […]
Do you know one of the most time-intensive parts of creating a fashion brand? Fabric sourcing. It can take months to find the perfect fabric for your product(s). And that’s why fabric sourcing is the very first thing we tackle in the Factory45 accelerator program. Because at the same time as you’re building your social […]
This is a guest post from Brianna Kilcullen, the founder of Anact and a student of my Kickstarter course, The Crowdfunding Factory. Today she’s sharing three things she’s learned about creating a Kickstarter campaign for anyone else who is considering it as a launch strategy. Here’s Brianna… I’ll begin by saying, I’ve never done a […]
The fashion industry is competitive — there’s no doubt about it…
Last week I *hopefully* convinced you that it’s not only worth the time and effort to blog about your fashion brand, but it’s imperative. If you missed that post you can read it here. Today I want to talk about the not-so-sexy side of creating content for your brand and why your blog strategy depends […]
If I polled an audience of startup fashion designers and asked them the number one business task they dread the most, I bet I could guess what most of them would say. It’s not Google Analytics… Or calculating costs… Or managing a budget… (Although I’m sure those are high on the list.) The number one […]
“Oh, man. I was going about this all wrong…” she said to me, looking like the ‘face palm’ emoji. “No wonder no one was emailing me back.” This is an all-too-common feeling for new designers who are just starting out in the overwhelming world of fabric sourcing. You know that whatever you’re doing isn’t working, […]
“The Instagram algorithm is literally paralyzing me.” I was talking to two startup designers at TexWorld, a fabric sourcing trade show in NYC. “Gah, I’m so happy to hear you say that,” one of my Factory45 alum replied, “It’s paralyzing me, too.” If you use Instagram to attract new customers and market your own brand, […]
It is officially fabric trade show season! What does that mean for you? There is a good likelihood that there is some sort of wholesale fabric show happening in a city near you — whether that’s a short plane ride or right down the street. StartUp Fashion put together a comprehensive list for 2019 here. […]
