Selling Your DIY Clothing
I've gotten a lot of questions lately about how to start a business, how to get people to buy your clothes, how to actually make money off of this, etc. In this DIY guide I'm going to try to go over all of the basics to selling your clothes/other DIY stuff over the internet, and I will include tips and things that I wish I could have known when I first started out. Please remember that I am not an expert on this! If there is anything I missed that you want to know about, send me an email and I'll add it on.
Contents:
1. 3 Most Important Things
2. Marketing Tips
3. Finding Wholesale Distributors
4. eBay Tips
5. Legal Stuff
1. Three Most Important Things
The stuff you sell must be AWESOME. Unique, well made, detailed, and not just something you stitched together in ten minutes. Don't just put a patch on a miniskirt and call it one of a kind DIY. Add paint! Bleach! Studs! Cover the entire thing with patches if you want, just make sure that you put time and effort into it and that it looks amazing.
Take great pictures. If you are not selling stuff on the internet, you don't have to worry about this. Otherwise, almost everything depends on your pictures. Even if you have made something completely awesome, if you throw it on your floor and take blurry, dark picture of it, nobody is going to realize how amazing it is. Have somebody model your clothes, or use your camera timer and model them yourself. Have interesting backgrounds that don't take the focus away from your clothes. Play around with different lighting effects. Make interesting shadows, or just make sure that your pictures are bright. Dress up your clothes with accessories and other things that create an interesting outfit. Do poses that make your clothes look as flattering as possible. You can also correct your pictures on your computer. Crop the picture, up the contrast, or correct the colors. Make sure your clothes look as great in the picture as they really are. If your pictures suck, nobody will want to buy anything from you.
Find a way to sell your stuff. A lot of people start out with eBay. You can also start your own website, but make sure that you have a way to direct people to it. Whichever way you choose, make sure that a lot of people will be able to find your stuff, and that they trust you or the website that you are selling through. Include a lot of ways to pay for your item, and be specific about shipping costs, whether you accept returns, and everything else that a potential buyer will need to know.
Places that you can sell your DIY stuff: eBay, Etsy, GothAuctions, and GothicAuctions
2. Marketing your clothes
The more you advertise, the more things you will sell. DIY advertising is a lot more creative (and fun!) then the usual type of advertising, where you pay for a magazine or television ad. Here are a couple of ideas:
A lot of people have made separate myspace accounts for their clothing lines, and they post bulletins whenever they list new things for sale. On my myspace page I have links to my website and my eBay auctions, as well as a banner ad.
Make flyers! As long as you have an easy website for people to go to, then you can pass out flyers advertising your stuff. If you don't have your own domain name or eBay store, you can just make a myspace/yournamehere account that won't be too complicated to put on a flyer.
Exchange banners and links with other DIY designers.
There are tons of other ways to get more people to know about your business, think of some!
3. Finding wholesale distributors
If you buy your supplies wholesale, you can save a lot of money. Look all over the internet for companies that will sell to you wholesale. Don't be afraid to send them a message asking for a price list, or to apply for a wholesale account. I have found a lot of distributors that have little or no minimums at all. If you are buying band shirts to deconstruct, try to buy licensed shirts. Bands will get money from the shirts you buy, and you won't be breaking the law. Also, don't go around asking other designers for their wholesale sources, because they most likely won't give them to you. (If I've ever done this to you...sorry!)
Remember, you can buy clothing and t-shirts as well as sewing supplies wholesale. I have found wholesale sources for needles, zippers, boning, elastic, thread, and many other things. If you do a lot of sewing, buying wholesale supplies will save you a lot of money.
Also, if you are buying other brand's clothing to resell, be careful about where you sell it. A lot of companies do not want their clothing on eBay, and they also don't want you to sell it for dirt cheap prices.
4. Selling on eBay
eBay can be both frustrating and rewarding. When I first started out I lost a lot of money because my clothes weren't bid up very high. Here are some tips:
The best way to become successful on eBay is to make people remember you. Try to always have several things listed, so that bidders can check back every week to see your new auctions.
Make an interesting About Me page. You can include pictures of yourself and past things that you have made, as well as links to your myspace, website, email address, or whatever else you want people to know. I love going around eBay and reading about other designers, and I'm sure your potential buyers will love to know more about you.
Include a description and every measurement that a buyer would need to know on your auctions. People forget to do this when they first start out, and most buyers don't want to bother with sending questions to clarify everything.
Don't open up an eBay store when you first start out. Things in stores don't show up on the regular search listings. Only open a store when a lot of people already know about your stuff and when you have a way to draw people into the store.
Be nice to your customers. This is obvious...answer all their questions, don't rip them off on shipping, and ship everything promptly. It is up to you how to treat non paying bidders. I'm way too nice to them, I usually wait up to a month to recieve payments, while some people give up after 3 days. I've found that being patient does help a lot, and I do get most payments eventually.
Don't be afraid to leave negative feedback, but don't be mean about it. Just let people know that they buyer did not pay. Insults are immature and will probably get you a neg in return. Even more annoying is when people add a reply to their negs to make excuses for what happened.
5. Legal Stuff
If you are planning on selling more then just a couple things on eBay every once in a while, you'll probably want to think about getting a business license, fictitous business name, and tax ID number. I don't really know what the point of the license and fictitous business name were, but I do know that they cost me about $165 total and I found out all the information I needed by typing "California business license" on a search engine. You will need a tax ID number/seller's permit to start charging sales tax. If you live in a state that doesn't charge sales tax, you should still look all of this up to see if you have to do something else. A lot of wholesale distributors require tax ID numbers, so it is a good idea to get one. You can pay somebody to do all your legal stuff, but doing it yourself is easier. It's just a lot of paperwork. You can download most of it off the internet.