The Debrief: A Clothing Company

Welcome to The Debrief. This week we interviewed Nathan, a clothing designer who turned his hobby into a business. If you didn’t catch it, feel free to check it out here before diving into this edition.

In this mid-week newsletter, we are going to investigate what we covered in our interview and breakdown the key takeaways and share some actionable advice for you to work on in your business venture.

Each debrief is designed to give you something to work on each week based off the advice given by our featured entrepreneur.

Let’s get into it!

Forme Prints

Key takeaways:

1. Inspiration for your business does not always need to come from a desire to make money. Nathan began his business by exploring his interest in screen-printing and once his designs began to catch the eye of friends and family, he decided to take it to the next step. Gathering inspiration from your hobbies or interests is sometimes a great place to start when building a business but this transition does not need to be intentional.

2. Success is not linear and your perception of it can and will change over time. Your initial goals should not always be overly ambitious (although it is good to set yourself some reach goals), but once you’ve achieved them, you should always look to build off it and strive for further improvements.

3. Selling products online isn’t always the best place to start when looking to build a business. There’s often a higher chance of success by targeting local customers to begin with and then growing your business reach from there. Nathan has found most of his success selling at artisan markets and pop-up shops.

My thoughts:

Now, I know what you’re thinking. Everyone and their mums has tried (and failed) a clothing business and there’s absolutely no way that this can work long-term. Well, let me explain my thought process first and then you can judge.

So, entry requirements, if you’re doing print on demand or ordering in bulk from overseas, then your entry requirements are going to be relatively low (a first order costing a few hundred/thousand GBP/USD) but if you go down the screen-printing route which Nathan has, then your entry requirements are going to be a little higher. Firstly, the machine to design and print on to the clothing is pricey to buy and time consuming to use. Nathan makes all his pieces by hand and prints them one at a time in his home - this requires some special dedication. However, by doing this, Nathan is in full control of this product and can make as many designs as he likes, whenever he wants. Not only does this product get to be labeled as homemade but also the quality is going to be much higher.

Time requirements are definitely on the higher side with this approach but as mentioned earlier, the payoff is worth it for Nathan. He also sells all this clothing personally and spends most of his weekends selling at local markets - this is a huge time sink but it is definitely worthwhile for his business growth. By selling in person, he’s more likely to convert more sales as his personal approach brings a value which you cannot get online.

Demand is where I graded this business lower as clothing is so incredibly saturated and highly competitive. However, going back to the point above, selling through markets actually increases the demand. Lots of people visit the markets and a lot of the initial sales can come from impulse buys. Once these buyers have used the product a few times, then he can build the demand and get repeat customers.

The scalability is definitely something which can be looked at positively with this business idea. Once Nathan has created his designs, he can print as many pieces as the demand calls for. He can also hire someone to sell for him on the markets so he can have his product on multiple markets on the same day. He has also started selling in local shops which is pretty much passive income for him.

Overall, I think this business idea is great for leaving the rat race. Nathan has proved this with Forme Prints, so it would be foolish of me to say otherwise. However, a word of caution for people wanting to start this business for themselves is you need to be prepared to put the time into getting this off the ground and churning consistent sales before you can think about quitting the day job.

Do you agree with me? I’d love to know your thoughts, just reply to this email!

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👇️ Now it’s your turn to answer a question:

If you’d like to read last week’s debrief, covering an interview with Sujal, a newsletter writer who earns a full-time living writing about the digital economy. Check it out here.

Thank you all,

See you on Sunday! 👋