How to open a clothing store

Opening a clothing store requires having a little capital, some contacts, but above all a lot of self-confidence, energy and perseverance.

In this article we show you some of the keys that it would be good to consider when creating a clothing store: documentation, bureaucracy, financing, clothing suppliers, etc. Read carefully and find out how to open a clothing store.

Steps to follow:

1. To open a clothing store one of the most important things is the location. Look for a busy street, ideally pedestrian. Clothing stores require many customers and you will achieve that if many people pass in front of your store. You can also consider taking a place in a shopping center.

2. Don”t worry about the size of the premises, a clothing store is easy to move in case you need a larger space. Adjust the expenses of your clothing store to your needs and then you can adjust it as the business grows.

3. The decoration of the clothing store is key, it is important that the customer feels comfortable. For this reason, try to create an environment that encourages you to stay longer in the store and thus increase the chances of making a sale. The decoration must be the product that is being sold. If the customer looks more at the decoration than the clothes, something is wrong.

4. Clothing stores have two key moments a year. In the fashion sector, the calendar year is usually divided into two seasons: spring-summer and autumn-winter. Depending on the brand you work with, you will need to place between two and four main orders throughout the year. The usual thing is two large purchases a year, at the beginning of each season, that is, autumn and spring, and then adjust your offer through specific replacements.

5. Buy clothes on short notice and with few units, this will help you better adjust the amount of clothes you buy and, thus, have more rotation.

6. The suppliers of the clothes are key, the brand, the prices, the quality, etc. Think that if you compete with large companies such as Zara and Mango, it will be difficult to compete with them in price, but you can compete in quality and address a more specific audience.

7. Make a business project for your clothing store. It is important that before starting the whole process to open a fashion store, you do numbers to see if it is a viable business or not. We recommend that the numbers be based on these criteria:

• Number of people who will pass in front of the premises.
• % of people who will enter the store.
• Average price of what people will buy.
• Margin on sales.
• Store costs: staff, material, services, etc.

It is recommended that in businesses where we will have few customers because it will be very specific clothing (for example, very expensive children”s clothing), they are businesses with a lot of margin. On the other hand, in businesses with a large clientele, they may have little margin but always more than 15%.

8. The staff you hire in a clothing store is key, finding two or three shop assistants who serve the public well can make the amount of each sale skyrocket, which will improve your margins.

9. To carry out optimal management of a clothing store there is the possibility of having real professionals who take care of it. Having the services of a good online manager, for example, ensures greater ease in labor, tax and accounting procedures for our business.