business plan about activewear

How To Start An Activewear Brand

If you ask any entrepreneur, starting a business comes with its fair share of challenges.

Starting an activewear brand requires a great deal of effort, dedication and most importantly passion .

If you're willing to put in the effort to build your own business, you're going to want to follow the critical steps to creating a successful brand.

We've created a guide that covers each step of the process - from making key financial decisions, to launching and marketing your business the right way, and tips/strategies on how to grow your business effectively.

Start An Activewear Brand ➜ avg revenue (monthly) $125K see all activewear brands ➜ starting costs $27.4K see all costs ➜ gross margin 20% time to build 360 days average product price $64 growth channels Handwritten notes business model E-Commerce best tools Flexify, Spin-a-Sale, MailChimp time investment Full time pros & cons 28 Pros & Cons see all ➜ tips 6 Tips see all ➜

💡 Introduction To Starting An Activewear Brand

Is starting an activewear brand right for you.

There are many factors to consider when starting an activewear brand.

We put together the main pros and cons for you here:

Pros of starting an activewear brand

• Flexibility

You can put as much time into the business as you'd like. If you like the work and have some initial experience, you can start small and manage all aspects of the business on your own.

• Gain exposure and experience

This career allows you to gain experience working for multiple different businesses - which will benefit your resume and also keep things interesting for you!

• Unlimited income potential

With starting an activewear brand there is no cap as to how much income you can make. The stronger your business skills and the more energy/time you put into your career, the more you'll make.

• Predictable income stream

Your businesses income stream tends to be predictable based on the number of customers you have signed up. This makes financial planning and outlooks much more seamless!

• Higher likelihood of getting referrals

This business is all about referrals, which can be a a very impactful way to attract and retain customers. It's critical that you have a great referral program in place that incentivizes your customers to tell their friends about your product.

• Location is everything!

When operating a physical storefront, the location often speaks for itself and serves as it's very own marketing tool! It's important to choose a location in a high traffic area so you can spark curiosity and get people through your door!

• You can sell your product in various places!

There are various different markets to sell your product, which will help you reach different audiences and revenue streams.

• Simple business model

A activewear brand has the advantage of a simple business model, which makes launching and building the business more seamless.

• Greater Income Potential

With this business, the sky is the limit in regards to your income potential.

• Easy to Learn The Business

When starting your activewear brand, there is a ton of information readily available to you online (Facebook groups, Youtube videos, Starter Story etc). This will help you get the business started and answer any questions, doubts or concerns you may have.

• You get to inspire others

Your business is one that encourages and inspires others, which in itself, can be very fulfilling.

• You can promote and sell your product on Amazon

Although there are some disadvantages to consider when selling your product on Amazon, there are also a host of benefits. Mainly, Amazon is the world's largest online retailer, so you're bound to tap into new business and reach an entirely new audience.

• You establish yourself as an expert

With starting an activewear brand, you establish yourself as an expert in your niche, which builds your credibility. In return, customers are more likely to trust you and refer you to other friends and family.

• Results and revenue happen quickly!

Unlike other businesses, it can be relatively quick to start seeing results and revenue. As long as you follow all the steps to validate your idea before launch, you are likely to see quick results and ROI.

Cons of starting an activewear brand

• Longer Sales Process

A activewear brand can be a big time and money investment for your customer, so it's important you plan and predict a longer conversion funnel and stay in communication with potential customers.

• Low margins

The gross margins for your activewear brand are typically around 20%, which can make it more challenging to incur new expenses and maintain profitability.

As a activewear brand, you typically pay self-employment taxes which can be quite high. It's important to understand what you will be paying in taxes each year so you can determine if the work you're taking on is worth it.

• Niche Market

A niche business is not necessarily a bad thing, in fact, it can be the key to your success. However, it can be more challenging and time consuming to find the perfect niche market and target audience.

• High overhead expenses

With starting an activewear brand, there are overhead expenses that come with selling a physical product. You will want to make sure you strategically budget for these overhead costs. We discuss this more in the startup costs section below.

• You may need to charge sales tax

If you are selling your products in various states, you may be required to charge sales tax. Although this may not impact your financials specifically, it can be a headache to create a process and procedure for this. To learn more about sales tax, check out this article

• Time commitment

With starting an activewear brand, all responsibilities and decisions are in your hands. Although this is not necessarily a negative thing, work life can take over at times. This can place a strain on friends and family and add to the pressure of launching a new business.

• Difficult to build trust with your customer

With starting an activewear brand, there can be minimal face-to-face interaction, which means it can be a lot more difficult to establish trust with your customers. You'll need to go the extra mile with your customer to grab their attention and business.

• Impatient customers

You may offer an engaging user experience for your customer, but customers expect a lot and may be impatient if they aren't pleased with your product or service.

• Difficult to scale

With a activewear brand, it can be challenging to find ways to scale. Check out this article that discusses scaling your business and the challenges that come with it.

• Learning Curve

When you start your own business, you no longer have upper management to provide you with a playbook for your roles and responsibilities. You should know the ins and outs of every aspect of your business, as every decision will come down to you.

• Equipment Breakdowns

Over the years, your equipment can get damaged, break down, and may need repairs which can be expensive. It's important you prepare for these expenses and try to avoid damages/wear & tear as much as possible.

• Recession-Impacted Industry

When the economy is down, activewear brand's are one of the first things to be cut.

• Technical issues can be frustrating

Technical issues are common in this business. If you struggle with the technical side of things, you may want to consider outsourcing this responsibility to save yourself the time and frustration.

Big Players

• Lululemon (3.86K Alexa Ranking)
• Gymshark (6.12K Alexa Ranking)
• S&S Activewear (10K Alexa Ranking)
• SIERRA (13.1K Alexa Ranking)
• alphabroder (23.4K Alexa Ranking)

Small Players

• Be Activewear - Revenue $125K/month
• MuskOx - Revenue $30K/month
• Spuds - Revenue $15K/month
• Thor Fitness Europe - Revenue $12K/month
• Infinite Elgintensity Gym Apparel - Revenue $8.38K/month
• Garage Gym Barbell Apparel - Revenue $7K/month
• Go Mama - Revenue $3K/month
• Absolute Fitness Apparel - Revenue $650/month

Search Interest

Let's take a look at the search trends for activewear over the last year:

How To Name Your Activewear Brand

It's important to find a catchy name for your activewear brand so that you can stand out in your space.

Here are some general tips to consider when naming your activewear brand

• Avoid hard to spell names: you want something easy to remember and easy to spell for your customers
• Conduct a search to see if others in the space have the same name
• Try not to pick a name that limits growth opportunities for your business (ie. if you decide to expand into other product lines)
• As soon as you have an idea (or ideas) of a few names that you love, register the domain name(s) as soon as possible!

Why is naming your activewear brand so important?

The name of your business will forever play a role in:

• Your customers first impression
• Your businesses identity
• The power behind the type of customer your brand attracts
• If you're memorable or not

It's important to verify that the domain name is available for your activewear brand.

You can search domain availability here:

Find a domain starting at $0.88

powered by Namecheap

Although .com names are the most common and easiest to remember, there are other options if your .com domain name is not available. Depending on your audience, it may not matter as much as you think.

It's also important to thoroughly check if social media handles are available.

As soon as you resonate with a name (or names), secure the domain and SM handles as soon as possible to ensure they don't get taken.

Here's some inspiration for naming your activewear brand:

• Heist 1st check availability
• Actobuy check availability
• Matchpoint check availability
• BUILT Apparel check availability
• Aqua Attire check availability
• Dreezy Flexy check availability
• Jumpshorts check availability
• Fair Is Fair check availability
• Rex Abby check availability
• Sport Start check availability
• Sporty Goods check availability
• Spotted Sportswear check availability
• Sporting Goods check availability
• O Circle check availability
• Drey Flab check availability
• Two storm check availability
• Sportturtle check availability
• For The Game check availability
• 2 storm check availability
• Healthy Competition check availability
• Accelerex check availability
• Tripic Edge check availability
• Roundhouse Apparel check availability
• Dalton check availability
• Marvane check availability
• Finishline Clothings check availability
• Cacada check availability
• Cosmic sports check availability
• Jack Kester check availability
• Victory Clothes check availability
• Game Of Life check availability
• Lululemon check availability
• Rough turtle check availability
• Onyourmarks check availability
• The Sidelines check availability
• We Know Sports check availability
• Fight Club Apparel check availability
• Sport Spot check availability
• Bravane check availability
• Shop World Gym check availability
• Gravitywears check availability
• Life’S Games check availability
• Frontline Clothing check availability
• Marne check availability
• The New Team Apparel check availability
• Missed check availability
• Cheetahcontrol check availability
• Grey Essense check availability
• Mexwears check availability
• The Last Team Apparel check availability
• Bay Bug check availability
• Belt highway check availability
• Morron check availability
• Oxigen check availability
• The Gifted Apparel check availability
• Hot turtle check availability
• Double Edge check availability
• Honey Be Worldwide check availability
• Thrivast check availability
• Nexwears check availability
• Vitalsports check availability
• Yay Sports! Clothing check availability
• Scoreboard Clothing check availability
• Galvestone check availability
• FastaTapper check availability
• Cleverbit check availability
• Enorfy check availability
• Copabust check availability
• Zapper check availability
• Competing Sides check availability
• Athletic Gear check availability
• Tropic Edge check availability
• Rogue Fitness check availability
• The Real Game Clothing check availability
• Aquawears check availability
• Superstone check availability
• Beat The Competition check availability
• One Athletic check availability
• Borvo check availability
• Always In Season check availability
• The Jersey Line check availability
• Gym Shark check availability
• Kester check availability
• Proton sport check availability
• Joyling check availability
• Rhone check availability
• Ghetto play check availability
• Fans Favorite Fans Clothing check availability
• Ready Set Sportswear! check availability
• Gamawears check availability
• Betterstride check availability
• Athlemotive check availability
• Dark Pixel check availability
• Dunkwears check availability
• Game Day Apparel check availability
• Shotshorts check availability
• Play Reaper check availability
• Classic Raw check availability
• Sporting Game check availability
• Gazza check availability
• Rocco check availability
• Graynil check availability
• Juvewears check availability
• Hikingpack check availability
• Mexotiny check availability
• Trackher check availability
• Raw check availability
• Fancysports check availability

Read our full guide on naming your activewear brand ➜

Gia Paddock, founder of Boutique Rye explains how they came up with the name of their business:

What took the longest was deciding on a name and our logo; I wanted it to be meaningful, and I cared so much about what people thought.

Looking back, my advice would be to quit thinking about other people. This is my business, and all that matters is if I am happy the name and logo.

A popular national brick & mortar women’s boutique that many may have heard of is called Francesca’s… How original, right? So we came up with Boutique Rye named after our son, Riley. We put "boutique" in front to be a little different.

Now came the logo… Oh man, was this a task. We hired a graphic designer that we went to high school with, and went back and forth with him for about a month and a half. I wanted something that really described my style which is kind of “boho chic” and decided on a dreamcatcher. The dreamcatcher is also what our son’s nursery was decorated in, so it truly felt like a family business.

How To Create A Slogan For Your Activewear Brand:

Slogans are a critical piece of your marketing and advertising strategy.

The role of your slogan is to help your customer understand the benefits of your product/service - so it's important to find a catchy and effective slogan name.

Often times, your slogan can even be more important than the name of your brand.

Here are 6 tips for creating a catchy slogan for your activewear brand:

1. Keep it short, simple and avoid difficult words

A great rule of thumb is that your slogan should be under 10 words. This will make it easy for your customer to understand and remember.

2. Tell what you do and focus on what makes you different

There are a few different ways you can incorporate what makes your business special in your slogan:

• Explain the target customer you are catering your services towards
• What problem do you solve?
• How do you make other people, clients, or your employer look good?
• Do you make people more successful? How?

3. Be consistent

Chances are, if you're coming up with a slogan, you may already have your business name, logo, mission, branding etc.

It's important to create a slogan that is consistent with all of the above.

4. Ensure the longevity of your slogan

Times are changing quickly, and so are businesses.

When coming up with your slogan, you may want to consider creating something that is timeless and won't just fade with new trends.

5. Consider your audience

When finding a catchy slogan name, you'll want to make sure that this resonates across your entire audience.

It's possible that your slogan could make complete sense to your audience in Europe, but may not resonate with your US audience.

6. Get feedback!

This is one of the easiest ways to know if your slogan will be perceived well, and a step that a lot of brands drop the ball on.

Ask friends, family, strangers, and most importantly, those that are considered to be in your target market.

Here's some inspiration for coming up with a slogan for your activewear brand:

• Hawaiian Sportswear, We Take Care Of You!
• I Can't Believe It's Not Activewear.
• Fitnessclothing Tested, Mother Approved.
• Activewear Makes Everything Better.
• Activewear Will Be For You What You Want It To Be.
• America's Most Trusted Fitnessclothing.
• There's A Bit Of Fitnessclothing In All Of Us.
• Beware Of Expensive Activewear.
• Sportswear Is Better Than Chocolate.
• Ho Ho Ho, Green Fitnessclothing.
• Let Your Activewear Do The Walking.
• America's Most Trusted Activewear.
• Swing Your Activewear.
• Next To The Breast, Fitnessclothing's The Best.
• Sleepwear Is What We Do
• Would You Give Someone Your Last Activewear?
• Activewear - A Safe Place In An Unsafe World!
• Activewear Right As Rain.
• See You At Sportswear.
• Have You Had Your Sportswear Today?
• It's How Sportswear Is Done.
• Sportswear - Go For The Game.
• Next To The Breast, Activewear's The Best.
• For The Activewear You Don't Yet Know.
• Exceedingly Good Fitnessclothing.
• Activewear Is My Sport.
• Sportswears With Labour
• Casual And Impractical
• Fitnessclothing - Go For The Game.
• I'm Not Just The Activewear, I'm A Member.
• Espadrille Is What We Do
• Fitnessclothing Is The Buzz.
• Let's Sportswear!
• Colorful Chambrays Are What We Do
• The Too Good To Hurry Fitnessclothing.
• It's A New Activewear Every Day.
• Activewear, You Can't Live Without It.
• Fitnessclothing Is Crazy Good.
• Fashionable Casualwear, Casual Womenswear
• Free Activewear.
• Fitnessclothing Loves You.
• Get More From Life With Sportswear.
• Classic And Magic
• Mild Green Sportswear Liquid.
• Sportswear It's Guaranteed.
• Fitnessclothing Gets It Done On Time.
• Fitnessclothing - Empowering People.
• Fitnessclothing Is What We Do.
• Active Sportswear, We Are Here
• Long Sleeve Is What We Do
• Fashionable Casualwear, Active Activewear
• Space Of The Hosiery
• You'll Look A Little Lovelier Each Day With Fabulous Pink Fitnessclothing.
• Casual Charlotte Russes Are What We Do
• Sportswears With History
• Italian Sportswear - A New You
• Why Can't Everything Orange Be Fitnessclothing?
• Welcome To Sportswear Country.
• Post Of The Apparel
• Sportswears With Work
• Repreve Is What We Do
• Fitnessclothing Is Forever.
• Contemporary Sportswear, Let's Get To Work
• Activewear For Everyone.
• Absolut Sportswear.
• Sportswear Keeps Going, And Going, And Going...
• Colorful Denims Are What We Do
• Fitnessclothing Can Do.
• Italian Sportswear, Take A Seat
• Crunch All You Want. We'll Make Activewear.
• Building The Future
• Activewear Is My Passion.
• You'll Look A Little Lovelier Each Day With Fabulous Pink Activewear.
• Simple Impartial Sportswear.
• Make The World A Better Place With Activewear.
• Colorful Sportswear, Satisfaction Guaranteed
• Where's Fitnessclothing?
• Activewear - Today And Tomorrow.
• Rate Of The Swimwear
• The Fitnessclothing Effect.
• Something Special In The Fitnessclothing.
• Active Handbags Are What We Do

The Brick & Mortar Business Model

When deciding whether or not to start an activewear brand, it's important to first decide what type of business model you want (brick and mortar, eCommerce, or both)!

Here are a few things to keep in mind when considering a Brick & Mortar store:

If you do plan to open a physical store, it's important that you find a spot in a high-traffic area. This is a great way to gain exposure for your business and also get new customers.

It's also important to consider the higher costs associated with operating a physical store (ie - employees, rent, utilities, etc) and the long days/hours associated with running a store.

The main benefit, however, is that customers love being able to see products in person. It's important to recognize that although some people enjoy shopping online, there will always be the shopper persona that likes to touch, feel, and see the product they're buying.

Learn more about starting an activewear brand :

Where to start?

-> How much does it cost to start an activewear brand? -> Pros and cons of an activewear brand

Need inspiration?

-> Other activewear brand success stories -> Examples of established activewear brand -> Marketing ideas for an activewear brand -> Activewear brand names

Other resources

-> Activewear brand tips

🎬 How To Start An Activewear Brand

How Much Does It Cost To Start An Activewear Brand

If you are planning to start an activewear brand, the costs are relatively low. This, of course, depends on if you decide to start the business with lean expenses or bringing in a large team and spending more money.

We’ve outlined two common scenarios for “pre-opening” costs of starting an activewear brand and outline the costs you should expect for each:

• The estimated minimum starting cost = $62
• The estimated maximum starting cost = $54,672

Emily Casseday, founder of Blush Boutique Co describes how she was able to stay under $10K to get off the ground:

Because we were starting small, we didn’t have a lot of overhead. One of the biggest downfalls of starting a business is having too much to carry without a lot of income, which is why we decided to start in my basement instead of fully going brick and mortar.

We wanted to test the waters first to see if we had a viable business for our community. In order to finance the beginning of our shop, we used some savings and one credit card. Our goal was to never outspend what we made, so we started with a limit of $10,000 on the card and paid it off as we went. That first year, we didn’t take a paycheck so that we could completely get out of debt.

Raising Money For Your Activewear Brand

Here are the most common ways to raise money for your activewear brand:

Bootstrapping

You may not need funding for your activewear brand.

In fact, many entrepreneurs take this approach when starting their own business, whether they have a little amount of cash or a substantial amount to get started.

So what exactly does the term "bootstrapping" mean?

This method essentially refers to self-funding your business without external help or capital and reinvesting your earnings back into the business**

Bootstrapping means building your company from the ground up with your own, or your loved ones, personal savings and reinvesting all earnings back into the business

Here are some tips to consider when bootstrapping your business :

• Use your savings as your capital - one of the best ways to bootstrap your business is to collect your savings and use them as startup capital. This will also help you avoid using your personal or business credit cards when getting started.
• Determine exactly how much capital you need and how much capital you have to get your business off the ground. Generally, when bootstrapping your business, you may want to consider starting a business that involves less startup capital.
• Consider starting a business that will generate immediate returns so you can put money back into the business
• Be as lean as possible - this refers to cutting down expenses as much as possible, such as payroll, fancy software tools, unnecessary travel, renting an office, etc
• Consider outsourcing instead of hiring - in the beginning, you may not need to hire someone permanently to help run your business. It tends to be much less expensive to outsource work to a freelancer and hire someone permanently down the road!

Want to learn more about bootstrapping your business? Check out this article

VC funding is a traditional and long process, but an effective way to raise money for your business.

The term "VC funding" refers to venture capital firms investing in businesses in exchange for equity.

The VC's (venture capitalists) are an individual or small group investing in your business and typically require substantial ownership of the business, with the hope of seeing a return on their investment.

VC's are typically the best approach for businesses with high startup costs - where it would be very difficult to raise the money on your own or through a loan.

When deciding whether to take this approach, it's important that you have a few things in place first, and know what you're getting yourself into:

Determine if your business is ready

Having an idea is not enough to get VC funding.

Typically, VC's will check to make sure you have these things in place prior to closing any deal:

• An MVP (Minimal Viable Product)
• A founding team with all proper documents in place (articles of organization, business formation)
• A validated idea with actual customers buying your product/service

Get everything in place and build a pitch deck

A VC individual or firm will be expecting a fine-tuned presentation that gives an overview of your business.

Here's what you should consider including in your pitch deck:

• Management team, their previous experience + current roles in the business
• Market challenge and solution
• Company financials - including a P&L statement, cash flow statement, and projections
• Company progress
• Investment amount - how much do you need and why?

Research the right VC to fund your business

Research the types of VC investors out there and what niche they focus on.

Then, put together a list of target VC's you want to approach and your strategy around setting up meetings.

Be sure you have everything in place (as discussed above) before setting up any meeting!

Make sure the terms and expectations are right for your business

Committing to VC funding is a big deal and a decision that should not be made lightly.

Although the money and experience from VC's can help your business quickly grow, you are also giving away a stake in the company, and the money comes with strings attached.

Be sure you do your due diligence in finding the right investor - one that truly believes in the growth and success of your business.

What Skills Do I Need To Succeed In Starting An Activewear Brand?

As a activewear brand, there are several essential skills and characteristics that are important to identify prior to starting your business.

Let’s look at these skills in more detail so you can identify what you need to succeed in your day-to-day business operations:

Self Motivation Skills

Self motivation and discipline skills are critical in order to become successful in this field.

It's likely that you will find yourself starting and running your activewear brand from home, which could mean there are more distractions for you.

Here are the basic skills needed for self motivation & discipline:

• Becoming a self starter: It's important that you are capable of independently completing a task without the help or direction of anyone else
• Listening and following directions : When you are given direction by others, it's critical that you are able to follow directions and ask the right questions in order to get your job done
• Taking the initiative in problem solving: Instead of taking the easy route, you'll need to learn to troubleshoot issues on your own as much as possible.

Customer Service Skills

Friendly communication with customers and the ability to address service issues is a critical part of the job.

Here are some customer service skills you may want to consider prior to starting an activewear brand:

• Professionalism: The way you act, present yourself, and respond to situations all leave an impression on your customer. It's important to stay professional at all times when handling customer requests or issues.
• Problem-solving: When issues arise, it's important that you are able to think quick on your feet and address the situation with a calm and clear solution
• Friendly-manner: This is an obvious one, but customers truly appreciate someone that can respond in a quick, efficient, and friendly manner.
• Proficient in writing: These skills include the ability to write well-crafted emails, service tickets, and any other programs used by the business (ie. chat functions, SMS texting)

Business Savvy Skills

When starting an activewear brand, there are a few fundamental business skills you will want to learn in order to be successful:

• Leadership and training skills: A great team starts with YOU. Make sure you have all company policies and training procedures in place prior to hiring your team
• Decisive and self-confident: Over the course of your career, you will need decisions that could impact your business significantly. It's important you are able to think clearly and rationally about these decisions.
• Ability to understand the financials : You don't need to be an accountant, but it is important that you are able to clearly understand and define metrics such as expenses, revenue, profit, margins, COGS, etc.
• Strategic Thinking : Setting clear goals and benchmarks, identifying opportunities, risks. Ability to effectively communicate these insights to your team.

These are a few of many business savvy skills you should have (or work on) when starting an activewear brand.

For a full list, check out this article here .

Design Skills

Whether you are the one designing the product or the decision-maker for the product, an eye for design is critical when starting an activewear brand. Here's what this looks like:

• Creative Thinking - the ability to develop or design different products or ideas
• Visualization - being able to imagine or visualize how the product will look
• Articulation - the ability to communicate what the design will look like and how it will be executed
• Detail-oriented - paying close attention to all of the small pieces when designing or working on a project
• Some technical skills - knowledge of the design software you are using to create the product or build prototypes.

Other skills that may be valuable to have when starting an activewear brand include digital marketing skills, branding experience, and basic business knowledge.

Advice For Starting An Activewear Brand

We've interviewed thousands of successful founders at Starter Story and asked what advice they would give to entrepreneurs who are just getting started.

Here's the best advice we discovered for starting an activewear brand:

Bradley Hoos, founder of MuskOx ($30K/month):

While eCommerce has been fruitful and will continue to grow, we feel retail is a mega opportunity for us.

Read the full interview ➜

Julie New, founder of Be Activewear ($125K/month):

A lot of people spend a lot of time on logos, website design… my focus was to get it launched and learn along the way what works.

We’ve been trying to diversify our marketing channels to become less reliant on Facebook as a traffic source.

Write a Business Plan

Writing a business plan from the start is critical for the success of your activewear brand.

Because this allows you to roadmap exactly what you do, what your overall structure will look like, and where you want to be in the future.

For many entrepreneurs, writing out the business plan helps validate their idea and decide whether or not they should move forward with starting the business.

You may want to consider expanding upon these sections in your business plan:

• Executive Summary : Brief outline of your product, the market, and growth opportunities
• Overviews and Objectives : Overview of your business, target customers, and what you need to run your business
• Products and Services : Specifics on the products and services your business will provide
• Market Opportunities : Analysis of customer demographics, buyer habits and if your product is in demand
• Marketing : Outline of your marketing plan and how you plan to differentiate yourself from other customers
• Competitive analysis : Analysis of your competition and the strengths and weaknesses therein
• Operations : Hierarchal structure of the company and what it will take to run the business on the day-to-day
• Leadership Team : Detailing roles and responsibilities of each manager based on their specific skill-set
• Financial Analysis Understanding of all expenses, operating budgets, and projections for the future.

Learn more about how to write a business plan here

Determine Which Business Bank Account You Need

There are hundreds of banks out there, and it can be overwhelming to find one that's right for your business.

Here are some factors you may want to consider:

• Location - Is your bank close enough that you can easily make deposits or get cash?
• Low Fees - Make sure to understand any and all fees associated with setting up and maintaining your bank account. Ask for a list - banks usually try to keep this hidden and in the fine print.
• Online Banking Services - Make sure you can easily navigate through your online portal and you have easy access to everything you need.
• Line of Credit - What do your options look like (even if you don't need this now, you may need this down the road).
• Every bank has something that differentiates them from the rest, so make sure whatever that is applied to your needs and values.

Check out this list of the 13 Best Banks for Small Business in 2020 and what makes them so unique.

Setting Up Your Activewear Brand (Formation and Legal)

When it comes to setting up your business, you may find yourself in a place where you have to make some financial and legal decisions.

The first thing you'll want to decide on is whether you want to be an LLC, S-Corp, or C-Corp.

These three options are found to be the most common when starting a small business, and all serve to protect your personal assets and also provide you with certain tax benefits.

• LLC : All income and expenses from the business are reported on the LLC personal income tax return.
• S corp : Owners pay themselves salaries + receive dividends from profits.
• C Corp : C Corps are separately taxable entities that file a corporate tax return (Form 1120). No income tax is paid at the corporate level and any tax due is paid at the owners individual expense.

Depending on where you're conducting business, you'll also want to consider securing the proper permits, licenses and liability insurance.

Learn more about securing the right permits and licenses ➜

Need to start an LLC? Create an LLC in minutes with ZenBusiness .

How Do I Pay Myself As A Small Business Owner?

Most entrepreneurs start a business to do something they love- but at the end of the day, you still have bills to pay (maybe now more than ever).

But it's important to strike the right balance - if you pay yourself too much, you could be putting your business at risk.

There are two common ways to pay yourself as a business owner:

1. Owner's Draw

Many entrepreneurs pay themselves through an owner's draw. This means that you are technically sean as "self-employed" through the eyes of the IRS and are not paid through regular wages.

At the point that you collect money from the draw, taxes typically are not taken out - so make sure you are prepared to pay these taxes once you file your individual return.

As an owner who takes a draw, you can legally take out as much as you want from your equity.

This type of compensation is suited for Sole props, LLCs, and partnerships. If you’re an S corp, you can pay yourself through both a salary and draw if you choose.

If you decide to pay yourself a salary, you will receive a set and recurring amount. This will be taxed by the federal government and the state you reside in.

The reality is that it can be really complicated to set your own salary, so we have some tips for you to consider:

• Take out a reasonable amount that allows you to live comfortably but also sets your business up for success
• Consider the number of hours you are working weekly + the type of duties you are performing.
• Set your salary based on your industry-standard, location, and profits (or projected profits)
• Look at your P&L statement : Deduct your own pay from that amount. This is important so you can first tackle important business expenses, and then pay yourself from the amount leftover.
• Pick a payroll schedule (and stick to it)! In the US, it's most common to pay yourself and employees twice a month.

To learn more about how to pay yourself and what is a reasonable amount, check out this article .

How To Price Your Activewear

One of the most challenging aspects to starting an activewear brand is determining how much to charge for your activewear.

When businesses under-price their product, this can be extremely detrimental to their bottom line and reputation.

Often times, businesses under-price their products to drive demand and volume, but that last thing you want is for customers to view your product/service as "cheap." Additionally, this can have a big impact on the type of customer you attract, which can be difficult to recover from.

On the other hand, when businesses over-price , this tends to be just as damaging to the business.

When customers buy, it's likely that they will explore the internet and look at other competitors to ensure they're getting the best value + deal. This is why it's so important that you research your competition and understand where you land in the marketplace.

Here are some factors to consider when pricing your product:

Understand your customer

It's important that out of the gates, you identify the type of customer you want to attract and how much they're willing to pay for your service. One great way to do this is by surveying your customers. Here are some important items you'll want to takeaway:

• Customer demographic: Age, gender, location, etc.
• Buying habits of your customer: What they buy + when they buy
• Level of price sensitivity with your customer

All of these segments will help you identify the type of customer you're attracting and how to price your product accordingly.

Understand your costs

When pricing your activewear, it's critical that you first identify all of your costs and consequently mark up your activewear so you can factor in a profit.

The actual cost of your activewear may include things like:

• The actual cost to make the product (ie. raw materials, supplies, manufacturer).
• Shipping + overhead fees
• Operating costs to run your business

You may want to consider creating a spreadsheet with every single expense involved in operating/owning your business. This will give you an idea as to what you need to generate in order to at the very least, break-even and will help you price your products to factor in a profit.

Create revenue goals

When determining the price of your activewear, you'll want to create goals for revenue + how much profit you want your activewear brand to make.

This process is simpler than you may think:

• Think about your breakeven cost (by completing the above step).
• Create a revenue goal based on your break-even cost
• Evaluate the # of items you plan to sell in a given period (make sure this is a realistic number)
• Divide your revenue goal by the number of items you plan to sell

This figure will help determine your estimated price per product in order to meet your revenue goals.

Evaluate your competition

The last piece in determining how to price your activewear is by simply looking at your competition.

The best way to do this is by finding like-minded businesses that offer product(s) with similar perceived value. Then, you can compare prices of the different businesses and determine where your activewear fits best in the marketplace.

All of these factors play an equal part in pricing your activewear, so it's important you evaluate each one individually to come up with an accurate price that will help optimize your business from the start.

Understanding Your Costs

Example from Ishan, founder of Ugly Duckling

First objective: profitability

Our profitability is OK at this point but definitely not where it should be yet. To this day I have not paid myself a regular salary yet...and it’s been 4 years!

The problem is not the cost of goods which are well under 20% of sales, which is good by any standard. The problem is fulfillment costs. In 2018 we transitioned from our first fulfillment company to a much bigger company. We did this because we wanted to provide faster shipment speeds and a better quality of packaging. In hindsight, we chose a company which would have been more suitable for a larger company with bigger volumes. We ended up being tied in with some pretty large minimum monthly payments. So currently fulfillment costs are currently around 45% of sales...way too high.

We are now looking to transit to another fulfillment center. Our target is to get our fulfillment costs down to around 30% of sales which I believe from what I have researched, is possible.

Just to be clear, when I say fulfillment that includes transportation costs also - FedEx, USPS, etc. Not just storage, picking, and packing. I am pretty sure that it is possible to get fulfillment costs down even lower, and I suspect that some large pro sellers on amazon.com work with around 20-25% of sales.

So our target P+L for 2020 looks something like this:

• Cost of goods, including inbound freight and clearance - around 22% of sales.
• Fulfillment - around 30% of sales.
• Digital Advertising & Promotion - around 15% of sales.
• Other marketing and office costs, including salary costs - around 10% of sales.
• That would leave us around 23% of sales - enough to pay me a liveable salary and for the company to make a profit and finance future growth.

That's the first objective for 2020: to right-size the P+L so that we are profitable at our current sales level

Gross Margin Calculator: How to Calculate The Gross Margin For Your Activewear

Our calculator is designed to be simple and easy to use.

The goal is to help you set realistic expectations and understand what is considered a healthy gross margin for your activewear brand.

Calculate your gross margin and profit margin here .

What Type Of Customers Will Buy Your Activewear

It's important to first establish who you will be selling to, whether it's to businesses or consumers.

Typically, in this industry, products are sold to B2C markets (business-to-consumer).

Let's take a look at what this means for your activewear brand:

B2C (or business to consumer) is a transaction where businesses sell their products or services to the consumer directly.

In this market, consumer behavior is the primary driver for your business decisions - so it's important that you truly identify who your customer is, and what their buyer habits are when building your product/service.

The advantage

B2C is that you are able to cast a very wide net when targeting your customers. Your product may interest a large number of consumers or a specific niche.

The disadvantage

B2C is that consumers hold all the power - so if your website is not the most user friendly, or does not rank in the top search results on Google, chances are, your customer is going to shop elsewhere.

When building your activewear brand, it's critical that you hone in on who your target audience is, and why they need your product over your competition.

Here are some items to consider when identifying your buyer persona:

Design A Prototype

Turning your idea into a reality can feel like a daunting task - but it's critical that you have an idea of what your product will look like (even if it's just a sketch) prior to finding a manufacturer.

Here are some common ways you can design your prototype:

• Draw Your Initial Design on Paper
• Form pieces of fabric together
• Consider Taking A Generic Product And Putting Your Own Brand On It
• Try Making the Product Yourself
• Consider Building A Prototype With A 3D Printer

To learn more about how to design and prototype a product, check out our latest guide here .

Joel St John , founder of Thor Fitness Europe dives deep into the process of designing and prototyping their product:

I signed up for a free trial of Adobe Illustrator and watched a handful of tutorials online. Then I read a very simple book called “Ho w to Launch a Kick-Ass T-shirt Brand”. It all stemmed from there. First things first - learn about the manufacturing of various garment types, materials, cuts, print types and their suitability. I sourced this from the UK firstly. Then after researching, I looked into working with foreign suppliers. Currently, we are using 5 suppliers in the middle and far East and 2 in the UK. We have used numerous other suppliers in the far East too, for items such as mailing bags or lanyards.

Dealing with overseas suppliers has proved difficult in some instances. The company that manufactures the Thor Lightning Speed skipping ropes is a large gym product manufacturer. Outside of Thor, I recently purchased a 7.5-ton shipment with the same manufacturer for a new CrossFit gym we are opening in February 2020. Learning about importing large shipments was a real eye-opener and it became rather fraught during parts of the process. It is much easier on a smaller scale importing our ropes, backpacks and other sundry items. I would advise anyone to import larger shipments that require shipping containers to do your research.

Also to really know who you are dealing with and what you are getting. Get yourself a good shipping agent. Even if you pay a little more, a good shipping agent is worth their weight in gold. I’ve heard some horror stories of things going wrong, business being ripped off or manufacturers underpaying fees which then result in massive handling fees once they land in the UK. It can be a minefield if you’re not careful. Fortunately, my shipping agent lays everything out in layman’s terms and handles all the formalities and nuances involved. They also have a man on the ground at overseas shipping ports which helps as have found language barriers problematic at times.

On top of product design and manufacturing, I’ve had to learn how to do other key tasks such as building out the website. I’ve actually built it out twice now, revamping it in September last year. Digital marketing, brand awareness and activation, online content, quality control, customer services and execution of physical events have also been on the learning curve. The start-up cost was always within certain strict parameters. I did not ever want to go over this, so have made every financial decision very carefully.

Utilize the free trials nearly all of them offer. You can normally tell within minutes if it will add value to your brand. If not lose it. If it will, pay for the 12-month subscription which is usually cheaper than staggering.

Where there was something that needed to be done but didn't suit the budget, I would try to find a cheaper way to do it. For instance, online content - the quotes were coming in for lifestyle shots. It was cheaper to enjoy a photography lesson with my wife, then download an app for £32.99 and make my own lifestyle shots. This is obviously not sustainable as the business grows and I am stretched thin, but is an example of being able to work around a problem with a cheaper solution at the time. I love doing this element too, as you can make some cool visuals fairly easily, with little or no money!

Playing around with some images for online content. The aim is always to be eye-catching

In terms of other challenges, like many small businesses, it was finding the time to do everything . I remember a few people raising their eyebrows about starting a CrossFit brand. Admittedly I don't have a lot of spare time, but with what spare time I do have, better it used making a GIF than watching soap operas in my opinion. Now there is more cash in the company, I am farming elements out which creates more time for me and improvements within the business. Using ‘dead time’, such as the 1-hour train journey to work makes for perfect productive time. You can either stare at the back of someone's head or learn something valuable from a book.

It is interesting to write this out and look back at the past processes and developments. There were certain times that felt like a fork in the road, especially when things went wrong. I have read about the infamous ‘trough of sorrow’. I experienced this myself a few times and felt like throwing in the towel, as so-called entrepreneurship is often a lonely endeavor. That said, the good has outweighed the bad, and what I have learned along the way is invaluable for other areas of life and other projects.

The first 2 validation mock-ups made and sent out to friends

A mock-up of something more recently released

How To Find A Supplier For Your Activewear Brand

Here are the steps to consider when finding a supplier/manufacturer:

Know your design

One very critical step to finding the right supplier is having an initial idea of what your design/product will look like.

Sketching is one of the most simple ways to get started in the design phase.

What's great about sketching is that you can practically do this anytime, anywhere - even on the back of a napkin.

To get started, all you need to do is pick up a pen and paper and start drawing - or if you are working on a virtual/software product this can be a diagram that outlines the user interface or experience.

Decide your supplier type

You'll want to identify the type of supplier you are looking for.

Here are some questions you may want to ask yourself prior to searching for a supplier

• Are you looking for a manufacturer to produce your product idea ?
• Do you want to find a supplier that can simply purchase existing products for you ?
• Do you want a drop-shipper to supply and fulfill orders?
• Do you want a domestic supplier or an overseas supplier? Read more about the pros and cons of each here

Where to start your search

Once you have an understanding of what type of manufacturer/supplier will be best to bring your idea to life, there are several areas you can start your search:

Domestic Suppliers

Overseas Suppliers

Manufacturing Your Product In House

It's also very common to manufacture your activewear on your own - either from your home or in a commercial space.

In order to get the product right, you may want to consider experimenting with different designs and recipes until you find the perfect one.

Some founders choose to manufacture their product in-house so that they can control quality, manage costs, and easily handle production/logistics.

Down the road, you can always choose to outsource your activewear.

Leslie Eisen, founder of AlmondClear discusses how to manufacture products in house

If you want to start a line of unique products, then you have two basic options: you can make them yourself, or you can find a manufacturer to work with that creates custom formulations for their clients.

I knew that I was trying to build a larger-scale business and that the home-made model wasn’t right for me, so I had to find the right manufacturing partner. It took a lot of research, phone calls, and emails before I found the laboratory that met my needs.

I wanted to create unique products (as opposed to private label), so I worked with the manufacturer’s chemist who specializes in skin care formulations. This process takes some time!

First, you have to tell the chemist what kind of product you’re looking for , the ingredients that you want to include or leave out, and what you want the final product to look like/feel like/smell like, etc.

Then, the manufacturer sends you the first sample , you try it out or give it to others to try, and then provide feedback for revisions. In my case, the first two products came together fairly easily because I only needed to make small changes to stock formulations.

There are many, many rules and regulations around cosmetics and skin care products. If you want to sell products that contain FDA regulated ingredients then you have to register and get a permit.

My products aren’t FDA regulated, so I didn’t have to go through this step, but I did have to be aware of the many guidelines and standards around labeling and safety warnings. Some people hire a lawyer to help them through this process, but my manufacturer was able to guide me through the regulatory process.

The entire process, from researching labs to work with to having the first finished products shipped out to me, took around six months.

Purchasing Inventory For Your Activewear Brand

When first starting out, it's important to start small with your overhead to get a gauge for what people want.

Just remember - if you order a line of items that don't sell, it's nearly impossible to recoup the money lost.

Buying the right inventory takes research and planning in order to get it right.

• Identify your target audience : Identify the age, gender, annual income that you will be selling to. This is a defining factor in ordering the right inventory that will sell.
• Research your competition : Conduct market research and identify the different types of styles, price points, and materials being used. This will help you see what's trending and ways that you can improve/stay ahead of the competition.
• Create an inventory wishlist : Identify what you need for the launch of your business and create a budget that you will stay within. Remember, it's okay to start small.
• Find a supplier Make sure to first compare prices and analyze different options.
• Delivery timing : Schedule the inventory delivery to match with seasonality and trending buying seasons

Pro-tip: It's easy to become biased based on your own fashion preferences on what types of shoes/apparel to purchase. This is where a lot of fashion businesses go wrong. It's important to base purchase decisions on current buyer behavior, trends in the market, and specific to your niche.

Erin Hooley, founder of Bailey's Blossoms tells us how poor inventory projections led her to lose over $2M

When we first launched Peyton Bre we did so in a social or direct sales model.

Through poor inventory projections we were forced to change models but only after losing $2 million dollars.

It was a devastating time for us and one we were not sure we could survive.

I have since become very intentional about the way that we project our inventory needs and we continue to refine that quarterly and even monthly. We have created a KPI for the cost of goods sold to help us hold ourselves accountable.

Ultimately, the better we manage our inventory the less we have need to discount and the healthier our profit margin becomes.

This is, of course, a very high-level overview of the importance of inventory control.

To see the full breakdown on how to manage inventory, check out my guide over on my blog. .

🚀 How To Launch Your Activewear Brand

Build A Website

Building a website is imperative when launching your business, and with the right tools in place, this can be a simple task to check off the list (without having to hire someone).

• Pick a domain name that's easy to remember and easy to type
• Choose a Web Hosting Plan (ie. Shopify, Squarespace)
• Make sure you choose the right theme and design
• Implement the proper page structure (ie. about page, contact page, pricing etc)

To learn more about how to build a stellar website with little stress, we give you all the details on this step-by-step guide .

Once you have chosen the domain, web hosting, and platform, it's time to get started with the design phase.

Themes are a great way to produce the fundamental style and identity of your website - this includes everything from your font design to your blog post styles.

One of the best ways to get started is to simply explore the various themes (free or paid depending on what you're looking for) and test them on your site.

If web-design really isn't in the cards for you, you may want to consider outsourcing a web designer to help bring your vision and brand to life.

Launch Strategies For Your Activewear Brand

There are various different ways you can launch your activewear brand successfully.

Here are a few different strategies to get customers excited about your activewear brand.

• Build hype with a landing page : you can effectively do this through waiting lists, discounts, countdown timer etc
• Create a teaser video : even just a 30 second video is a great way to exposure for your activewear brand, and possibly even go viral
• Reach out to influencers : The right influencer for your product has the ability to reach your audience with just one post, and because of their loyal following, this could lead to a big return for you.
• Get Press : Whether you plan a PR stunt or get exposure through a popular news outlet, this is a great way to attract initial customers
• Launch on popular sites : A great way to get buzz about your activewear brand is to submit your launch to popular startup sites.

Here are a few popular sites to launch on:

• ProductHunt
• Hacker News

Learn more about how to launch your business successfully ➜ here

Joel St John , founder of Thor Fitness Europe dives deep into the process of launching the business:

The business was formally launched at The European Championships Finals of January 2019. This is a large CrossFit competition in the UK, attracting the highest level teen athletes, all the way up to the highest level professional athletes, plus everyone in between of all ages categories across Europe. The brand was well received and we got some great feedback that weekend. It was strange to watch people coming over to the stall, look through the rails, then part with their money for our items. That was a very cool feeling! Seeing people buy items validated the brand for me too. People had said “ yeah that's cool” or “ I like that” when seeing concepts. But hearing feedback and watching real customers validate the brand in realtime made the whole thing real.

At all the events we do, we have taken the Assault Bike. For those that have used this, you know how hideous they are! In the CrossFit community, they are renowned for inducing sickness and pain. We put on a 30-second max-calorie burnout competition. The male and female winner gets a Tank, Tee or rope. It’s hilarious to watch those brave enough come to have a go. People now recognize us at various for our ‘Beat the Bike!’ competition.

Thor’s ‘Beat the Bike’ Competition at Battle For Middle Ground

Shopify was instrumental in getting setup. This went live in February 2019, a few days after the European Championships. As we are an e-commerce brand predominantly, the model was mainly for sales online, supplemented by events for brand awareness and revenue. As many Shopify merchants will tell you, it’s pretty intuitive to set up. There have been some sticky moments with inserting code here and there, but generally, it’s been easy enough. I’ve engaged an expert twice on Hey Carson! from within Shopify, to resize product thumbnails and reposition the Buy1Give1 widget. My limited skills could not do this.

After an audit a few months in, it was suggested by a digital marketing agency we changed the theme for a premium. I then rebuilt the website using Parallex scrolling and rejigged the whole site. This, along with 2 new product launches, had a positive effect overall on conversion rates and navigability on the website.

Make Sure You Get The Package Design Right

The way you package your activewear brand is often the first impression your customer has - so it's important to get it right.

You may want to ask yourself these questions:

If my product is on a shelf next to hundreds of other similar products:

• Will my activewear brand stand out?
• Will the branding/packaging create a connection with my customer, and hence, lead them to buy?

There are hundreds of tools you can use to help with packaging and design:

• Canva - Allows non-designers to create beautiful Instagram/Pinterest posts, flyers, business cards, etc.
• Stickermule - High quality custom stickers you can include on or in your packaging.
• Noissue - Custom tissue paper and compostable mailers
• Rollo Label Printer - A great tool to print all shipping labels at home

Sheets & Giggles explains the motive behind their "Premium Unboxing Experience"

I had a particular vision for our packaging centered around one goal: because we were a DTC company and wouldn’t do physical retail in year 1, we needed to focus entirely on an incredible unboxing experience that made the product feel as premium as possible.

Outside: a white box, nice wax coating, logo front and center with no other copy, easy to open, nice and sturdy.

Inside: make people smile from the get-go, have a social call-to-action, include free extra surprises (a knapsack that wraps the sheets and an eye mask), put funny copy all over the place, and add a donation bag that people could use to donate their now-defunct cotton sheets (sheets & blankets are the #2-most-requested item at shelters behind socks).

Get Press Coverage For Your Activewear Brand

The more buzz around your brand - the more the phones ring, the more traffic to your website, and the more customers as a result.

Here are a few ways you can get press for your business:

Press releases:

Press releases are a great way to share big announcements or news, but in order to get any traction, you'll need to find a way to make your press release stand out amongst others.

Try to convey a story that really matters, not just to you, but to the reporter and to their audience.

Here are some things to consider when submitting a press release:

• Craft a catchy subject (keep it short and sweet).
• Acknowledge the journalist's past work and interests - this is key!
• Include the main point of the story in the first paragraph, heck, even the first sentence. Reporters want to hear the juice first and foremost.
• Focus on the facts and try to limit the amount of jargon used.
• Pitch yourself! Help them put a face to the story.
• Make sure your topic is newsworthy. If it's not, find a way to!
• Try not to include any attachments of your release!

Email is one of the most effective and preferred way to send your press release, so as long as you keep your pitch brief, interesting and personalized (no cold emails), you should stand a chance!

Get Press Using HARO

HARO, otherwise known as "Help a Reporter Out" is an outlet for journalists to source upcoming stories and opportunities for media coverage.

The best part is, HARO is free to use! There are, of course, premium versions you can purchase, but the free version is still an accessible way to get press.

Once you set up an account, HARO essentially will email you based on stories (that are relevant to you) that need to be covered where you will then have a chance to essentially "bid on the story."

Here are some tips when crafting your pitch:

• Discuss your experience and expertise in the space. Make sure it's obvious why you're relevant to this story.
• Answer the question in 3-4 sentences. Try and be as direct as possible
• Offer to provide the reporter with more information and make sure to give them your contact info

Plan a Publicity Stunt

Planning a publicity stunt is an effective and quick way to raise awareness for your brand and gain some traction from the press.

If you're looking to plan a stunt, the objective should be to be bold and create something memorable

However, being bold has a fine line - it's important that you consider the timing of your stunt to ensure you don't come off insensitive or unethical. For example, timing may not be in your favor if you plan something during the general election, or in most recent cases, a global pandemic.

In order to measure the success of your stunt, it's important that you first determine your end goal, for example:

• Is the stunt aimed to raise money for your business or a particular organization?
• Is the stunt aimed to drive more traffic to your website?
• Is the stunt aimed to get more followers and engagement on Instagram?

Here are a few tips for creating a great publicity stunt:

• Research to ensure that there haven't been similar stunts done in the past by other businesses - this could easily turn off journalists and your audience.
• Make sure you can explain the stunt in one headline - this will help grab the media's attention. In other words, simplify!
• The stunt should be related to the product you are promoting. Even if the stunt is a success in terms of viewers, but it doesn't tie back to your original goal, then it's not useful.
• Keep the stunt visual with videos/images.
• Leverage the internet and social media platforms for your stunt by sharing your message across a variety of audiences. This will help with word of mouth and the overall success of your event.

To learn other strategies on how to get press, check out our full guide here .

🌱 How To Grow Your Activewear Brand

Consider Selling On Amazon

In addition to selling your products directly on your site, you may want to consider selling on Amazon to reach a wider audience and attract new customers.

Here are some pros and cons of selling on amazon:

• Easy and seamless process to get your product listed on Amazon
• There are roughly 100 million thoroughly committed prime customers, so you're bound to tap into new business
• Can help grow your business exponentially and reach new audiences
• You may encounter some "copycats" and counterfeit products
• Amazon owns the relationship with the customer (you lose control over product reviews + customer service)
• If you already have a low-markup, amazon may not wrth your while and you could end up losing money
• Commissions and listing fees are high - it's easy to lose control of your offering

Follow these instructions to get your product listed on Amazon or check out the video below on how to get started:

Cory Stout, founder of Woodies ($250K/mo) provides us with specifics on how to rank better on amazon:

Our main product is walnut wood sunglasses that I sell for $25 on Amazon and Woodies.com.

I dedicated myself to becoming an Amazon expert. I listened to all the podcasts and read all the blog posts I could find. Shoutout EcomCrew I took the basic fundamentals that are out there and I added a couple of my own twists.

Amazon brings me, 100 brand new customers, every day for very little acquisition cost. If I tried that on my own, it would take a TON of work and it wouldn’t be nearly as effective as Amazon, so I took the easy road on this one.

Here's an article I wrote on how to rank better on amazon (30+ Tips):

5/5: ESSENTIAL

• Beautiful images (minimum 5 images) especially lifestyle images I use UpgradedImages.com for product photography (hey Ken!)
• Keywords in your title (but it still needs to sound human)
• Competitive price (contributes to high conversion rate)
• NOT having 1-star reviews
• DON'T STOCKOUT: it's such a killer and if you DO stockout, definitely DON'T raise your price right before you do, if anything LOWER your price for the last 10-20 units before you stockout, each ASIN has a 'memory' for when you do get back in stock so that will help you regain ranking quickly
• DON'T VIOLATE AMAZON TOS: just don't
• Perform QC on your stock before you send it in (I sent in a wrong box once and I had to 'remove' over 3,000 pieces so I could sift through them and remove the 150 contaminated pieces 0/7 would not recommend

4/5: Pretty Friggin Important

• Minimum 10 5-star reviews (do this before you do anything below this)
• Well optimized PPC campaigns (could do a whole post on this, keep ACOS under 40%) here's a screenshot of some of my campaigns I use a combination of manual campaigns with exact phrases and high bids...and auto campaigns with a broad range of products and very low bids
• Turning on FeedbackGenius for auto review requests (it's not as good as it used to be, but it's still worth it)
• Get a trademark and get Brand Registry, this protects you from hijackers and other unscrupulous sellers
• Quick response to customer messages (under 12 hours) here are my stats my mom does all my customer service "Employee of the Year" status
• Drive outside traffic (amazon loves outside traffic because they don't have to spend so much to acquire customers) Facebook, Instagram, and Google Adwords are the usual suspects
• Use ocean shipping to save mucho $$$ on unit costs (use flexport)

Read more about amazon tips here .

Consider Working With Instagram Influencers

Partnering with like-minded influencers (within your industry) is one of the most effective ways to grow your social media organically.

Industry influencers already have an established and loyal following. With one post, your product immediately establishes a connection with a brand new audience. It's that powerful.

When finding influencers to promote your product, do your research and make sure that their following will actually be interested in your product.

It's easy to be blinded by any influencer with a huge following, but if those followers don't resonate with your product, there may not be any value there... so make sure you do your research!

Evan Marshall, founder of Plain Jane discusses how "micro-influencers" have impacted his business:

Influencer marketing has been huge for us. Our approach is pretty simple. We give out samples of our products and ask people to post about us on social media aka a micro-influencer strategy.

We really like this approach because we get authentic stories and content. We cannot really control the messaging so the product has to speak for itself. We don’t really take product photos at all. Our customers take the photos and we ask to reuse them.

With any influencer strategy, you have to be very sure you’re targeting the right people and engaging with them. You can make sure you’re targeting the right influencers by looking through their posts and then looking through the profiles of their engaged followers.

It takes more time per influencer but the payoff is certainly worth it. Make sure their followers look like your existing customers.

It takes a ton of time and work to grow a social media following this way but it’s worth it. Other accounts have tried to grow themselves through botting or other manipulations. As a CBD company, we didn’t want to give Instagram any reason to shutdown our account so we’ve done everything through content and real engagement. It’s not magic to make this happen. You just have to post consistently and then reply or like every single comment you get. It takes months but it works

Experiment With Pay Per Click Ads (PPC)

Pay-per-click (PPC) is a performance-based marketing method that allows you to show specific ads for services or products oriented to a very defined target, with the goal that the user visits your website or landing page.

Here are some tips to consider:

• Consider connecting the ad to your corresponding landing page so that the audience receives the necessary information after clicking on the ad.
• Conversion Tracking: When running PPC campaigns, be sure to run the ads with conversion tracking.
• Focus on quality keywords, even if there are few as this will save you time and money. When assessing the performance of a keyword, it's important to track the expense, conversion, and cost per conversion, as well as the ROI.

PPC advertising can be a very important lead generator as long as it's done properly. Your PPC campaign is intended to drive traffic to your website and help the business scale.

Additionally, if the campaign is not having the desired results, you can make the necessary changes immediately to improve them.

Ryan Schortmann, founder of Display Pros talks about their investment in PPC Ads:

My name is Ryan Schortmann and I’m the founder of Display Pros. We are a custom trade show display booth company offering easy to use portable display “kits” for small and medium businesses wanting to get into the trade show game.

It did not take long to come to the realization that to compete at any reasonable level, we were going to need to take the plunge and invest in Pay Per Click ads and display.

From experience, I know that it is important to give Google’s hivemind some time to settle in before each campaign starts seeing consistent results (this is largely dependent on budget).

A certain amount of PPC budget must be viewed as a “marketing research” expense and then you can look at the analytics data and make informed decisions on where to refine, tweak or plain scrap an idea.

Google Shopping was an entirely new concept for me. You can’t assign keywords to products so at first, I was asking myself “How the hell do you refine these?”. Then I found some good reading material and courses and learned of some advanced methods that the pros are using. It turns out you can utilize negative keyword lists combined with the priority setting on each shopping campaign to “shape” the keywords that are coming in and how much you are spending on them.

To learn more about PPC Ads and Google Shopping, check out this video to learn everything you need to know!

Improve your SEO

SEO is not just about driving traffic to your site, it's about driving the RIGHT traffic to your site , and ultimately, converting leads into customers.

One of the most important aspects of SEO is understanding what your customers are searching for, otherwise known as "keyword research."

Here are some tools that can help you choose the right keywords for your activewear brand.

• Google Ads Keyword Planner invaluable for discovering search trends.
• Google Search Console is very helpful once your website is up as it shows you what words/phrases are generating traffic.
• Ahrefs and SEMRush are paid tools that allow you to look at results of your competitor's website.

Publish Great Content

Finding keywords is an important piece of the puzzle, but Google also ranks your site based on the actual content you produce, as this is what your customers are reading and engaging with.

There are various different "forms" of content that you may want to consider diversifying on your sites, such as blog posts, articles, studies, and videos.

So let's discuss what google considers "good content:"

• Length - This will vary depending on the page, however, generally having a sufficient amount of content helps search engines recognize that your site is a good source for a specific topic
• Engagement - The longer people stay on your website to read your content, the higher Google will rank your website. It's important to have informative and "thick" content that keeps people reading
• Avoid Duplicating Content - Google will recognize this and may consider your content to have low value
• Ensure pages load quickly - This will also help with engagement and time spent on your website
• Shareability - Create content that people want to share, and is easy for them to share, especially to their social media accounts (ie. "click to tweet" is a great example of this).

Another element of creating good content is creating consistent content.

If (and hopefully you are) publishing content frequently, it's important to stick to a schedule - this helps build brand trust and easy user experience with your customers.

Planning out your content with a content calendar is key to staying consistent.

Here are a few great content calendar tools that can help you:

• If you prefer to keep it simple, your average spreadsheet is just as useful!

Backlinks are an important piece to SEO, as they allow for other websites to link to your content.

Search engines recognize that other sites are essentially "verifying" your content and essentially rank you higher because of this.

Of course, some links are more valuable than others and can affect your site in different ways.

For example, if a highly valuable and credible site like the New York Times links to a page on your website, this could be remarkable from an SEO perspective.

Aside from organically getting mentioned from other sites, there are other ways that you can increase and earn backlinks:

• Create infographics with relevant data that people want to share
• Promote your content on different sites/look into "guest blogging"
• Contact influencers/journalists/bloggers and ask them to mention you!
• Write testimonials for other sites in exchange for a backlink
• Leverage existing business relationships

Learn more about the fundamentals of SEO ➜ here and check out Neil Patel's 3 Powerful SEO Tips below

Build A Blog

One of the most effective ways to build brand awareness and grow your business is through consistently blogging.

We've outlined some useful tips for you to consider when creating content:

Consistency and Quantity

Quality is important, but it should be the standard for any content you publish.

What’s more important is consistency and quantity.

Consistency is as simple as committing to publishing and sharing a certain number of posts per week. For me, that’s three per week right now.

This kind of commitment is key, because one day, a random post will blow up, and you will have never expected it.

Oversaturation

The easiest mind trap is to think "I’m posting too much", and “I need to give my readers/audience/this platform a break”.

This is nonsense.

There is no such thing as oversaturation. Well, there is, but it is just someone else’s opinion.

For every person that tells you you are posting too much, there is another person that wants even more of your content.

You should ignore people’s opinions on how much you post.

Patience & Persistence

Keep posting, keep trying, and keep putting out good content on the regular. Your time will come, and when it does, it will change everything.

The only thing you have control over is your content.

You can’t control how people will react to it. You can’t control pageviews, likes, or shares.

So the only metric you should focus on is how much content you can put out in a week, month, etc.

Where to share your blog content

Mailing List

I know it sounds obvious, but the best places to share your content is on your mailing list. It is guaranteed traffic and it is a great way to get rapid feedback from your most loyal readers.

Send newsletters often. I have done once a week since starting, and I’m moving to twice a week soon.

Work on increasing your mailing list as well. Look into ways to increase your conversion rate to your mailing list. I added a flyout popup thing to my site and now I’m collecting ~30 emails per day.

An email newsletter is one of the most powerful assets you can have and it is worth its weight in gold.

Reddit is one of my favorite places to promote content.

It is a very scary place because you will often get banned or heckled, but it can really pay off.

Create social media accounts for your blog, the main ones I use:

Twitter Facebook Instagram LinkedIn

Set up Buffer and share all of your blog posts to all of your accounts. All of these little shares really do add up.

Automate this as much as possible. I automated all of my social media for Starter Story.

Facebook Groups

When I started out, I put together a spreadsheet of relevant Facebook groups for my niche, and I would post to these groups whenever I had a big story I wanted to share.

Grow Your Email List

The more engaged list of emails, the more engaged customers, which ultimately leads to more sales.

One of the best ways to start growing your list is by providing your customer with something free (or discounted) in return.

This could also be anything from:

• Fascinating case study
• Video series
• Free week of the product
• Discount on the product

Learn more about how to grow your email list and improve email marketing ➜ here .

Dylan Jacob, founder of Brumate states their email collection tactic that is proven to work:

We use Spin-a-Sale for this (you spin a wheel for a discount code in exchange for subscribing to our email list). This has been the best email-collecting tool we have found because the customer truly feels like they won a prize rather than just a coupon code.

Even if a customer doesn’t convert right away, if we have their email we have a 19% chance of converting them into a future customer whether that is through future promotions, new releases, or simply just sending an email at the right time for a purchase to finally make sense for them.

We also have a return customer rate of over 14%, so one out of every 6 people we convert will end up buying from us again with an average order value of over $60.00.

Add an exit-intent popup to your online store

A great way to double, or even triple, your email opt-in rate and to grow your list is to add an exit-intent popup to your site, and offering a discount or content upgrade for subscribers.

Here's an example of what that might look like:

One thing that I spent years NOT doing, that I now kick myself about, is adding an "exit intent pop-up" to our site, which lets people enter a sweepstakes to win a Xero Shoes gift certificate.

That one idea has added over 100,000 subscribers to our email list, which is one of our most effective marketing channels.

Improve Your Email Marketing

Different types of emails

Here are the most common types of email campaigns you can send to your customers and their benefits:

• Welcome emails - the perfect way to provide information from the start with a clear CTA. Make sure to tell your customer everything they need to know about your product or service.
• Newsletters - a great way to give customers updates or send out your latest content
• Product launch emails - the quickest (and easiest) way to increase sales is by selling to current customers. Make sure they're the first on the list to know about your new product
• Promotional emails - promote discounts, deals coupons etc. Try and make this feel exclusive and for a limited time only
• Abandoned cart emails - give your customers a reason to complete their purchase!

Here's a great resource for finding curated email designs, for all types of email campaigns!

Abandonded Cart Flow

The abandoned cart workflow is one of the most effective strategies for turning your lead into a customer, and a powerful tool to have if you're an e-commerce business.

Think about all the times that you went on a shopping frenzy only to add items to your cart and then either forget or realize nows not the right time to pull the trigger.

Then, minutes later you receive an email saying "Hurry up! Your cart is waiting - and we want to provide you with 20% off your order."

Maybe that's the special touch (and discount) you needed to pull that trigger.

Implementing this workflow can automatically trigger this for your business every time a customer abandons their cart.

Here's a great example of an abandoned cart email from Brooklinen :

Things they do well:

• Showcase 5-star reviews from other customers
• Offer a small discount + free shipping
• Great design + clear call to actions!

Social Media Advertising

Social Media Advertising is one of the leading ways to get the word out when it comes to activewear brand.

There are various different Social Media platforms available to you. Some may be more critical for your marketing efforts than others, however, it's important to have an understanding of what's out there and available to you.

Let's talk about a few of the main platforms and what makes them unique:

• Facebook Advertising - more than 2 billion monthly users. Facebook is the best for lead generation + capturing email addresses for e-commerce businesses.
• Instagram Advertising - approximately 500 million monthly users and has a higher audience engagement rate than any other platform. Instagram ads are best for linking to a product page or landing page and reaches the 18-29 age group most effectively.
• Twitter Advertising - Small businesses typically use twitter ads to drive brand awareness, but the platform is meant more for organic engagement (and is not as heavily used for paid advertising)
• Pinterest Advertising - 175 million monthly users and most effectively reaches the female audience. Pinterest is great for promoting products without "promoted". The promoted pins have a way of blending right in.
• LinkedIn Advertising - 227 million monthly users and is geared towards the B2B market and generates the highest quality leads. Great platform for recruiters, high-end products and services that will help businesses

It's important to first define your goal/objective so that you don't waste time and money into the wrong platform:

Here are some different questions to ask yourself as it relates to your goals:

• Do I want to simply drive brand awareness?
• Do I want to drive users to my website to gather information?
• Do I want to increase sales and get my customer to take action?

From there, choose the platform that targets your audience best and start experimenting!

Learn more about social media advertising ➜ here .

Emily Cassedy, founder of Blush Boutique Co explains how their Facebook strategy is the #1 way of attracting new customers:

Our biggest tool for attracting customers and then keeping repeat customers has been social media and word of mouth. We made sure our social media platforms were attractive, inviting, and not too in your face.

We set up an editorial type calendar for our Facebook posts that we still use to this day.

For example, every Tuesday we have a vote post where our followers can vote on an item that we will bring into the shop. Our customers and followers love this and chime when that piece that is voted on comes in, we already have a set amount of people that will come purchase it because they were able to be a deciding factor.

We also make sure to do a live Facebook video when we get new arrivals to show what came in that week. The supply and demand of a piece then draw in more customers, even if one of the new arrivals sells out, they are still coming in to see what else we have in the shop.

Founder Andy Hayes talks about mastering FB ads and the pixel:

The biggest bang for your buck will likely be mastering Facebook and it’s platform - which we all know is pay for play, so you’ll have to come up with a small amount of budget to start for marketing.

We’ve spent countless hours (and paid numerous coaches) before we cracked the code that works for us on Facebook, but it is working really well for us now.

Some of the most important things to know when it comes to FB Ads:

• Start with retargeting (that’s showing ads to people who already know you but did not purchase). Master this - and start building information on your Facebook Pixel - before you do anything else
• Once you have that down, try working with the 1% “Lookalike” audience to prospect for new customers. This may take awhile because your pixel audience is small, so try layering on interests - 1% Lookalike and your largest competitor, for example. Don’t use interest-only targeting until you master this.
• Great photography and videography is key, as is smart copy. Research what’s out there in your industry and constantly test - what works for one company may not work for other people.
• Make sure you have good offers. For example, we have a $5 trial for our subscription, which converts affordably - if we promoted our subscription with the standard $30 front charge, it wouldn’t be as cost-effective.

Host A Social Media Giveaway

People love free stuff and love competition. Giveaways and contests are a great way to create awareness for your brand, grow your email list, and eventually convert leads into customers.

If your goal is to gather email addresses, make sure the entry criteria is to "enter your email." You can do this by leading customers to your landing page where they can then enter their email to be in the giveaway.

One of the most important aspects of promoting a successful giveaway is having an amazing prize. The better the prize, the more engagement you'll get.

This doesn't necessarily mean choosing an iPad or an expensive/trendy watch, but instead a prize that is actually relevant to your brand/target audience.

Giveaway Example and Tips

Example from TJ Mapes, founder of RIPT Apparel

Our most recent successful giveaway was when we gave away a PS4 + the new Spiderman game. I hosted the giveaway on our site and then let our audience know about it via email/social channels.

Entrants earned different amounts of entries for entering in different ways (tongue twister!), for instance; enter via email, get 10 entries. Follow us on Facebook, get 5 entries. Subscribe on Messenger and get 25 entries .

I also built out a drip sequence in Klaviyo that contained four emails to encourage entrants to take more action, like referring friends and liking us on social.

Email #1: Thanks for entering!

Email #2: Explained how to earn bonus entries:

Email #3: About us

Email #4: Coupon for entering

This last email in the sequence just thanked them again for entering and also included a coupon to a specific (related) collection of designs with an expiration date on it to incentivize purchases.

PS4 Giveaway Results:

We ran it for 2 weeks and recorded results in a meticulous spreadsheet to analyze the data. Here are some of the highlights:

• Giveaway page pageviews - 67,355
• Total entrants - 26,137
• Conversion rate - 38.80%
• Total entrants in Klaviyo (not suppressed) - 24,515
• New emails acquired - 16,363
• Emails we already had - 7,521
• % of new emails - 66.75%
• Cost of item - $350
• Instagram visits - 10,618
• Instagram followers gained - 3,496 ( total followers lifted by 6.9% )
• Twitter followers gained - 4,194

Form partnerships for your activewear brand

Starting a activewear brand is all about building relationships and becoming an integral part of your community.

Many entrepreneurs make the mistake of thinking they can do everything on their own. In reality, other businesses (even your competition) and members of your community can be a huge piece of your growth strategy.

When forming any type of partnership, a lot of energy and time can go into this. To ensure it's worth your while, dive deep into the vetting process and ask yourself (and them) the following questions:

• What are your businesses values and priorities?
• Who are your customers? What matters most to them?
• In what ways can we both bring value to each others businesses? Cross promotions? Clout/credibility?
• Should we do a trial run first to make sure this partnership works out before finalizing an agreement?
• What will the agreement look like?

Once you have an idea as to what the ideal partnership agreement looks like, that's when the outreach begins (the hardest part)!

Here are some different ways you can meet other entrepreneurs and form partnerships:

• Simply talk to other people in the activewear brand industry. You'd be surprised as to how willing other entrepreneurs are to share their knowledge with you
• Host an event: By inviting people to your event in your community and industry, you may be able to form partnerships and expand your clientele
• Join a facebook community: Nowadays, everything is online. A great way to meet other people is to become 'active' on a public forum or community
• Use other social networks such as LinkedIn or Twitter to aid your outreach. This can be a very powerful tool if used properly.

Forming partnerships and building relationships within your community can be a very valuable tool, but it's important that you do your due diligence and avoid going in blind to any sort of partnership. This can save you months, if not years of time.

Mike Aspinall, founder of The Crafty Gentlemen discusses how brand partnerships are the most important part of his growth strategy and revenue stream:

My main revenue stream is sponsored brand partnerships, whereby a company pays me a fee to feature their product within one of my blog posts.

Over the years, I’ve worked with some really cool brands – Etsy, Hobbycraft, Cricut, Pinterest, Gorilla Glue, Singer, Janome, Brother, Bosch, and lots more.

For a long time, I was hesitant to charge for my work – I was happy to work in exchange for products. But there came a point where I was being offered more work than I could have said yes to – something had to change. So I started to charge for partnerships. And brands agreed, no questions asked!

The last 6-12 months have been the most successful yet for my business. I’m making regular revenue through multiple streams, including sponsorships, media appearances, influencer work, and passive ad revenue. My website traffic is at an all-time high, and growing – as are my social media followings:

🏃🏼‍♀️ How To Run Your Activewear Brand

How To Retain Customers For Your Activewear Brand

Retaining customers is one of the most effective ways to grow your activewear brand.

Oftentimes, it's easy to find yourself focusing on generating new customers, vs retaining your current ones.

Look at it this way - you are 60-70% more likely to sell a new product to an existing customer than you are a new customer.

That's not to say that finding new customers and revenue streams is not important, however, the easiest (and most inexpensive) source of new revenue is right there in front of you.

Here are some ways you can retain customers for your activewear brand:

• Responding to comments on social media
• Send discounts (or freebies) to loyal customers
• Provide valuable content, for free
• Write a hand written thank you note
• Provide awesome customer service and build relationships with customers

To find out more tips and tricks on retaining customers, check out this article ➜ here

Joel St John , founder of Thor Fitness Europe dives deep into the process of attracting and retaining customers:

Instagram is the main outlet for us. Since the changes to Facebook, it was noticeable how difficult it has become to grow a Facebook page to a large following anymore. Even the pages that had huge followings seem to get hardly any engagement. Instagram was the better option due to it being more visual. All the posts share to Facebook by default, but the Gram is the main page for us. Frustratingly, the recent shifts in Instagram have made brands of all sizes, influencers, and other businesses suffer content interaction with posts dropping down the algorithmic chain for a variety of reasons. Having studied what these changes mean, we are looking at how to better effectively use Instagram going forward.

Facebook Ad Manager is another mammoth task to learn. Having tested out various ads, we’ve had pleasantly good returns on a number of these. The world of digital marketing is a full time and refined job in itself. We are currently engaged with a well established digital marketing agency in London who will take the brand to the next level in a number of ways. We are looking forward to that next year. Experimenting with very small money on ads, A/B testing, installing a pixel and creating audiences was a good way to find out who our customers are and how to reach them. The first advert we made was shot on an iPhone whilst on holiday in the USA. I asked my wife to video me wearing the bag in tonnes of locations (much to her irritation!). Then I edited the clips into a 60-second advert on my phone using VideoLeap. The overall ROI of all ad spend to date is 5.7x. I’m extremely happy with that, considering it’s just a bit of experimenting, amateur workings, and an iPhone.

Listening to customer feedback at events was extremely important, as these messages could be conveyed back to them online in various ways too in the ads. This also feeds into the product; what colorways are popular, what cut is favored, what they like and don't like etc.

One bold move we made was a partnership with the longest-running CrossFit ‘Masters’ (over 40’s) competition in the UK. Previous years saw other CrossFit brands such as Razorstorm, Samson Athletics, Reebok, and Big Crocodile sponsor the event. We had some issues with the garments for this event, and we learned a difficult but worthy lesson.

We’ve recently been asked by another very widely known Crossfit events brand if we’d like to partner with them in 2020 which will be amazing for Thor if this goes ahead. The finer details of this are just being agreed upon.

A good friend of mine runs a PR company. We have discussed pushing Thor into the limelight, so that will be on the agenda for 2020, has not committed to any PR to date. Ultimately, I want people to like the brand for its personality and values. This is hopefully conveyed, not only in our product detailing but also on our Instagram and online content by use of humor, interesting facts or other things that people that are part of our community care about. The idea is for it to not feel stale when or clinical when you look at the brand online or interact with Instagram Stories for instance.

Raising the Bar Masters. Year 8 saw Thor take the sponsorship baton

As far as customer retention and growth are concerned, the aim is to keep interested peaked by putting engaging content online. We want people to enjoy the brand and what it stands for, not just like the products. We joined the Buy1Give1 Business For Good scheme a few months ago. Each month, it is possible to donate some of the company's profits back to real, worthwhile causes. I didn’t want it to come across pretentious in the way “Buy this T-shirt and we will give some to charity” . Instead, the idea is more subtle and the givebacks are more targeted and relational.

A screengrab from the website of widgets displaying Thor’s’ impacts’

When the month is out, a clear figure can be put to one side and then assigned to charitable causes all over the world based on revenue. You can learn more about the B1G1 scheme here.

More info on our account giving and impacts can be seen here.

On a personal level, this was very important. In May/June 2017, I was fortunate enough to travel parts of South-East Asia. Most poignant was visiting the slums of Manila in the Philippines whilst staying/working with Christian Compassion Ministries for a short time. I experienced first hand just how hard life can be for an uncountable number of people in the world. This was just a small part of that. In our little Western bubble, we so readily forget just how easy life can be. We’re all guilty of moaning about a lack of WiFi, or other trivial matters like running out of ketchup.

There are literally billions of people throughout the world who don’t have access to proper sanitation, clean water, food or education. The fact that this small business can help some people in the world somewhere is a wonderful thing. I would encourage others to explore this positive impact as part of their business mechanics too. It doesn’t take a lot, yet goes a long way.

The live widgets are linked to our B1G1 account and update in realtime

Along with this, sustainability is another important value. Our recent Geo-Creation series of garments are all of this mindset. They are Sedex and GOTS approved, Fair Wear and WRAP certified, made from 100% organic cotton. Some of the other garments are made partly using recycled plastics. Although these are good things, even these have their limitations. For instance, cotton requires a lot of water to make garments and polyester from recycled bottles still creates microplastics which can end up in our oceans. It is very difficult for a company to be completely sustainable in all manners when you know all the facts. However, we can all take steps to take some of the burdens off of our planet.

I also wanted to only use suppliers that are transparent. I would look for things like their company ratings and feedback, are the ISO-registered, what is their output and to whom, referencing opportunities, do they invite you to their factory, can you take a virtual tour of the factory? You get a gut feeling when talking to manufacturers what their ethical code and processes are like. Even if you don’t go out to see their processes, it speaks volumes if they’re willing to let you come and see.

Diversify Your Product Line

Adding new products to your business is a great way to expand into new markets and grow your business.

It's important to note that adding new products and diversifying may not be in the cards for you right this moment, and that's okay. You can always consider it down the road.

Here are some reasons you may want to considering adding/diversifying your product

• Meeting the needs of your customers
• Establish yourself as a top provider in your industry and stay ahead of the game with competition
• Resistance to downturns/trends fading
• Create new revenue streams

Diversifying Product Example: Joah Love

The future for JOAH LOVE is bright! Customers have been telling us that they’ve been coveting their kids’ wardrobes for years, and this season, we’re going to make a collection just for them with the launch of a new line for adults.

It will include Mommy + Me and Daddy + Me collections, complementary clothing for parents and their kids.

We’re also in the early stages of exploring clothing options for children with special needs. There’s growing demand for sensory-sensitive apparel to help outfit these children and support their parents, and we’re excited to reenvision how our incredibly soft materials can help these families.

Provide Great Customer Service

Providing exceptional care and creating relationships with clients is a great way to build your reputation and retain customers.

Whether you are an online business or a physical business, it's highly important to communicate with customers and make them feel like they are the priority.

Just remember: customer service represents your brand, values, vision and YOU as a person.

Build a Referral Program

Word of mouth is one of the best ways to get the word out about your business and acquire new customers. Especially when you are starting out, it’s important to build a solid referral program to encourage existing customers to help you find new ones.

A great way to do that is by offering a reward (ie. credit on your service or cash) to customers that refer you to their friends and family.

A fantastic referral program will help with clout, credibility, and establishing yourself in the space.

Authenticity

As a brand, you want to deliver an experience that authentic, honest and transparent.

Don't make the mistake of giving your audience less credit than they deserve.

Be Authentic

If you go around chasing every trend and only focused on yourself and money, you’re going to lose very quickly.

There have been many times where we have been tempted to do this but stayed true.

Sure we sacrificed sales, but we kept our integrity, played the long game and people saw and appreciated that, and really began emotionally investing in the brand.

Word of Mouth

The most tried and true way to grow a activewear brand is through word of mouth - some entrepreneurs would say it's more important than all social media.

Why you should focus on word of mouth:

• Consumers trust word of mouth above all other forms of marketing
• 92% of consumers believe recommendations from friends and family over all forms of advertising
• 64% of marketing executives indicated that they believe it is the most effective form of marketing

Learn more about word of mouth in our guide: 30 Ways Founders Grow Their Business ➜

How To Crush The Sales Process For Your Activewear Brand

You may find yourself in a spot where you're ready to hire a few (or many) salespeople to support the sales conversion process.

Regardless if you have one or thirty salespeople, it's critical that you assign them specific roles and responsibilities to nurture the client and provide excellent support.

Mike Korba, co-founder of User.Com walks us through the entire sales process and which teams are responsible for what:

User.com Sales Process

Each user and account is qualified with a specialist. For business leads, they are handled by the sales team, and if they are qualified we give them a demo, more than often at the end of their fourteen-day trial. If they’re happy they’ll add a payment, and get an account manager, so a customer support and success team who will help implement the solution and to use the technology.

Sometimes, users will convert naturally on their own, after using the freemium product and finding it to be something that they will find beneficial.

After they convert, we help with onboarding , give them some personalized tips for their specific business or industry to grow plus all kinds of support, for whatever they need - something we take huge pride in.

The team is right now more than 30 people, with more than half working on the IT and product side, and the rest are in three teams: Support, Marketing, and Sales who all work together very closely.

We put together the best resources on the internet to help you start your activewear brand.

• Platform tools such as Shopify , Etsy or Google Shopping
• Email tools such as MailChimp , Klaviyo or Mailerlite
• Social media tools such as Facebook , Instagram , Twitter , YouTube , Pinterest , LinkedIn or Buffer
• Advertising tools such as Facebook Ads , Instagram Ads , Google Adwords or Google AdSense
• Reviews tools such as Product Reviews or Stamped.io
• Analytics tools such as Google Analytics or Lucky Orange
• Shipping tools such as ShippingEasy , Lumi , USPS , UPS or NZPost
• Productivity tools such as Google Suite , Dropbox , Slack , Asana , Trello or Airtable
• Payments tools such as Paypal , Shopify Payments , Stripe , ReCharge , TransferWise , Apple Pay or Afterpay
• Accounting tools such as Quickbooks or Xero
• ** tools** such as Crisp Messaging
• Design tools such as Adobe Suite
• Customer service tools such as Facebook Chat App
• Freelance tools such as Fiverr
• Affiliate tools such as Refersion
• App tools such as Flexify
• Education tools such as Udemy
• Web hosting tools such as GoDaddy
• Podcast tools such as Anchor
• Sew Your Own Activewear: Make A Unique Sportswear Wardrobe From Four Basic Sewing Blocks

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The 12 Week Year: Get More Done in 12 Weeks than Others Do in 12 Months

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Home > Misc > Featured > How To Start An Activewear Company

How To Start An Activewear Company

Modified: August 19, 2023

Learn how to start your own activewear company with our featured guide. From sourcing materials to marketing strategies, we've got you covered!

(Many of the links in this article redirect to a specific reviewed product. Your purchase of these products through affiliate links helps to generate commission for Runningshorts.com, at no extra cost.)

Introduction

Welcome to the world of activewear! If you’ve ever dreamt of starting your own activewear company, now is the perfect time to turn that dream into a reality. The activewear industry has experienced tremendous growth in recent years, driven by an increased focus on health and fitness and a growing demand for stylish and functional workout attire.

Before you embark on this exciting journey, it’s important to understand that starting an activewear company requires careful planning, strategic decision-making, and a deep understanding of your target market. This article will guide you through the step-by-step process of how to start your own activewear company, from conducting market research to building an online presence and launching successful marketing campaigns.

Starting any business requires dedication, perseverance, and a genuine passion for your product. Activewear is no exception. The market is highly competitive, with established brands dominating the scene. However, with careful planning, a unique brand proposition, and a clear understanding of your target customer, you can carve out your own niche in this thriving industry.

In the following sections, we will explore each step in detail, providing you with valuable insights and practical tips to help you navigate the challenges of starting an activewear company. So, let’s dive in and explore the world of activewear entrepreneurship!

Step 1: Research and Market Analysis

In order to build a successful activewear company, you first need to conduct thorough research and analysis of the market. This step is crucial as it will help you identify key trends, understand your target customers, and discover any gaps or opportunities in the market.

Start by researching the activewear industry as a whole. Look at the current market size, growth projections, and major players in the industry. Analyze their product offerings, pricing strategies, and marketing approaches. This will give you a better understanding of the competitive landscape and help you differentiate your brand.

Next, identify your target customer. Determine their demographic profile, lifestyle, and preferences. Are they fitness enthusiasts, yoga practitioners, or casual gym-goers? Understanding their needs and preferences will allow you to design and market products that resonate with them.

Conducting a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) is also beneficial at this stage. Assess your own strengths and weaknesses as well as potential opportunities and threats in the market. This will help you identify areas where you can differentiate your brand and capitalize on untapped market segments.

Furthermore, don’t forget to analyze the current fashion and fitness trends. What are the popular colors, patterns, and styles in activewear? Stay updated on the latest innovations in fabric technology and sustainability practices. This will give you an edge when it comes to product development and positioning.

Lastly, seek feedback from your potential customers. Conduct surveys, interviews, or focus groups to gather their insights and opinions. This feedback will provide valuable information to fine-tune your product offerings and ensure they meet the needs and expectations of your target audience.

By thoroughly researching and analyzing the market, you will gain a deep understanding of your target customers, competition, and industry trends. This knowledge will be invaluable as you move forward with the next steps of starting your activewear company.

Step 2: Define Your Brand and Target Customer

In order to stand out in the crowded activewear market, it is crucial to define a strong brand identity and identify your target customer. This step will help you differentiate your company and create a meaningful connection with your audience.

Start by defining your brand values, mission, and vision. What do you want your activewear company to represent? Are you focused on sustainability, performance, or style? Clearly articulating your brand identity will guide your business decisions and help you create a cohesive brand experience.

Next, identify your target customer. Understand their needs, aspirations, and pain points. By developing a clear picture of your target audience, you can tailor your products, messaging, and marketing strategies to resonate with them.

Consider demographics such as age, gender, location, and lifestyle. Dive deeper into psychographics, understanding their values, interests, and motivations. This will allow you to create a brand that aligns with their preferences and builds trust and loyalty.

Additionally, conducting competitor analysis at this stage is crucial. Study how other activewear brands are positioning themselves and identify any gaps in the market. By understanding what your competitors are offering, you can position your brand in a unique way that caters to the needs of your target customer.

Once you have defined your brand and target customer, it’s time to develop your brand identity, including a strong logo, brand colors, typography, and visual elements. These elements will serve as the foundation for your brand’s visual identity and should be consistent across all your marketing channels.

Remember, a well-defined brand and target customer will shape all aspects of your activewear company, from product development to marketing. Building a brand that resonates with your target audience will set you apart from the competition and create a connection that goes beyond just selling activewear.

Step 3: Create a Business Plan

A well-crafted business plan serves as a roadmap for your activewear company, outlining your goals, strategies, and financial projections. It helps you define your business objectives and lays out the necessary steps to achieve them.

Start by outlining your business concept. Define your unique selling proposition (USP) and clearly articulate what sets your activewear brand apart from others in the market. Identify your target market segments and outline how you plan to capture their attention and meet their needs.

In your business plan, include a detailed market analysis. Evaluate the size and growth potential of the activewear industry. Identify trends, market opportunities, and potential challenges. This will help you position your brand effectively and make informed decisions.

Next, clearly define your product offering. Describe the types of activewear you plan to offer, the materials you will use, and any innovative features. Outline how you plan to differentiate your products from competitors and create a unique value proposition.

Develop a comprehensive marketing strategy as part of your business plan. Outline your digital marketing activities, such as social media campaigns, influencer collaborations, and content marketing. Also, include traditional marketing methods such as advertising, PR, and events. A detailed marketing plan will guide your promotional efforts and help you reach your target audience effectively.

Financial planning is a crucial aspect of your business plan. Outline your startup costs, including product development, manufacturing, marketing, and website development. Project your revenue and expenses for the first few years, considering factors like production costs, pricing, and sales volume. Determine how you will fund your startup and outline your financial projections for profitability and growth.

Lastly, include an executive summary at the beginning of your business plan. This section provides an overview of your business idea, objectives, and strategies. It should capture the attention of potential investors or partners and convey the essence of your activewear company.

A well-crafted business plan not only serves as a guide for your activewear company’s growth but also demonstrates your professionalism and commitment to potential investors or lenders. Take the time to develop a comprehensive and persuasive business plan that reflects your vision and sets a solid foundation for your venture.

Step 4: Source Suppliers and Manufacturers

Once you have a clear vision for your activewear brand and a solid business plan, the next step is to source suppliers and manufacturers for your products. Finding reliable and high-quality suppliers is crucial to ensuring the success of your activewear company.

Start by conducting thorough research to identify potential suppliers and manufacturers who specialize in activewear production. Look for suppliers who align with your brand values, environmental sustainability practices, and production capabilities.

Make a list of potential suppliers and reach out to them to inquire about their services, production capacity, lead times, and pricing. Request samples of their work to assess the quality of their products. A successful partnership with suppliers who can meet your production needs and deliver products on time is essential for the smooth operation of your business.

When evaluating suppliers, consider factors such as their reliability, reputation, and ability to accommodate your specific requirements. It’s also important to establish clear communication channels and ensure that they are responsive and willing to work closely with you throughout the production process.

Once you have identified potential suppliers, it’s a good practice to visit their facilities if possible. This will give you firsthand insight into their production processes, quality control measures, and working conditions. It will also help you establish a personal connection and build trust with your suppliers.

When negotiating contracts with suppliers, ensure that all terms and conditions are clearly outlined, including pricing, payment terms, delivery schedules, and quality control standards. It’s essential to have a solid understanding of the production timeline and ensure that your suppliers can meet your demand for product quantity and quality.

Additionally, consider diversifying your supplier base to mitigate risks and avoid dependency on a single source. Having multiple suppliers can provide flexibility, ensure a consistent supply of products, and help you negotiate better pricing and terms.

Remember, sourcing suppliers and manufacturers is a critical step in the journey of starting your activewear company. Taking the time to find reliable partners who align with your brand values will ensure the production of high-quality activewear that meets the expectations of your target customers.

Step 5: Design and Develop Your Activewear Products

The design and development of your activewear products are crucial steps in creating a unique and appealing brand. This is where you bring your vision to life and turn your ideas into tangible products that meet the needs and preferences of your target customers.

Start by researching current trends in activewear design. Look at popular styles, colors, and patterns that resonate with your target audience. This will help you stay relevant and create products that are in demand.

Next, develop a cohesive and versatile product line that caters to the different needs of your target customers. Consider offering a variety of styles, such as leggings, sports bras, shorts, and tops, to provide options for different activities and body types.

When it comes to materials, prioritize comfort, performance, and durability. Choose fabrics that are moisture-wicking, breathable, and stretchable to ensure optimal performance during workouts. Also, consider incorporating sustainable materials and practices to align with the growing demand for eco-friendly activewear.

Work closely with your suppliers and manufacturers to create prototypes and samples of your activewear products. Test the samples thoroughly, evaluating the fit, comfort, and functionality. Seek feedback from potential customers or fitness enthusiasts to gather insights and make any necessary improvements.

Think about incorporating unique design elements and details that set your activewear apart from competitors. This could include innovative features, stylish patterns, or eye-catching branding. Consider both aesthetics and functionality to create a product that customers will love.

Ensure that your product development process is aligned with your target customers’ preferences. Conduct market research, engage with your audience on social media, and use customer feedback to continuously iterate and refine your designs.

Don’t forget about sizing options. Offering a range of sizes, including plus sizes, will help you cater to a broader customer base and make your brand more inclusive.

Once you have finalized your designs, work closely with your suppliers and manufacturers to begin production. Maintain open and frequent communication to ensure that the production process runs smoothly and that the end products meet your quality standards.

Remember, the design and development of your activewear products are instrumental in setting your brand apart from competitors. By creating products that are not only stylish but also functional and of high quality, you will establish a loyal customer base and pave the way for the success of your activewear company.

Step 6: Build an E-commerce Website and Online Presence

In today’s digital age, having a strong online presence is essential for the success of your activewear company. Building an e-commerce website and effectively establishing your brand online will allow you to reach a wider audience and drive sales. Here’s how you can do it:

First, invest in a well-designed and user-friendly e-commerce website. This is your virtual storefront and should reflect the essence of your brand. Optimize your website for easy navigation, fast loading times, and a seamless checkout process. Ensure that it is optimized for mobile devices, as more and more customers are shopping on their smartphones.

Create compelling product descriptions and high-quality images that showcase your activewear in the best light. Utilize professional photography or consider hiring fitness models to showcase your products in action. This will help customers visualize themselves wearing your activewear and increase their likelihood of making a purchase.

Implement secure payment gateways to provide a safe and convenient shopping experience for your customers. Offer multiple payment options to cater to different preferences.

Additionally, incorporate social proof on your website by showcasing customer reviews and testimonials. This will build trust and credibility and encourage potential customers to make a purchase.

Next, establish a strong presence on social media platforms. Identify the platforms where your target audience is most active and create engaging content that aligns with your brand values. Utilize a mix of product photos, lifestyle shots, fitness tips, and inspirational content to captivate your audience.

Engage with your audience by responding to comments and messages promptly. Encourage user-generated content by running contests or featuring customers who post about your activewear. This will foster a sense of community around your brand and help increase brand awareness.

Invest in digital marketing strategies such as search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, and social media advertising to drive traffic to your website. Implementing these strategies will help your activewear company get discovered by potential customers and increase your online visibility.

Collaborate with fitness influencers or partner with fitness studios and gyms to expand your reach and tap into their established communities. This will help you gain credibility and reach a targeted audience that aligns with your brand values.

Finally, monitor and analyze your online presence using analytics tools. Track website traffic, conversions, and engagement metrics to gain insights into your customers’ behavior and preferences. Use this data to optimize your online strategies and make informed business decisions.

By building an e-commerce website and establishing a strong online presence, you can reach a wider audience, build brand awareness, and drive sales for your activewear company. A well-executed online strategy is key to staying competitive in the fast-paced digital landscape.

Step 7: Set Up Inventory and Fulfillment Systems

Setting up efficient inventory and fulfillment systems is essential to ensure smooth operations and timely delivery of your activewear products. Proper management of inventory and fulfillment will help you meet customer expectations and maintain a positive reputation for your brand. Here’s how you can do it:

Start by assessing your inventory needs based on your sales forecasts and production lead times. Determine the optimal inventory levels to have on hand to meet customer demand without incurring unnecessary costs or holding excess stock.

Invest in inventory management software that can help you track your inventory levels, monitor sales, and automate reordering when necessary. This will streamline your inventory management process and ensure that you always have the right products in stock at the right time.

Implement a robust quality control system to ensure the consistency and reliability of your products. Conduct regular inspections of incoming inventory to identify any defects or issues before they are shipped to customers.

When it comes to fulfillment, consider whether you want to handle it in-house or outsource to a third-party fulfillment center. Each option has its pros and cons, so carefully evaluate which one aligns with your business goals and resources.

If you decide to handle fulfillment internally, set up an organized and efficient system to process orders, pack products securely, and ship them in a timely manner. Consider investing in shipping software that integrates with your e-commerce platform to streamline the fulfillment process and provide your customers with real-time tracking information.

If you choose to outsource fulfillment, research and select a reliable fulfillment center that can handle your inventory storage, order processing, and shipping. Ensure that they have experience in handling activewear products and can meet your specific requirements for packaging and shipping deadlines.

Establish clear communication channels with your fulfillment center or internal fulfillment team to optimize efficiency and address any issues that may arise. Regularly monitor and measure fulfillment performance to ensure that orders are being processed accurately and in a timely manner.

Implement a returns and exchanges policy that is customer-friendly and aligns with industry standards. Have a clear process in place for handling returns, and ensure that technology systems support the tracking and management of returned items.

By setting up efficient inventory and fulfillment systems, you can streamline your operations and ensure a seamless customer experience. This will help you build trust and loyalty among your customers and maintain a positive reputation for your activewear company.

Step 8: Launch Marketing and Advertising Campaigns

Launching effective marketing and advertising campaigns is essential to generate awareness, drive traffic to your website, and ultimately, increase sales for your activewear company. Here are some key steps to successfully launch your marketing and advertising campaigns:

Start by developing a comprehensive marketing strategy that aligns with your brand and target audience. Identify the most effective channels to reach your audience, such as social media platforms, search engines, or influencer partnerships.

Create compelling and engaging content that showcases your activewear products and resonates with your target customers. Use high-quality visuals, such as lifestyle images and videos, to capture attention and evoke an emotional connection with your audience.

Utilize social media marketing to reach and engage with your target audience. Develop a content calendar that includes a mix of product highlights, fitness tips, inspirational quotes, and behind-the-scenes content. Engage with your followers through comments and direct messages to build a loyal community around your brand.

Consider collaborating with fitness influencers who align with your brand values and have a strong presence in your target market. Influencer marketing can help you reach a wider audience and build credibility for your activewear products.

Utilize search engine optimization (SEO) strategies to improve the visibility of your website in search engine results. Conduct keyword research and optimize your website content, meta tags, and product descriptions. This will help you attract organic traffic and increase your chances of converting visitors into customers.

Implement pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaigns, such as Google Ads or social media ads, to drive targeted traffic to your website. Set clear objectives, such as increasing brand awareness or driving sales, and carefully monitor your campaign performance to optimize your ad spend and maximize ROI.

Take advantage of email marketing to nurture relationships with your customers and drive repeat sales. Collect email addresses through your website and offer incentives, such as a discount or exclusive content, in exchange for sign-ups. Regularly send out engaging newsletters or promotional emails to keep your audience informed and encourage them to make a purchase.

Consider hosting or sponsoring events, such as fitness challenges or local fitness classes, to raise awareness and engage with potential customers in person. This can help you build a strong brand presence within your local community.

Measure the performance of your marketing and advertising campaigns using analytics tools. Track key metrics such as website traffic, conversion rates, engagement, and sales to identify successful strategies and areas for improvement.

Remember, marketing and advertising are ongoing efforts. Continuously monitor and refine your campaigns based on customer feedback and market trends. Stay agile and adapt to changes in the industry to ensure your activewear company stays competitive.

Step 9: Establish Partnerships and Collaborations

Establishing partnerships and collaborations can greatly benefit your activewear company by expanding your reach, enhancing brand visibility, and generating new opportunities. Here are some key steps to consider when seeking partnerships and collaborations:

Identify potential partners who align with your brand values and target audience. Look for complementary businesses or individuals in the fitness, wellness, or lifestyle industries. This could include fitness influencers, fitness studios, gyms, nutritionists, or other activewear brands that offer complementary products.

Reach out to potential partners and propose mutually beneficial collaborations. Highlight how the partnership can provide value to both parties and their respective audiences. Be clear about your objectives and the specific benefits that the collaboration can bring.

Consider co-creating content or products with your partners. This could include joint social media campaigns, brand collaborations, or even limited-edition activewear collections. Collaborative efforts can expand your audience reach and create excitement around your brand.

Engage in influencer collaborations by partnering with fitness influencers who align with your brand values. Collaborate on content creation, product launches, or campaigns that feature your activewear. Influencer partnerships can help you tap into their loyal followers and gain traction in the market.

Explore opportunities for strategic sponsorships. This could include sponsoring fitness events, sports teams, or wellness programs. By associating your brand with these activities, you can increase brand awareness and reach a wider audience.

Consider creating affiliate programs to incentivize brand ambassadors or affiliates to promote your activewear products. Provide them with unique discount codes or a commission-based structure for driving sales. This can help amplify your brand message and drive additional sales.

Participate in trade shows, events, or conventions in the activewear industry. These provide opportunities to network with potential collaborators, meet industry professionals, and showcase your brand to a targeted audience.

Establish long-term partnerships by nurturing relationships with your collaborators. Engage in regular communication, provide support, and celebrate their successes. Building strong partnerships can lead to ongoing collaboration opportunities and mutual growth.

Before entering into partnerships or collaborations, ensure that you have clear agreements or contracts in place. Clearly define expectations, responsibilities, and the duration of the partnership to avoid any misunderstandings or conflicts down the line.

Remember, establishing partnerships and collaborations can open doors to new markets, elevate your brand image, and boost your activewear company’s growth. Be strategic in selecting partners and nurturing relationships to create mutually beneficial opportunities.

Step 10: Monitor and Adjust Your Business Strategy

Monitoring and adjusting your business strategy is crucial to the long-term success of your activewear company. As the industry and consumer preferences evolve, it’s important to stay agile and adapt to changes. Here are some key steps to effectively monitor and adjust your business strategy:

Continuously monitor your performance metrics to gauge the success of your activewear company. This includes tracking sales, customer acquisition costs, customer retention rates, and website analytics. Regularly review these metrics to identify trends, patterns, and areas for improvement.

Stay informed about industry trends and shifts in consumer behavior. Keep an eye on fashion and fitness publications, attend industry conferences, and engage with your target audience on social media. This will help you identify emerging trends and adjust your strategy accordingly.

Seek feedback from your customers through surveys, reviews, or direct communication. Listen to their input and suggestions and use this information to improve your products, customer experience, and overall brand strategy.

Monitor your competitors’ activities and performance. Stay up to date with their product launches, marketing strategies, and any industry innovations they introduce. This will help you identify areas where you can differentiate your brand and react to market changes.

Regularly evaluate your marketing and advertising campaigns. Review the performance of each channel, such as social media, PPC ads, or influencer partnerships. Analyze the return on investment (ROI) of each campaign and make adjustments accordingly to optimize your marketing spend.

Assess the effectiveness of your collaborations and partnerships. Monitor the reach, engagement, and sales generated from each partnership. Evaluate whether the collaboration met your objectives and consider exploring new opportunities or refining your partnerships.

Keep a close eye on your inventory and fulfillment systems. Regularly review your stock levels, production timelines, and fulfillment performance to ensure that you are meeting customer demand efficiently. Make adjustments as needed to avoid overstocking or running out of popular items.

Keep your business plan and financial projections up to date. Review them regularly to assess whether your assumptions and goals are still valid. Adjust your projections based on current market conditions, industry trends, and the performance of your activewear company.

Stay connected with your team and regularly communicate about the progress of your activewear company. Employee feedback and insights can be valuable for identifying areas that require adjustment and fostering a collaborative work environment.

Finally, be open to experimenting and trying new strategies. Don’t be afraid to make necessary adjustments to your product offerings, pricing, marketing, or distribution channels. Embrace a growth mindset and continuously fine-tune your business strategy to stay relevant and competitive.

By actively monitoring and adjusting your business strategy, you can ensure that your activewear company remains dynamic and responsive to market changes. Stay adaptable and willing to make calculated adjustments to position your brand for long-term success.

Congratulations on reaching the end of this comprehensive guide on how to start an activewear company! Throughout the steps outlined in this article, you have learned valuable insights and strategies to embark on your journey as an activewear entrepreneur.

Starting an activewear company requires careful planning, research, and strategic decision-making. From researching the market and defining your brand to sourcing suppliers, designing products, and establishing an online presence, each step plays a crucial role in your success.

Remember to continuously monitor and adjust your business strategy to stay ahead of industry trends and meet the evolving needs of your target customers. Flexibility, adaptability, and a commitment to delivering high-quality products and experiences will be key to sustaining and growing your activewear company.

Building a strong brand presence and implementing effective marketing and advertising campaigns will help you create awareness, engage with your audience, and drive sales. Seek partnerships and collaborations that align with your brand values to expand your reach and tap into new markets.

Finally, embrace feedback from your customers, employees, and industry peers. Learn from their insights and experiences to continuously improve your products and customer experience.

Starting an activewear company is an exciting and challenging endeavor, but with the right knowledge, strategies, and dedication, you can turn your vision into a thriving business. Stay focused, passionate, and adaptable as you navigate the ever-evolving landscape of the activewear industry.

Now it’s time to take what you’ve learned and embark on your journey as an activewear entrepreneur. With careful planning, perseverance, and a commitment to quality and customer satisfaction, you have the potential to make a meaningful impact in the activewear industry and inspire individuals to lead a healthy and active lifestyle.

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• How to Start Fitness Clothing Line
• How to Start Your Own Fitness or Athletic Clothing Line

Table of Contents

• Some Facts Regarding the Fashion Industry 
• Step-By-Step Guide to a Fitness Clothing Line Launch
• Conduct Adequate ​​Research of the Industry and Target Market
• ​​Prepare a Business Plan
• Choose the Best Business Structure
• Register Your Business
• Cover The Business Insurance Part
• Find Funding
• Choose Your Fitness Clothing Type
• Understand Your Materials
• Establish a Niche Market
• Find The Right Clothing Manufacturer
• Start Branding

Over the last few years, everyday fashion has seen a big shift. Activewear is now the go-to choice for many, from running errands to attending meetings. Even high-end brands like Gucci have jumped on the activewear trend. 

Getting to know the retail fashion world better can help you stand out in a competitive market by staying ahead of trends and navigating fashion industry challenges. Here are some insights:

• The global gym apparel market is set to grow to about $385 billion by 2032.
• The athleisure sector is expected to reach $3.2 billion in 2032, with a strong focus on sustainable fabric that particularly appeals to younger consumers.
• There's been an increase in “recycled” athletic apparel, with a rise of 642% for men and 388% for women in the past year, highlighting the growing eco-friendly sportswear trend in the U.S.
• Revenue in the fashion industry increased by 21% between 2020 and 2021, and EBITA margins doubled to 12.3 %.

Launching a new business is like sprinting the 100-meter dash in clogs; you’re going to fall down a few times. To help you avoid a few stumbles, we have designed a comprehensive guide to help you through the process of how to start a fitness clothing line.

Starting a business in a field where big names like Nike already have a stronghold can feel like stepping into a major league game.  Knowing the rules and players is key, especially understanding your customers . This knowledge is foundational as you venture into selling workout clothes with your athletic clothing brand.

• Market Size and Growth : Utilize IBISWorld or Statista to gauge the fitness apparel industry's size and growth rate. Explore sales data, customer count, and active businesses in this sector.
• Trends and Dynamics : Follow fashion news and attend trade shows for the latest trends. Investigate the rising interest in sustainable materials and athleisure popularity.
• Competitive Landscape : Examine big brands like Lululemon or Gymshark to understand market share distribution and identify gaps your athletic clothing line could fill.
• Regulatory Environment : Consult legal experts for insights on material safety, labeling, and advertising regulations in the fitness apparel industry.
• Demographics and Psychographics : Conduct surveys or focus groups to learn about your potential customers' demographics and psychographics. Use tools like Google Analytics to analyze your target market's online behavior.
• Consumer Needs and Preferences : Collect feedback on prototypes or existing products to understand your target market's preferences regarding comfort, style, or durability.
• Price Sensitivity : Analyze competitor pricing to determine your target audience's willingness to pay for quality fitness apparel.
• Material and Design : Collaborate with designers and material experts to develop samples, testing for comfort, durability, and appeal. Stay informed on new technologies like smart textiles.
• Vendor Selection : Tour factories, verify certifications, and negotiate terms to optimize costs without compromising on quality.
• Cost Efficiency : Perform a cost analysis to formulate pricing strategies that would ensure profitability as you sell workout clothes.

Creating a solid business plan is a stepping stone toward success and attracting potential investors. It acts as a blueprint for your business goals and the strategies to achieve them. Here’s a breakdown of a business plan’s key components as you consider how to start a gym clothing line:

• Executive Summary : Overview of your business plan, touching on your company profile and goals. It covers your business name, location, mission statement, business concept, founding date, current status, and owner details.
• Market Analysis : Covers the industry landscape, analyzing the market, target customers, competitors, and your business's competitive edges.
• Organization and Management : Details your organizational setup, management team roles, and individual department tasks. Includes bios of team members showcasing how their expertise will bolster business success.
• Product or Service Line : Describe your gym clothing line, highlighting the benefits of your brand, clothing life cycle, and any intellectual property rights.
• Marketing and Sales : Crafts a marketing strategy for reaching and retaining customers alongside a sales strategy on how you plan to sell your apparel. Includes pricing and promotional plans.
• Funding Request : Outlines the funding amount needed, its proposed usage, and funding type (e.g., equity, loan).
• Financial Projections : Offers a five-year financial forecast, including projected income statements, balance sheets, cash flow statements, and capital expenditure budgets.

For further guidance, check out Hal Shelton’s book, "The Secrets to Writing a Successful Business Plan: A Pro Shares a Step-By-Step Guide to Creating a Plan That Gets Results."

When starting a fitness clothing business, the business structure you choose can affect how you pay taxes and how much personal liability you have.

Sole Proprietorship 

A sole proprietorship is the simplest form, where the owner and business are synonymous. The owner is personally responsible for all debts and liabilities. It’s easy to set up, giving the owner full managerial control. The benefits of independent contractors include easy formation and minimal regulatory compliance, while drawbacks are unlimited personal liability and capital-raising challenges. This structure is ideal for small-scale fitness clothing lines with limited capital seeking simplicity and full control.

Partnership 

Partnerships, formed by two or more individuals, share responsibilities, profits, and losses. They combine resources and expertise, which is useful in the competitive fitness clothing market. Advantages include combined resources and shared responsibility, while drawbacks are joint liability and potential conflicts. A good choice for collaborative ventures in the fitness clothing industry.

Corporation 

S corporations offer liability protection and tax benefits suitable for growing businesses. Profits and some losses are passed directly to owners’ personal income, avoiding corporate tax rates. Benefits are liability protection, tax savings, and investor attraction capability, but with stricter operational requirements and a 100-shareholder limit. Suitable for fitness clothing businesses eyeing rapid growth and investor attraction.

Limited Liability Company (LLC) 

LLCs blend personal liability protection like corporations with the operational flexibility of partnerships. They offer liability shields and pass-through taxation with flexible management and fewer compliance requirements. Pros are personal liability protection and operational flexibility, while cons are a more complex setup than sole proprietorships and possible self-employment taxes. An LLC is ideal for those anticipating higher risk or eyeing a medium to large-scale fitness clothing venture.

Before launching your clothing brand, it's important to register your business for legal protection and a solid entrepreneurial foundation. Here's how:

• Choosing a Unique Name : Pick a unique name for your fitness clothing brand to stand out in the market. Check name availability in your state using resources like your state's business registry, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office registry, or domain registrars like GoDaddy.
• Obtain an EIN : Secure an Employer Identification Number ( EIN ) from the IRS for tax purposes and official documentation.
• Apply for Permits and Licenses : Identify and obtain necessary permits and licenses, such as business licenses and sales tax permits, relevant to operating a fitness clothing brand in your area.
• Open a Business Bank Account : Establish a business bank account to separate business and personal finances for accurate record-keeping and tax management.
• Maintain Ongoing Compliance : Keep up with business registration renewals, tax obligations, and other legal requisites to sustain your business's good standing.

Starting and running a fitness clothing business involves various considerations, one of which is ensuring the business is adequately insured to mitigate risks. Here are some common types of business insurance policies to consider:

Consider also consulting with insurance professionals, from insurance brokers to agents, who are knowledgeable about the taxes and legal limitations of owning a retail business. They can guide you on the types of insurance covers you should consider.

Chances are, when you’re starting a new business, you will need some sort of financial assistance. You can apply for a business line of credit, a startup loan, or a small business loan to get your fitness clothing line up and running.

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Here are some differences between these three options: 

• Business Line of Credit : A business line of credit operates similarly to a credit card, where you are given a credit limit, typically ranging between $2,000 and $100,000. The average interest rates for a business line of credit range between 7% and 25%. A typical repayment period ranges from six months to a few years, with interest accruing only on the funds drawn. Business lines of credit offer continuous access to funds and often don’t have limitations on what funds can be used for. 
• Startup Loans : Startup business loans are designed specifically for new businesses seeking initial capital to kickstart their operations. These loans often cater to businesses that may not yet have a solid financial history. The average interest rates for startup loans can vary widely, typically ranging from 6% to 20%. The loan amounts generally fall between $10,000 and $500,000, with repayment terms spanning from one to seven years. 
• Small Business Loan: Small business loans are more traditional financing options where a lump sum of money is lent to be repaid over a set term with interest. The average interest rates can range from about 2.5% to 7% for traditional bank loans or higher for online or alternative lenders. Average loan amounts can range from $30,000 to $250,000, with terms generally ranging from two to 10 years. With large loan amounts and lower interest rates than other business loans, a small business loan may offer the controlled boost necessary to build your business. 

Fitness wear is just as stylized as any other type of clothing, and choosing what type of fitness clothing you’ll offer will help you build your brand image.

Sportswear includes performance-based apparel suitable for a wide array of athletic activities, like running, swimming, cycling, and team sports. Sportswear is designed to provide comfort, safety, and better performance for athletes. For instance, materials that wick away sweat, improve aerodynamics, or offer thermal insulation are common in sportswear. 

Activewear is mainly defined as the clothes one wears to work out and sweat in. This can include sports, exercise, and outdoor activities. It is typically lightweight, sweat-resistant (or dry-fit), and form-fitting. It should allow free movement and comfort above all. 

On the other hand, when considering what is the difference between activewear and sportswear,  keep in mind that sportswear is tailored for specific sports. It usually encompasses team jerseys, protective items, and footwear made for particular sports – which might not be the best fit for your everyday workout or a laid-back yoga session.

This niche lies at the intersection of activewear and recreational wear. It can be worn any time of day or night. Athleisure is typically composed of articles like leggings or joggers, hoodies, and sneakers for an active yet stylish look. The hype around athleisure took a boost when celebrities and influencers took activewear from the gym to the streets and everywhere else in between. 

Streetwear is a style of casual clothing that became mainstream in the 1990s. Unlike sportswear or activewear, streetwear is more about making a personal or social statement. It's less about functionality and more about style and the expression of individual identity but often incorporates athleticwear and activewear. Major components of streetwear include t-shirts, hoodies, and gym shorts.

If you are a newcomer to the world of clothing and athletic wear, here are some small tips to help you understand what you will be working with:

• Fabrics : Fabrics can be picked based on the target audience. Fabric choices should align with the physical activities of your target audience. Certain activities may require more breathable, stretchable, or moisture-wicking materials.
• Fit : Determine the purpose of your clothing line. For high-intensity workouts, consider designs that offer compression benefits. Compression can help reduce muscle fatigue, prevent strains, and enhance movement. If you're targeting a casual or athleisure audience, looser fits might be more appropriate.
• Fabric Weight : Be mindful of the seasons and the intended region of sale. Summer collections should favor lightweight materials, while winter collections might call for heavier fabrics. For activities like running, you might prioritize lightweight fabrics to facilitate unrestricted movement.
• Reflective Details : These are more than just aesthetic additions. With a growing demand for reflective designs, especially among night-time athletes, these details enhance visibility and safety.
• Ventilation : Proper ventilation allows for temperature regulation and improved blood circulation. If you're designing for intense physical activities, incorporate cut-outs, mesh paneling, or other breathable elements in strategic locations.


Navigating success as a small fitness clothing business in a bustling market requires a mix of creativity, market savvy, and a solid grasp of your target audience.

Here's how you can carve a niche for your brand, especially if you're selling gyming clothes online:

• Discover Your Unique Selling Proposition (USP): Pinpoint a USP that aligns with your brand and appeals to your audience. If you're rooted sustainably, eco-friendly fitness apparel could be your niche, using materials like organic cotton or recycled polyester.
• Create and Refine Prototypes : Develop prototypes embodying your USP. If catering to plus-sized individuals, create stylish designs offering the right support. Obtain feedback from potential customers to refine your offerings.
• Engage with Targeted Communities : Connect with communities that share your niche values. If promoting body positivity, interact with relevant online and offline communities, sharing your brand story and how your fitness clothing line champions this cause.
• Collaborate with Influencers : Partner with influencers whose followers resonate with your niche. For a line suited to high-performance athletes, collaborations with athletes or fitness trainers on social media can yield authentic exposure.
• Narrate Your Brand Story : Craft a narrative around your niche , sharing the journey and impact your brand aims to create, helping to foster a deeper audience connection.
• Collect and Act on Customer Feedback : Post-launch, actively gather customer feedback to understand their experiences, learn what resonated, and adjust your product range accordingly.
• Measure, Learn, and Iterate : Set key performance indicators to gauge your niche strategy's success. Analyze sales data, website traffic, and social media engagement to discern what's hitting the mark with your audience and identify areas for enhancement.

Exploring the variety of activewear manufacturers is a pivotal step on the road to successfully selling workout clothes. The right manufacturer can be a cornerstone for quality and satisfaction. Here are some tips to guide you in identifying a suitable manufacturer:

• Research Experience : Seek manufacturers with proven expertise in fitness clothing, as they can provide valuable advice on fabric and design choices.
• Check Machinery : Ensure the manufacturers have diverse machinery to handle unique material designs for sportswear.
• Verify Prior Partners : Ask about their past collaborations with brands. A track record of success can hint at reliability and quality output.
• Consider Sustainability : Look for any environmental or social impact statements to find a manufacturer whose values align with your business ethos.
• Collect Samples : Acquire samples before finalizing any contract. Conduct thorough quality checks, examine seams and stitches, and perform wash tests for color fastness. Request the manufacturers to conduct stretch and recovery tests for a comprehensive assessment.

A strong brand can propel your fitness apparel business forward. With a memorable name and a clear identity, you pave the way for growth and a positive reputation. Here's a roadmap to help you create your gym clothing brand:

• Pick a Brand Name : Select a name that mirrors the essence and values of your fitness apparel brand. Online tools like Namelix, Shopify’s Business Name Generator, or Brandroot can be your allies in brainstorming.
• Create a Logo: Once the name is in place, draft a logo. It's natural for the logo to evolve as your brand matures. If design isn't your strong suit, professional designers or platforms like Adobe Illustrator, Canva, or Looka are options to explore.
• Build Your Website : With a name and logo at hand, it's time to create a welcoming website to showcase your products, reviews, and mission. User-friendly platforms like Wix, Squarespace, and Canva can be good starting points.
• Advertise : Boost your brand's visibility through advertising on major social platforms like Facebook and Instagram. Tailor your advertising approach to resonate with the specific audiences on each platform, be it through influencer partnerships on Instagram or engaging visuals on Facebook.

Starting a fitness clothing business requires careful planning and consideration in areas like business structure, registration, taxes, insurance, and understanding the industry. Budget wisely, comply with legal requirements, and stay updated with the fashion industry trends to promote the success and growth of your business.

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Do you have some great design ideas or a cool new activewear brand concept? Can’t you find the styles you are looking for? 

2020 has been a good year for activewear brands. Due to the pandemic, people have looked for different ways to stay active, whether it’s been indoors, at home, or outside in nature, away from people crowds in order to keep the social distance. 

The global activewear apparel market is said to grow by $157.1 billion during 2020-2024, meaning there’s plenty more room for new brands with unique and innovative design ideas and brand concepts.

But where do you start? How do you go about to make it all happen?

If you want to launch your own activewear brand or athleisure brand, then this article is for you. We’ll give you an overview of the steps involved in starting your own successful business.

1. Starting Up

Idea & customer need.

It all starts with an idea. Maybe you can’t find the clothes you are looking for, or you have a strong design opinion that you want to show the world. You are better off if you can connect your idea to a customer need. If you strongly believe in your idea, you should go ahead and make it happen. The most important is to know who your target customer is and the activewear niche you are going to cover in the marketplace.

Here are some questions to ask yourself to get a good start:

• Who  is your future target customer? Who is going to buy your product when your brand is launched?
• What  exactly is it that you are going to sell to this specific customer? What makes your brand and product unique that this particular customer can’t get anywhere else?
• Why  will it be important for them? Why should they care?
• Where  will you be selling your products to your target customer? Where can people find you?
• How  will you be telling the world about your products and brand? How will you market it?

Entrepreneurship

Running your own business isn’t a 9 to 5 job. It is not the hours you spend in the office that matters. What matters is what you produce. You are your own boss, and you need to make it all happen. You will live and breathe your brand, working 24/7. All people have great ideas. The differentiator is that the entrepreneur makes them happen. It will require you to put in the work and follow through on your dream. Are you cut out for this? Is it really what you want? Do you have the grit and determination to pursue this dream? If you are nodding your head – keep reading:)

2. Market Research

Market scan.

You have a great idea for sure. The question is: is it unique? Is there enough market room for your new brand? Perform a thorough market scan. Search the web, visit shops, and read relevant magazines. You want your brand to stand out in the competition and find your own target niche. You want your brand to be nr 1. If another brand already has your idea, you will always be number two.

Business Plan

It can be great to have a business plan if you want to bring other people on board, e.g. investors or partners. But primarily, the business plan is for you. It forces you to ask yourself those tough questions and look at your business venture from different angles. The business plan is a living document that will change and evolve over time, usually things don’t go exactly according to the initial picture in your head.

Starting an athletic clothing line isn’t free. In your business plan, you have made an initial budget, and you have an estimate of how much it will cost you to set it up. But how will you finance it? Will you bring investors onboard? There are special start-up loans as well as angel investors to turn to. Going to an investor early on means giving away part of your company. But maybe that’s the best way to get it started and make your dream a reality?

As mentioned in step 1, setting up your brand will require a lot of blood, sweat, and happy;) tears. Can you do it all by yourself? Even if you can, is that the most efficient way to do it? Make sure to liaise yourself with talented and driven people that can help you out where you fall short. If you are a designer, find a good business partner, and if you are a business person, find a great designer. No one can do it all and you shouldn’t either.

3. Branding and Marketing

Activewear branding.

Put a lot of time and thought into your activewear brand identity, don’t rush it. Creating an enticing brand identity is important. Every touchpoint with your garment and brand should be thought about, from the labels and hangtags, to your packaging, to your website and point of sales material, all should be cohesive and on-brand. Your logo needs to be designed with the end-user in mind – from a small embossed logo on a cord stopper to a big backdrop for a fair, your logo needs to look equally great in all areas it’s used. There are many brands out there, so you need to make yours stand out. Create brand awareness and loyalty that connects your customers to your label. Remember that it’s important for your brand to tie together with your actual products.

Studies show that a customer needs to have been in contact with your brand on an average of 7 times before “trusting” you and making a purchase. What’s a touchpoint you might be asking? Your website, your blog, your Instagram, your Facebook and Youtube account, maybe your podcast, your monthly guest posting for an industry magazine etc. All the ways that you are talking about your brand. That’s why it matters that you think diversity when it comes to your marketing strategy, instead of having one touchpoint, like only your website. 

What will you talk about? See it more as documentation than content creation. Document your journey, let your customers join along and see the behind the scenes, let them be part of your brand. Talk about your brand’s story. 

Eventually, marketing is everything you do! Your products, your meetings, your content, the way your customer service, EVERYTHING.

Be honest in everything you do, let the customers understand why you do it, and what your brand is about. Get your message out authentically. Tell the world about your products and what differentiates them from the other activewear brands. What makes your brand unique is your superpower.

4. Design Your Collection

Activewear collection – define the range.

Leaving the foundation phase behind you, it’s now time to start the design and product development, the process of making your garments. The first step here is to define your collection, a strong collection with styles that complement each other, and help the sales. 

In this phase, you will also focus on choosing the right materials. Think about what purpose the products have, what problem they will solve for your customers, and the aesthetic direction you want to go in. 

A fun part of this phase is to create an inspirational mood board that guides the design direction.

Finally, make sure your collection is clear and cohesive.

Designing Activewear

You have structured and defined your collection, and the activewear designer or freelance designer can start sketching and sourcing. It’s important to incorporate the inspiration, the brand image, and your target customer. The styles should fit in with the values, vision, mission, and identity of your brand. The designer needs to make great tech packs so you can start the process of sampling and manufacturing your products. The tech packs are the blueprint of each product, and with this document the manufacturer can quote your prices, plus create your prototypes.

Sourcing Activewear Material

Sourcing means finding factories, materials, and accessories. Materials is a science by itself. If you know your price points, performance requirements, and quality level, it will help you narrow down your search for the right materials. Accessories can be cords, zippers, pullers, etc. that you want to include in your garments. Then you need to find a fitness clothing manufacturer that suits your needs, that can produce your styles, and believes in your activewear concept.

In step 2 you had a first look at the costs and the prices for your styles and production. Now when the collection is defined, you have sourced activewear materials and found factories, and hence production costs, you need to check your pricing again. Does it add up? Will it be profitable? Review all the posts in your budget and see how you can recalibrate it. In the end, you want to live and work, doing what you love. You don’t want it to be an expensive hobby that you pour money into.

5. Make your garments

Pattern & prototype.

This is a very crucial part. Even though you have great activewear designs on paper, you need to transform them into athletic wear that looks and feels the way you want. Based on the tech packs, you need to find a good pattern maker, which by the way isn’t that easy. The pattern is made in your wanted sample size and will later be graded to fit several sizes. With the pattern, you will start making your prototypes. In between every prototype you will measure, fit, and adjust the pattern/fit to improve your garment. Typically you will need 2–3 prototypes per style before you have a sample ready to show and sell.

Once you have arrived at your final prototype (salesman sample), you can start planning the bulk production. Discuss this with your activewear manufacturer as early as you can. They need to plan in your production in their schedule. They of course, need to know how big your production will be, the number of styles and sizes per style. We suggest you write an agreement with the manufacturer stating delivery times and quality requirements.

You have the bulk production ready and need to get your fantastic activewear garments to your customers. Depending on your sales strategy, you can have one or more customers. There can be shops, end-users, and wholesalers. Take a look at your logistics, negotiate with transportation partners, and plan how you will repackage the goods to suit your designated customer.

It doesn’t matter if you have the best products in the world with the best story, if no-one buys them. In the end, it all comes down to sales. You want your garments to sell, so you can reinvest and develop your collection and keep doing what you love. 

The traditional sales channels are retail through wholesalers and direct to consumer – online. 

It is up to you as a brand to determine what sales strategies you want to implement. 

One must-have though, as a brand of the future is your own e-commerce. This way you have full control of all the communication and experience out to your customers.  

The activewear manufacturer usually has minimum quantity requirements for producing your garments. This should at least be your selling target. Sell, sell, sell, and collect your orders to meet those minimums. At the same time, keep track of your minimum requirements for materials. How much fabric is on each roll that you buy? You don’t want to buy too much fabric that, in the end, turns into leftover. A good recommendation is to only produce the garments you have orders on. Don’t stock up unless you have an online business, and therefore need your own stock.

Customer Service

Take care of your customers. You make your garments so that your customers can have them for their intended need. Don’t disappoint them, put yourself in their shoes, and just see how you can help them. How will you handle complaints, returns, delays? Talk to your customers, and use the information to make even better products in the future.

This 6-step overview gives you an idea of what is involved in starting your own activewear or athleisure brand.

No matter if you are a start-up or an established brand that wants to expand your product segment, we can help you make it happen. With everything from concept, collection strategy, tech packs, and sourcing, we can also help you with an end-to-end solution. You bring the idea and concept, and we help make your idea a reality – create your own brand and bring activewear products to your future customers’ hands. 

Of course, if you want to launch a fashion brand, sportswear brand, streetwear brand, etc, we can help you with those as well. 

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• How to Start an Activewear Clothing Line

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How to Start an Athletic Clothing Line in 10 Steps

Crossing the finish line.

Activewear has always been popular, as nothing comes close to the comfort and functionality it offers to those leading an active lifestyle. However, it has exploded in popularity in recent years as more and more people embrace athleisure fashion and health-consciousness in their daily lives. In other words, if you’ve always dreamed of owning an activewear clothing line, now it’s time to act.

But how exactly can you go about turning this dream into a reality?

That’s what this guide is here to help you with. Keep reading to learn how to start a fitness clothing line, setting it up for success from the get-go.

Embarking on any business venture is no easy task. But when entering an industry dominated by activewear giants like Nike, Adidas, and Lululemon, you genuinely have your work cut out for you.

But there’s no need to panic. Consumers have always and will always recognize quality, innovation, and authenticity. So, as long as you start a fitness clothing brand that embodies these values, you can carve your niche.

Start with an idea. Think of something the activewear industry is missing or something that can be significantly improved. From there, follow this 10-step guide on starting a fitness clothing line and enter the competitive market with a bang.

Step 1: Hit the Ground Running With In-Depth Research

Most creatives have been there – you think of a genius idea, only to find out something similar has been on the market for years. So, it might be best not to get too excited about an idea before doing extensive research.

Luckily, the internet has made this research virtually effortless. Start by researching the most prominent players in the game and gradually narrow down to specific niches. Take notes on what’s popular and what seems to be only a fad, look for gaps in existing activewear collections, and gather inspiration. You might even come up with new concepts beyond your initial idea as your research progresses.

The ultimate goal is to truly understand the market you’re entering and the competition waiting for you there.

If you like a more “hands-on” approach, forget about the internet and head to local activewear shops. Try on many different styles to understand what fits the best, which material feels the most comfortable, and what type of designs you find the most attractive.

Step 2: Carve Your Victory Path Through a Niche

Finding something unique in an industry as crowded as activewear is nearly impossible. So, don’t get discouraged if you encounter other fitness brands selling products similar to your idea. What matters is that the niche isn’t completely saturated, and there’s enough room to grow.

Armed with your findings from market and competition research, you should be able to find a niche (e.g., a specific sport or exercise type) where your activewear line will be able to stand out. A significant part of this search is zeroing in on your target audience.

Think of your ideal customer – who they are, what they need, and how your products can enhance their lifestyles. Knowing who you’re designing activewear for will help you carve out a distinct identity and create specialized products that will resonate with your audience and, thus, become a hit.

Step 3: ​​Develop a Game Plan

There’s no doubt about it – creativity is what fuels your business venture. But the key word here is still “business.” Even the most innovative ideas need structure and strategic implementation to succeed. In other words, you need a business plan.

Though each business plan is unique, the document should generally include the following information:

• A summary – What is your company all about?
• Business description – What is your business model? What makes your business different?
• Market analysis – Who are your main competitors?
• Business structure – How is your business organized and managed?
• Product description – What are you selling?
• Marketing strategy – How will you attract and retain customers?
• Financial projections – What are your financial goals for the next few years?

This might seem like a lot of information for a stage near the beginning of your entrepreneurial journey. Still, it lays the foundation for your future success. Besides knowing precisely where you’re heading with your business, you can use this plan to apply for a startup business loan or bring investors and partners on board.

If you think you’ll be stuck on this step for a long time, we’ve got good news. As you’ll see below, many items on your business plans are separate steps for starting an athletic clothing line.

Step 4: Tackle Branding Like a Pro

Sure, the quality of your activewear line is what will keep your customers coming back. But it’s the branding that will initially draw them in. You need a compelling and memorable brand identity for your product to stand out in such a saturated market.

Of course, it all starts with a brand name. Think of a name that perfectly captures what your business is all about. Alternatively, go for something catchy and cool, like Fabletics. Whichever route you take, remember to check whether your desired name is available before getting too attached.

With your brand name down, you can move on to a logo. If you’re lucky, you’ll hit the jackpot almost instantly, like Nike with its iconic swoosh. But even if it takes a while to get it right, there’s no need to worry. The same happened to Adidas and Puma, and look at them now!

Step 5: Score Financial Backing

In the best-case scenario, you’ve saved money for some time or have a wealthy family member to lend you a hand, and you can self-finance your activewear venture. If not, you can still start a fitness clothing line. You’ll just need some financial assistance.

This is where the previously discussed business plan will come in handy. Use it to apply for a small business loan, a merchant cash advance, or a business line of credit. You can also look for an investor willing to support your activewear business in exchange for equity.

Step 6: Ace Your Activewear Clothing Line Design

Now that you know the budget you’re working with, you can move on to the fun part – designing your clothing line. Since this step requires numerous considerations, let’s break them down into key aspects.

Defining the Range

The first step in designing an activewear clothing line is determining what the line will actually encompass. Determine how many clothing pieces you want to launch initially and what they are.

The most crucial consideration in this regard is for these pieces to be tied with a common theme. Whether it’s a specific sport, a workout regimen, or a lifestyle concept, a cohesive theme will give your activewear line a strong identity.

Choosing the Materials

The material should top your list of priorities when designing an activewear clothing line. After all, activewear is all about feeling comfortable and performing at optimal levels. The ideal material(s) for your clothing line will depend on the type of activities your target audience will engage in wearing it. Generally, activewear clothing materials should be high-quality, durable, and moisture-wicking. Other than that, consider the following factors:

• The fit. Loosely fitted materials will work for a line leaning more toward athleisure than activewear. If you want to sell workout clothes, you’ll need fabrics with a supportive fit for a full range of motion.
• The weight. The weight of your fabrics will depend on your activewear line’s designs. Summer sports and activities like running call for lightweight fabrics like bamboo. In contrast, winter activities might require slightly heavier, insulated materials for warmth and protection from the cold (e.g., merino wool).
• The ventilation. The more extreme activity you’re designing your clothing for, the more ventilation it will need. The choice of material can significantly help with this aspect, as can additional elements like mesh paneling and cut-outs.

Adding Specialized Features

As you research more, you’ll quickly realize one thing – starting a workout clothing line is significantly different from starting any other type of clothing. Why?

Activewear is among the clothing types that require special considerations and features to be usable and successful. For instance, you might need to add reflective details, which benefit people who enjoy nighttime sports. Or, your line might need strategically placed compression panels to improve blood circulation and provide muscle support.

Whatever the case, adding these features will ensure your activewear line doesn’t only look good but performs exceptionally, too.

Designing Your Activewear

With all the details ironed out, it’s time to begin sketching. Do it yourself, or hire a designer and get to work!

Step 7: Go for the Gold With the Right Manufacturer

This stepStep 7 is where your vision finally comes to life. Finding the right clothing manufacturer is vital for the success of your activewear line. Get it wrong, and your idea will only look good on paper while being unwearable in reality.

Conducting in-depth research will also help you with this step. You’ll want to ensure your chosen manufacturer fits your needs and preferences to a tee.

If you’re lost in the sea of clothing manufacturers making promises and offering deals, let us help you make the right choice. Go with Appareify , and confidently take your activewear line from idea to creation.

With Appareify, starting an athletic clothing brand is a breeze. The company will help you produce a long-lasting activewear line that excels in performance, breathability, and flexibility. Best of all? You’ll be able to oversee the entire manufacturing process, ensuring each garment is up to your standards.

You can even choose Appareify’s private label services and let these experts take care of every step of starting a fitness clothing brand, from design to packaging. With their in-house research and development team, years of experience, and sustainable manufacturing practices, you can rest assured your dream is in good hands.

Get in touch with Appareify to learn more and inquire about sampling, production, and shipping details.

Step 8: Assemble Your Dream Team

You might think you can manage your activewear brand on your own. But “It takes a village” is a common saying in sports for a reason. No brand or athlete has ever made it big without a team of dedicated individuals pooling their expertise and efforts.

Of course, you might not be able to afford a full-scale team from the start. So, consider freelancers or part-time employees for essential roles until your brand grows.

Starting a gym clothing brand usually calls for a project manager, marketer, and sales assistants. Over time, you can add in-house positions like designer, market researcher, stylist, and photographer.

Step 9: Steer Your Line to Victory With Top-Notch Marketing

To give your activewear line a real chance, you must market it properly from the get-go. The great thing about marketing is that it can iron out any perceived drawbacks in your line. For instance, you might fear your products aren’t unique enough to succeed in such a competitive market. But as long as you find the right marketing angle, you can position your activewear line for success.

While you can explore numerous marketing avenues, digital marketing might be your safest bet. With a well-designed e-commerce website and striking social media channels, you can do wonders for your business.

An efficient marketing strategy will also help you create substantial pre-launch buzz, drawing potential customers in before your line is even out. Take lots of high-quality photos, give a sneak peek of the line, show the behind-the-scenes, and do anything to generate excitement before the official launch.

Step 10: Ready, Set, Launch

As all the puzzle pieces come together, there’s nothing left to do but launch your activewear brand. If your budget allows it, host a launch event to introduce the product of your hard work to the public. Even if you can’t afford such a launch, an online promotion can be just as effective. Plus, it allows a much wider audience to attend and feel like a part of your story from the beginning.

And there you have it – a guide on how to start an activewear line in 10 steps. Though these steps might look challenging, especially for a novice, remember that every successful brand starts from scratch. With a solid idea, fierce passion, and reliable partners like Appareify , there’s no limit to what your activewear brand can achieve.

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fitness clothing manufacturer » How To Start An Activewear Line

How to start an activewear line.

14 Feb 2024     posted by Fitness Guy

Seizing Opportunities: Starting An Activewear Line

The activewear market presents exciting opportunities for entrepreneurs. Whether your passion is fitness or fashion, starting an activewear line can be a rewarding venture. Though starting any business has challenges, the demand for quality activewear allows room for new players.

If you want to learn “how to start an activewear line,” you have landed on the correct place. Continue reading to know the exact steps to launch your activewear business.

1. Understanding the Activewear Consumer

With fitness motivating millions, activewear is in high demand. This creates an opening in the clothing sector. Developing a unique, specialized line is a great way to gain a foothold. Remember, major brands are not the only names in this game! Numerous small and medium-sized companies have found success. By crafting a solid business strategy and marketing plan, your original products can prosper.

The activewear space welcomes new ideas. If you have the determination, starting your own activewear line is a promising way to pursue your entrepreneurial dreams.

2. Selecting A Brand Name By What It Represents

The name and logo are frequently the entrepreneur’s priorities when starting a new business. This is valid when launching a brand of active clothing. Your initial designs for the apparel company may already include branding and visual identity.

In the end, the brand title you chose might have been your first idea. Before choosing a name, think about your intended audience. Who is going to buy your clothes? Who will be buying the best activewear: regular gym goers, at-home workout enthusiasts, or professional athletes? Make sure your label makes sense for the niche if you’re concentrating on a certain sport.

After deciding on your fashion business identity, create a consistent logo. Generally speaking, choose a simple design that will look well on your clothing in colors that correspond with your business. If creating your activewear line seems overwhelming, keep in mind that when you market your items in the future, your name and logo will be associated with your company’s values.

Also Read: 

Want To Start a Fitness Clothing Line – The Best Guide In 2024

How to Start a Gym Clothing Line in 10 Easy Steps – Updated 2024

3. Creating A Budget for Your Activewear Company

The costs associated with starting a clothing brand are the same as in any other sector. The least expensive option for launching an online store is to do so from home. The overhead of a physical storefront staffed by employees is significantly higher. Most people who launch an activewear line business, start with e-commerce. This enables the label to grow and acquire clients before paying for overhead such as rent, payroll, and taxes. Start by figuring out how much money you have available to start your clothing business.

4. Create a Strong Business Plan

Every new business endeavor requires a strong business strategy. Lenders will evaluate your plan when determining loan amounts and approval if you are applying for loans to start your activewear business.

When starting an activewear line, a basic plan outlines your intended venture and evaluates rivals and market conditions. It also describes your target market, products, marketing strategy, sales plan, organizational structure, and financials, including loan requests and first-year estimates.

After finishing each section, write an executive summary. The main points of your whole proposal are summarized in this one-page synopsis. The summary should be written last, even though it should go first, to make sure it includes all the important information.

5. Finding Manufacturing Partners for Your Activewear

To start an activewear line, you’ll need an experienced manufacturer for your products. If you have design experience, you may just require printing or production. Otherwise, seek out a company with expertise in both activewear design and manufacturing.

Choosing a Maker for Your Label

First, determine your business model. If you are solely selling a brand, print-on-demand could work for promotional gear. Your name and logo are printed as needed on existing labeled apparel.

Private label activewear manufacturing , where the maker produces generic pieces with your branding, is another option. Original design manufacturing uses your concepts to create unique activewear showcasing your identity.

If located near production hubs, search locally for suitable clothing manufacturers. Industry events and textile networking also connect entrepreneurs with manufacturers. While online searches seem convenient, it’s risky to trust your startup to an unknown web company.

Since quality is critical for new activewear ventures, carefully vet manufacturers when starting your activewear line. Local has advantages, but ensure they understand athletic apparel. Workout wear requires specific construction for safety, stretch, support, breathability, and moisture control. Partners should grasp these concepts, especially if providing custom sportswear apparel .

Take time to find the right partner to bring your activewear clothing dreams to life.

Choosing Resources

Most fitness clothing manufacturers are happy to help with sourcing, but keep the following in mind: Customers desire sports apparel that is well-fitting, performs well, and looks fantastic. Materials ought to be cozy, elastic, and give way underfoot. Stretchy, thin fabrics can seem perfect. Nonetheless, when bending and posing, clients anticipate opacity. Decent blends of spandex are frequently sufficiently thick to inspire confidence. Certain designs work well with mesh and other materials.

Receive fabric samples before making decisions. Check for colorfastness, stretch, feel, and durability. Resilient exercise equipment may be washed. If clothing wears out soon, customers will switch brands.

Cost is a consideration, even if choosing the best materials is preferable. Select high quality while staying within your means. Customers care about their first impressions. Obtain quotes from several vendors before making a choice. Give cost and quality evaluations a week or so. Next, choose according to both performance and value.

Investing time upfront to find top-notch textiles will pay off in the form of happy, loyal consumers.

Learn more:

How To Start An Activewear Brand In 10 Easy Steps [2024]

8 Steps – How To Start A Gym Clothing Line From Scratch

How to Launch an Activewear Brand Legally

Make sure the legal matters are taken care of before starting your activewear line. Before selling, think about your company type, taxes, permissions, and other factors. 

Selecting a Structure for Your Business

A quick opening is possible with a sole proprietorship, and income is reported on your taxes. It might not be the best choice, though. Speak with an accountant in advance. It might be dangerous to be a lone entrepreneur because you are personally accountable for any problems.

In a partnership, partners’ liability is divided. Although they increase complexity up front, corporations and LLCs reduce personal liability. A consultant or accountant can recommend the best structure for you.

There are going to be a lot of taxes due. Employees and physical places add additional factors. It is your responsibility as a retailer to collect sales tax, both local and state. To prepare for taxes, get in early with an accountant. To keep your finances organized, open a second bank account specifically for your business.

Getting the Appropriate License 

Launching an activewear clothing line is thrilling, but to avoid problems later, take the time to follow all requirements.

State and local laws govern licensing and permits . Look for SBA guidelines in your region. Operating without the required authorization may result in fines or closure, which would reduce revenue. Additionally, make sure your business identification is distinct by filing copyrights and trademarks with the USPTO.

You can concentrate on producing high-quality sportswear and creating a successful fitness apparel company if you make the appropriate legal arrangements.

Skills for a Thriving Activewear Brand

A strong concept provides a foundation, but various skills are needed to achieve success with an activewear clothing brand. Depending on your budget, some can be outsourced.

Business Savvy and Marketing

You don’t need to be an expert to prosper, but you should grasp customer service, operations, and marketing basics. If you are unsure in these areas, engage professionals. They can assist with business plans, marketing strategies, websites, and storefronts. You may also need activewear models and photographers to showcase your line.

Importance of Marketing

Marketing will play a huge role so customers can discover you when starting an activewear line business. An effective brand strategy is key, often involving a strong social media presence with influencer promotions. As sales grow, customers can become brand advocates through reviews and referrals. Marketing must coordinate branding, website, products, service, and more for a consistent customer experience.

Starting an activewear line requires consideration across many areas, starting with a vision. Ultimately, customers expect quality, durability, and branding they’re proud to sport. Make thorough plans to ensure legal compliance, visibility, and marketing. Combine this with stellar products and service, and your clothing venture can thrive.

With dedication and the right skills, you can turn your idea into a successful fitness apparel enterprise.

Read More: 

• How To Start An Activewear Brand

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Home > Blog > How to Start an Activewear Brand: 7-Step Guide

How to Start an Activewear Brand: 7-Step Guide

Do you want to create a new activewear brand in your country, but lack the time and money to do so? Or maybe you have some great design ideas or cool fashion ideas but can't find the one you want ...... Now is the time to create your personalized activewear line. But how do you know where to start? FITOP can help you create your activewear brand. With our team's 7 steps and some tips, you'll know exactly what you need to do to create your activewear line. We'll show you how to start an activewear business on a limited budget with no experience whatsoever.

Know your market

Before you can develop a business plan, you need to know exactly who your customers are. 

 ● Determine their demographics (gender, age, income level)

 ● Psychographics (attitudes, interests, and lifestyles) 

 ●  Where they buy their activewear

The more information you have about them the better prepared you will be to create custom activewear that meets their needs. Get to know your market with these tips on consumer research.

Also, when building a fitness clothing line, you may need to decide whether to focus on activewear or athleisure wear.

Activewear is "clothing designed for sports, exercise, and outdoor activities". It is what you wear when you go to the gym, to yoga class, or on your morning run. It is usually lightweight, sweat-wicking, and close-fitting, allowing you to move freely. Its main purpose is functional. Activewear is clothing that serves the purpose of mixing an active life with a casual social life.

Athleisure was born out of compromise. It sits at the intersection of activewear and traditional sportswear, which is casual clothing designed for daytime or casual activities, but later adapted for more formal occasions.

While celebrities and influencers from supermodels to singers took activewear from the gym to the streets of London, Los Angeles, and New York. Yoga pants became a staple in every college and working girl's closet, transitioning to casual wear.

In a nutshell, activewear is casual, comfortable clothing suitable for sports or exercise, while athleisure clothing is casual, comfortable clothing designed for both exercise and everyday wear.

Business Plan

The Apparel Series business plan allows entrepreneurs to examine their business in detail, assess the amount of capital needed to get up and running and evaluate its expected profitability.

It also serves as a roadmap for the first three years of your company's operations. When your apparel line is up and running, you can use the business plan to track whether it is thriving by comparing the numbers estimated in your initial projections.

Any bank or investor you decide to approach will also specifically request a clothing line business plan, so drafting one is a mandatory step when it comes to obtaining financing.

So what does a business plan for a clothing line look like? In short, it consists of two main parts.

 ●  Financial projections highlighting expected financial performance and profit potential over the next 3 years

 ●  A written section detailing your project, team, business strategy, and medium-term goals

Choosing the right activewear manufacturer

Finding an activewear manufacturer can be a daunting task for small to medium-sized businesses, and when you finally do find one, there are many parameters to enforce. Choosing the right apparel manufacturer is a key decision for your fashion business, and FITOP has summarized for you what you need to consider when choosing an activewear manufacturer . It is divided into the following areas.

 ●  Production capacity

 ●  Quality of work

 ●  Price

 ●  Catalog

 ●  Customization

 ●  Sample

 ●  Minimum order and shipping costs

 ●  Support Services

The best China activewear manufacturer for you

FITOP is one of the most expert China activewear manufacturers in China, basically serving internet businesses, retailers, online activewear vendors, different games gatherings, corporate groups, and associations. Regardless of whether your business market is in the United States, Australia, Mexico, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, or Canada, FITOP can plan and produce nearby athletic apparel styles. FITOP's main sportswear are Sports Bras, Yoga Tops, Sports Suits, and Sports Leggings.

Get our latest activewear catalog now.

Create your brand

Creating a brand doesn't mean creating a logo. It means creating a brand guide for your brand values, mission, and goals. The guidelines will help you make informed decisions and set visual direction. 

It will determine your marketing strategy and website design process. You can use social media to share inspirational stories about your custom activewear brand and its mission statement.

Price your product correctly. The secret to success is to price your products correctly. You should choose a price point that covers your production costs without alienating your customers - it's a balancing act. Create a clothing line that is fair to everyone - be sure to find a happy medium. 

Price your products correctly

The secret to success lies in pricing your products correctly. You should choose a price point that covers your production costs without alienating your customers - it's a balancing act. Create a clothing line that is fair to everyone - be sure to find a happy medium.

Design a website

To start a clothing business, you need a well-designed, eye-catching, and responsive website. Your website is one of the most representative aspects of your business. This is much easier than it sounds - most e-commerce platforms, such as Shopify, Etsy, and Wix, offer excellent off-the-shelf templates. Put your products in the spotlight by creating an engaging website that inspires trust, shares your vision, and draws customers in to browse around. 

Start marketing and start selling

First, build strong brand awareness - advertise on social media, launch campaigns, and tell your story. Whatever your marketing strategy, make it easy for your audience to share the content. Second, set sales and distribution goals. Consulting an industry professional may be helpful. Third, once you have achieved your sales goals, look for growth opportunities and attract investment. Business partners who can provide capital in exchange for a share of future profits are the traditional way to address this issue.

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Start Your Activewear Line and Launch it in 5 Steps

Have you ever thought of starting your own activewear brand but can’t seem to find suitable styles that match your workout requirement?

The activewear apparel market worldwide has been growing rapidly in recent years, which means there is much room to grow for new brands that cater to unique designs and concepts.

If you’re looking for the steps in launching your activewear line , then our guide is for you. So how to start your own activewear line and make it happen? Here are the five steps to successfully begin your activewear business.

• Starting Up
• Market Research
• Start to Design Your Collection
• Choose Reputable Manufacturer
• Marketing Your Brand

1. Starting up

Find the idea and your unique identity

You need to come up with an idea before you start anything else. Perhaps you’ve never been satisfied with the clothes you see nowadays, or that you have an excellent idea for a design that can fill in the gaps of the current activewear brands. For example, if you think most sports leggings today are not squat-proof enough, which gives you the idea of developing your own durable squat-proof leggings. Once you have a strong belief in your concept and unique identity, you can start to go out and make it happen by connecting your idea to the customer’s needs.   

2. Market Research

Understand your competitors

Once you have a great idea, you need to know if the concept is unique and still room for your style to grow in the market. Check out the latest trends in the market by visiting shops and trying out a bunch of different clothes to figure out what you like and what you don’t like about them, browsing the web and doing your homework on the global activewear industry. You want to know your competitors and make your brand stand out from the crowd.

Define your target customer

Knowing your target customer is probably the most important thing to know, along with the activewear niche you’ll be covering in the market. Make sure you know your future target customer and what products you will be selling them. This is why it’s crucial to have a unique idea first so that your customers will remember your product and can’t get it anywhere else. 

Set up the business plan

A business plan lets you set goals for the long term and helps you keep track of any changes along the way, as things usually don’t go the way we have pictured it in our heads. It can also be great in case you plan to bring investors and partners on board.

Just like any other business, an activewear line will require some budgeting to get started. Have an estimated cost for setting up as part of your business plan and determine how your business will be financed. You can either choose particular start-up loans or an investor to get your business the early boost it needs.

Look for your dream team

No brand has succeeded without the help of its dream team. Even if you think you can manage everything alone, do you think it’s the most efficient way to do it? It’s essential to have a cast of talented and motivated people behind your back in case you fall short.

Branding your line

Take your time to work on your own brand identity, as your brand connects your customers to your products. Pay attention to the little things in your products, such as the labels and hangtags, to the garment and the packaging itself should all be cohesive and well thought. Make sure your logo stands out of the many brands out there and looks good in all areas. And finally, remember that your brand should reflect the products that you’re selling.  

3. Start to Design Your Collection

Define the range

When the foundation phase is all set, then it’s time to start designing your products. The first step in making your garments is to determine your collection. What materials do you want to use, what styles do you want to have and the aesthetic theme you’re going for. Just remember your collection needs to be consistent and cohesive.

Designing activewear

After you’ve defined your collection and structure, you can start hiring a freelance designer or a pro activewear designer to begin sketching. Make sure they understand your brand image, identity and your target customers first before they start designing. If you’re personally designing your active product, then you can find inspiration to make your own style. The designers should also make the tech packs to help you get started with the sampling of your activewear line. 

4. Choose Reputable Manufacturer

Sampling stage

This stage is a vital part of the process, as even though your activewear looks good on paper, you’ll still want your designs to be fully wearable while looking and fitting the way you want it to and finding a good pattern based on the tech pecks. The tech pack can help you start making your samples as it offers technical information that you can use to develop samples. Once the sample is approved, you can create a spec sheet containing all the measurements and grading if your product comes in different sizes.

Production and shipping

Once you’re happy with your final sample, which will be called a PPS (Pre-production sample), you can then think about the production. This requires some discussions with your manufacturer as they need to know everything from the quantity and sizes per style. When your production is all set, check in with your logistics and find a reliable shipping partner to help you deliver your products to your customers. All these contacts will be beneficial when the time comes to finally deliver your products to your customers. 

5. Marketing your brand

Selling your collection

Your product doesn’t need to be the most unique in the world. What’s important is your marketing strategy. This is when all your efforts in research during the beginning of development come in. If you have a good marketing plan, it will produce some sales. The image of your brand that you present out there is equally important as your products. This is how your customers get to know your brand. You need to figure out how your brand will sell to make profits and keep following your passion.

You can either follow the traditional way of retail and selling directly to the customers or owning your own e-commerce, which lets you connect directly with all your customers. Take advantage of the power of content by using all social media platforms. 

Customer Service

Remember that your customers come first! Your mission from the start is to create a product for your customers to wear and love. Don’t disappoint them and when they have any complaints, figure out how to make it up to them. Get in touch with your customers and use their feedback as a way to make your products even better.

We hope that our guide has helped you get inspired to start your activewear line, we also have a more complete version of this guide in our Active Starter Kit where you can find the a to z about manufacturing and kickstarting your activewear business. We wish you great success in your journey ahead.

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Launch your own activewear brand in 5 steps.

We’re still here and it’s easier than ever to launch your own brand. Hi. It’s us again. It's 2021 activewear is still around, like we told you it would be. In fact, it’s still growing with no signs of slowing down.

Obviously, people are still interested in being healthier and fitter and we’re no different, always on the path for positive progression. And some abs would be nice, but one thing at a time. Let’s sit back and take a look through the new and improved steps you need to be taking to launch your activewear brand successfully.

Step 1. One Direction. Brand Direction.

What is your activewear niche? Your brand still starts here, with a great idea. 
Maybe it’s not available yet, or maybe it is, but you know you can do it better? 
How you’re going to make it work is still broken down into these five criteria; Who, What, Where, Why & How. 
So, we’re going to need you to take a long hard look in the change room mirror and…

Ask yourself these 5 questions:

1. Who am I selling to?

Who is buying your products? What do they like and dislike? Know your consumer, conduct research and be thorough. It’s great having a product people want, but do you know who that person is specifically? Build a customer persona and get friendly with them.

2. What am I selling them?

What is your product? What is your point of difference that is going to give you visibility to your audience? What makes your brand unique and different

3. Why do my who’s need what I have?

What does your audience need from your product that they aren’t getting from competitors? Why will it sell? Why is this product THE product they are going to spend their cash on? Know your product. Be confident in its release into the market.

4. Where will I sell my what to the who’s?

Where does your consumer spend their money? Online? Instore? Do they look at your products on mobile or desktop? Look into their spending habits and traits.

5. How will I market my what to the who’s?

Marketing strategy here we come! How are you planning on selling this product? Is your social media marketing strategy in line with your audience? How are you going to be memorable, build brand credibility and encourage loyalty? Now you’ve got your what, know your who, and where to find them – how are you going to get them to see it AND want it?

If you think about it – these questions are just fleshing out your business plan. By now, you should have a brand name in your head… (Get started on your trademark application while you’re here too).

Next step would be your Brand Style Guide. A Brand Style Guide is your branding bible. Built out by a graphic designer, it starts by creating your wordmark and icon. Think Nike and Nike tick.

From there it’s built out, but not limited to include the following:

1. Brand Logos – Wordmark and Icon. Appropriate sizing, placement, proportions, mis-usage. Brand Colour Palette. 2. Fonts – headers, sub headers and body copy 3. Appropriate use across all branding – websites, emails, social media, packaging, stationary, official documents & POS. 4. Brand Aesthetic – represented by relevant imagery 5. Those brands you love, their clean and cohesive branding – they follow a guide to ensure they stay within their aesthetic at all times.

In closing, a Brand Style Guide – Just Do It.

Step 2. Product Design

Now, let’s take that dream product and put it on paper. Visualise and then actualise it, kids.

This is where you can get creative. Start a Pinterest board. Screenshot your fav Instagram looks. Collect swatches. Pick up a pad and pencil and get drawing. The creative process is a fun one. Through these initial stages is where you are going to start further understanding your brands identity, personality and voice. Your aesthetic sets the tone to how your brand and product interact with its audience. It’s important to remember, with activewear and whichever niche you are going to explore – it needs to be functional and fashionable. Even athleisure in its growing popularity is largely based on its comfort and functionality – leisure, it’s in the name.

First step after creating your mood boards is to see your inspiration on a design board. This is where your inspiration becomes a product. The conceptualising starts to take shape. Make sure you find a talented fashion designer that will give you a design board with variations on your product. Trust their knowledge and expertise to guide you to the right and best product. Both functionally, fashionably and economically. The design board stage allows you to piece together products as a cohesive range. After tweaking, editing and suggestions you might find that what you envisioned works slightly differently. Pull a colour that doesn’t go. Take out a piece that doesn’t mesh into the collection. Look at what you are doing as a whole collection, rather than the individual pieces. Before we get into specifications, we need to go through the design process. Be sure and confident in your designs, getting it right here will help you later on.

Once your design board is done, it’s time to move to the next step – Design Packs. What and why do I need this design pack once I’ve done my design board you ask? Well, for a slew of reasons. A design pack is a set of instructional documents made by your designer. This is how we will give you pricing and guidance to the manufacturer. This includes things such as construction details, fabrication, colourways, brand labels, swing tags, print placement, print application, accessories and much more.

Each design pack is based off your unique designs, no two are the same. Without design packs you won’t be able to receive quotes from your manufacturer.

Which leads us to step 3.

Step 3. Quoting, Sourcing & Sampling

Once your design board and packs are complete, you can now move into sourcing your fabrics and quoting your range. By sending both your final design board and packs to manufacturers you can now be sure that the factory is clear on what you are looking to make and how they can help. From here the factory can advise pricing, MOQ’s and lead times for samples. Shop around, pricing varies greatly and is affected greatly by time of year, quantities, fabrics and factory. Factories will specialise in different things; some will be better at compression while others could excel in outerwear. Some may offer a lower MOQ for a higher price. A good agency will have access to multiple factories and be able to cross cost for you. But be sure to know exactly what you’re getting for that price. Ask whether your factories are audited and if they follow ethical and environmental practice. Once you’ve received pricing you are happy with, it’s time for some timelines and planning;

Build a Production Plan .

Now we’ve got a clearer understanding of what our garments may cost, we can re-evaluate – what is needed, what is not and how this plays out to end costs. It’s important to note though, all quotes when starting the sampling process, are just that – quotes. Fluctuations in exchange rate, fabrics, accessories & fair wages can change your end unit price. As well as after sampling; final fabric consumption or changes to the garment will affect your pricing too. But it shouldn’t be too much. Just something to be aware of and prepared for.

Building a production plan out for everything you have designed and are planning on releasing will help you lay it all down in front of you. From prices, timelines, sample stages and everything in between. You may even find that this changes your initial concepts into split ranges or seasonal drops.

You guys still here? Yes? Let’s get ready to sample.

Once you have approved your design packs and quoting, the next step gets a little different.

Before we send to the factory to sample, you need your technical specifications. This is your size grading, points of measurement/construction and patterns. The last piece to turn your design packs into fully fledged Tech Packs (or Tech Specs). These specifications are created by highly skilled Garment Tech’s whose job it is to know and tell the factory how to make this garment. This means your samples and bulk will be as close to what you have designed as possible. Garment Tech’s have a microscopic eye for detail, and things you might miss they will see and amend for you. It’s with the addition of these superstars, we can start to see fit samples come back closer to the finished product sooner. Not only do they create your specs for your products, they quality control all stages of the product development process to ensure nothing is amiss. They are invaluable to any good apparel brand.

Garment Techs and a proper fit sampling processes mean fewer fit samples, and quicker lead times for sampling in general. While we’re discussing fit samples, let’s run through the different kinds of samples you should expect.

Fit Sample –

A fit sample should be measured and compared against your tech specs by your GT, both flat and on a mannequin. This is to ensure an accurately constructed garment. It will allow you to see any adjustments that need to be made for further sampling. It’s very rare that a fit sample comes back 100% right first time, our standard is at least 2. We don’t ever want to be moving forward into bulk without a fit sample being at least 99% correct. A fit sample will be made out of generally the right fabric, perhaps not the right colour though or sub-fabric – whatever is available at the time in the factory sample room. The focus here is on fit over aesthetic. During fit sampling is where we would also source fabrics, accessories, provide strike offs of prints and lab dip custom coloured fabrics for approval.

Pre-Production Samples –

Once your fit samples are approved, including your prints & accessories, we can confirm a bulk order and move into PPS (Pre-Production Samples). A PPS is as close to the finished product as you can get. It will be in your bulk fabric, with all the right trims and prints. There shouldn’t be any changes at this stage. It’s just a little preview of what the factory is about to make. You should also be able to use these samples for some marketing purposes.

Shipping sample –

Shipping samples should ideally look like your PPS (otherwise we have problems). They are taken from bulk just before its complete to show that yes, all of the products are uniform and neat. Shipping samples must be approved before bulk is shipped from the factory. Sampling is sometimes a long process, but it’s so important to develop your product to where you want it to be before moving into the next step.

Step 4. Manufacturing

We’re getting close, aren’t we? You’ll soon learn with your first range that product development is a process. And while it certainly wasn’t hiccup free, you’ve learnt a lot along the way – haven’t you? Once you’ve approved your fit samples, we jump into our PPS. After your PPS is approved, we begin production. Full production, dependent on your products and range size, takes anywhere from 45 days to 12 weeks (+ 2 weeks for shipping). Which leaves you with some time to set up everything else. Didn’t think you could relax for 3 months, did you? Because we know it’s not just about the product anymore. We don’t want to give you a great product and then not help you sell it successfully.

During production you need to think of so many things; e-commerce, social media and all the other bells and whistles that makes your brand, a brand. Time to get some visibility, credibility and awareness out there. Which leads us to…

Step 5. Marketing

What does the farmer do with their produce once it’s grown? They take it to market and arrange it nicely on display to entice hungry patrons. They might yell savings and benefits repeatedly to engage and attract new customers, remember your name from your last visit to draw you back in, and even offer samples or incentives to get you across the line. And while marketing these days for your new activewear range isn’t going to be as simple as yelling at people to buy your bananas, the tactics they use can be relayed over. Let’s breakdown some benefits of a good digital marketing plan

1. Increase brand awareness / visibility

What’s the point in having a great product if no-one can see it? Organically you can still be seen through SEO, with careful keyword planning and some time. To see results you will need patience, especially in a saturated market so make sure your content is SMART. However, organic reach might be flogging a dead horse on other platforms, you can definitely pay to play. Think Facebook/Instagram ads, dynamic retargeting and dedicate a decent ad spend to it.

2. Connect with your audience

You know your audience; you know why they want your product and now you’ve found them. Traditional marketing is gone, people don’t want a sales pitch; they want a story. Make the customer journey charming and personable, every point you connect – make it memorable.

3. Expand your audience reach

Once you’ve begun to find your audience, start to build it into a community. Your target market shares common interests and hobbies, post engaging content that resonates not just with your product but your brands identity to expand its reach.

4. Growing your social media presence

Social Media is a MUST. Utilise the relevant ones for your brand and be consistent with your posting and content.

5. Increasing your sales

This is pretty self-explanatory. You didn’t create this brand for no one to buy it. So you need to have a strong sales driven target. Marketing will be a huge part of your brands success or failure to grow. We know now that after you’ve manufactured your apparel, that getting it out there and seen by the right people isn’t always as easy as it looks. Speaking of being visible, have you thought about what e-commerce platform is right for you?

Step 6. E-Commerce

E-Commerce. It has changed the way we shop, and although bricks and mortar is definitely not dead (I don’t care what you’ve heard), e-commerce is easily the best place to start selling your brand. From larger reach, to less overheads; the ability to start small using an online platform means you aren’t limited by your location. Your audience is the internet, as long as you’ve paid attention to step 5 and found them. There is so much that makes up a website. And a badly performing website can greatly affect your sales. Just like the customer experience is so important when you’re in a store, the user experience (UX) on a website is just as vital to converting those sales. Websites need to load quickly, be engaging, easy to navigate and easy to purchase. And I want you to get used to these three letters; CTA.

Call. To. Action Encourage the user to take action i.e. Shop Now, View The Range & Buy Now. Guide them to where they need to be on your page – the product page.

So which platform is right for you?

E-commerce giants like Shopify are exceptionally user friendly for the consumer and the operator. The back-end platform makes handling stock a breeze. The options are literally endless to customise and make it your own, and there is a plugin for just about anything you could want to add. Do your research, look at websites you like and what makes the experience so nice and memorable to you. This will help you in decided what is going to make your website great. And now here we are, at our last step. We’ve had the idea. We’ve tested it. We’ve made the product. Done our Marketing Plan. Set up our e-shop. Now, where is our stock going to go? And how are we going to send it.

Step 7. Order Fulfilment

The beauty of starting an online activewear business is that the majority of it can be done from your laptop, anytime, anywhere. And for many of you it’s a business you are beginning to eventually turn into your full-time job. But that doesn’t mean you still aren’t doing the daily grind. So, unless you are planning on opening your own warehouse or filling your garage floor to ceiling, you might want to look into third party storage and distribution. From picking, packing, storage, returns, stock counts and beyond – it allows for consistency for your customers and you. Not to mention discounted shipping rates directly from the warehouse due to their existing relationships with freight companies. In a highly competitive space like e-commerce, you need to ensure your shipping and returns are quick and painless. Savvy shoppers will look out for the best rates and easy policies when buying. And that brings us to the end of the seven steps. Do they look too high to climb? Not to worry, we don’t expect you to do it alone.

That’s why we’re here.

From developing your idea, finding the right manufacturer, building your website & marketing plan, and even your storage & distribution.

2018 was huge for activewear and we listened to what you guys needed to be successful. So, lets recap quickly:

1. Brand Direction

Find your activewear niche. Build out your business plan & brand style guide.

2. Product Design

Get designing. Find a fashion designer who can bring your vision to life.

3. Quoting and Sampling Shop for the right price & manufacturer and then start sampling. This takes patience and don’t be afraid to strive for near perfection.

4. Manufacturing

Time to push the button on bulk. 12 weeks will go fast, but you’ve got plenty to do in the interim.

5. Marketing

Build out a strong strategy and make sure you have a dedicated ad spend. Don’t let your hard work be invisible to your audience.

6. Ecommerce

Make the user experience as enjoyable as possible. And don’t forget your CTA’s.

7. Order Fulfilment

It’s flying out the door, make sure it gets there quick and without hassle.

And that’s it! Seven steps to launching your own activewear brand. You can start building your brand with us today. Book your preliminary concept call with one of our Brand Managers. Let’s begin building out your business plan together.
 And don’t forget to comment below and let us know any questions or stories you have.

Till next time!

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How to Start an Activewear Business in 5 Steps

Introduction.

There are various categories in the fashion industry, one of them being activewear. The global activewear market has been rapidly growing in recent years to $394 billion in 2023 , meaning that there is plenty more space to grow for new brands that cater to extraordinary and innovative designs and concepts. Also, due to the pandemic, many people have looked for different ways to stay active yet away from each other to keep a social distance. The rise of activewear is one of the fastest in the entire garments sector, as discussed in this article by Forbes .

Now, have you ever thought of starting your own activewear business but be all at sea to make it happen? Here are the 5 steps to successfully begin your activewear business!

Starting Up

Starting an activewear business means finding the concept and your peculiar identity before you start anything else. Maybe for the last few years, you haven’t been satisfied with the existing activewear around you, or you have a fantastic idea for a concept that can fill the gaps in the current activewear business.

It’s crucial to know who your target customer is in order to set the activewear niche you are going to cover in the market. Now, it’s time to develop and advance both your concept and identity. Once you have a strong belief in your extraordinary concept and peculiar identity, you can start to go out and make it happen by connecting your idea to the customer’s needs.  

Market Research

The next step is to understand your competitors and check out the current trending clothes in the activewear business by researching the market. You can hop from one store to another and take notes of what’s happening in the industry. By understanding your competitors, you can make your brand stand out from the crowd. You can start with this list of the most famous existing activewear brands.

After that, define your target customer. Knowing your target customer is one of the most important things, along with the activewear niche in the market. This is why it’s vital to have an exceptional idea so that your target customers will remember your product and can’t get it from another seller.

Now, you’re all ready to set up your business plan, and budget, and looking for your dream team!

Start to Design Your Collection

After you’re done with steps 1 and step 2, now you can prepare for step 3 to build your activewear business.

You have to define the range. When the foundation step is all set, now is the time to start designing your first collection. In this step, you will focus on choosing the best and most suitable materials. This is where you develop the design into the product by crafting mood boards first to ensure your collection is clear and cohesive.

This is the fun yet exhausting part; designing your collection! After you’ve found your aesthetic direction, you will have a structured and defined collection. It may be helping to hire a freelance fashion designer to ease your work. But, ensure they know and understand your brand and target market! The styles should also fit in with the values, vision, mission, and identity of your brand.

Furthermore, you can depend on designers to craft great tech packs for you to start the sampling and manufacturing process. These tech packs will be the blueprint of your products and help manufacturers to quote your prices and to create your prototypes.

Choose Reputable Manufacturer

You don’t want your first collection to come out poorly, so make sure to choose a reputable and trusted activewear manufacturer .

After you find your desired manufacturer that can meet your expectations, you move to the next step! This step is a crucial part of the activewear business process. Although you already have great activewear designs, you’ll still want your designs to be transformed into pretty wearable while looking and fitting activewear the way you want them to and finding a great pattern based on the tech packs.

The tech packs will be the blueprint for you to start making samples because it offers technical information that you can use to develop product samples . After you approved the sample, you can create a spec sheet containing all the measurements and grading in case your product comes in different sizes.

With the pattern, you can start crafting your prototypes. In between every prototype process, you will measure, fit, and adjust the pattern/fit to make some improvements. Usually, you will need 2–3 prototypes for each style before you have a sample ready to show and sell.

Mass Manufacturing & Shipping

Once you have your final sample, you can start to plan the mass manufacturing. Don’t forget to discuss everything with your chosen garment manufacturer from the very beginning, because they have to plot your production schedule to their timeline. They also need to know how large your production will be, and the number of styles and sizes per style.

When your production is all set, check in with your logistics and find a trusted shipping partner to help you deliver your products to your customers. All these contacts will be useful for you when it’s finally time to deliver and expanse your products to your customers.

Marketing Your Brand

Nowadays, everything is about marketing. Even though you have the best product in the custom activewear business, it doesn’t matter when no one buys them. You need to convince the market with the best story and great marketing. You want your product to sell in order to produce the next collections! Planning on how to start an activewear business these days is connected a lot to marketing your product creatively.

The modern, easy, and cheap way to market your activewear business is to introduce your brand on social media!

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Surf Clothing and Sportswear Business Plan

Start your own surf clothing and sportswear business plan

Hang Toes Surfing

Executive summary executive summary is a brief introduction to your business plan. it describes your business, the problem that it solves, your target market, and financial highlights.">.

Hang Toes Surfing will be a new player in the United States for the surf wear and active wear apparel industry. Hang Toes Surfing is composed of surfers and designers making quality products for surfing, skating and other active lifestyles. Hang Toes Surfing plans to gain market penetration and establish themselves as a cool-to-wear Logo and apparel company.

Hang Toes Surfing is a corporation located in Florida whose products are manufactured in South America. Florida was strategically chosen to provide Hang Toes Surfing with credible product feedback, since it is considered by many as the hispanic South American blend capital of the United States.

Hang Toes Surfing currently has both surfing and active-wear clothing lines that will soon be available for distribution in the United States.

Hang Toes Surfing will be able to supply the rapidly growing active-wear specialty market with quality lines of apparel provided by their South American manufacturer. The clothing lines can be broken down into five segments: surfing, recreational, fitness, speed (cycling), leisure, and extreme skaters.

Management Team

The management team of the company consists of sports-oriented people who design products to match their own active lifestyles. The President of Hang Toes Surfing is also President of the South American manufacturer. He has 25 years of surfing experience and is dedicated, personally and professionally, to the world of surfing and surf competitions. His love of the sport has been passed down to his children, who also participate in surfing competitions. The Vice President and CEO in the United States became involved while supporting their children’s participation in ice hockey and skate boarding.

Hang Toes Surfing is an exciting business that will leverage their individual sports passions for the greater good of the company as well as for all sports-active people and their lifestyles. 

Sales are forecasted to be $765,000 for year one. Hang Toes Surfing will generate robust profits by year three.

• Provide specialty surfing stores with top quality active-wear products
• Develop and manufacture new products and create brand awareness
• Develop and expand a sales force throughout the United States
• Reach sales of $700,000 by the end of our first year in business, and reach sales above $50,000 monthly
• Sponsor local community sports events
• Develop products that will attract our buyers and sell to consumers
• Develop a solid e-commerce market and to maximize our profit margin

Hang Toes Surfing is focused on fulfilling the need for after-market products. This is a market we have identified based on the large volume of specialty stores being opened throughout the United States.

Hang Toes Surfing will be able to adapt their product line for a variety of recreation activities, including sports, leisure, and casual lifestyles. Our mission is to:

• Focus our product lines to be the top sellers against competing companies such as Billabong, Quicksilver/Roxy, and Reef
• Focus on our surfing industry experience to identify products that attract consumers to specialty stores

Keys to Success

• Seek out feedback from our customers (kids, teens and young adults) to develop a successful clothing line that meets their needs and tastes
• Develop a niche market for our unique apparel (bags, beanies, hats and surf boards)
• Maximize profits by selling through the Internet
• Maintain low overhead costs by monitoring and scheduling production
• Implement a successful marketing campaign to inform the existing clientele and the public of our new image
• Build brand image and brand equity through marketing

Company Summary company overview ) is an overview of the most important points about your company—your history, management team, location, mission statement and legal structure.">

Hang Toes Surfing is a start-up branch of an established clothing manufacturing firm located in South America. Hang Toes Surfing was conceived by a professional surfer and a clothing designer who will work together to create practical designs for surf wear, in-line skating, and skate boarding. Being avid health and fitness advocates, they will promote a clothing line that can be incorporated into any active lifestyle.

Hang Toes Surfing will be managed by two executives in the United States, with support from the president of the South American manufacturing . They bring to the company a wide range of experience in Marketing, International Sales, Accounting and Public Relations. They perceive an opportunity to acquire a significant amount of market share by focusing on specific needs of the active-wear clothing industry and by providing greater service and support to their distributors and sales representatives than their competitors. The company will be organized as a closely-held corporation with a majority of the shares held by the two principle executives.

The company will be seeking to raise approximately $120,000 in loans for start-up purposes. The company will have close contact with its manufacturer in South America.

Company Ownership

The company will be a closely-held corporation with two principle shareholders who will form the Board of Directors. It is anticipated that within the next five years, the company will be instituting a public offering to enlarge its ability to acquire financing. The principle owners will seek to retain the majority of the company’s stock for the foreseeable future. The company is incorporated in the state of Florida.

Presently, (removed for confidentiality) is Chief Executive Officer and owns eighty percent (80%) of the company.

Presently, (removed for confidentiality) is Vice President and owns twenty percent (20%) of the company.

Start-up Summary

Start-up costs have been primarily for inventory, trade shows, marketing, trademark acquisition, leasing a company vehicle, operating and administrative costs, and establishing a professional e-commerce website.

Upon receiving a loan for the first month of operation, the company is planning on extensive advertising through the Internet as well as surfing, skating, and snow boarding publications, and sponsorship of community on-site events.

The start-up costs are shown in the following table and illustration.

Hang Toes Surfing offers the following product lines:

• Clothing line (street wear, dry-fit wear, surfing wear, snow wear, casual wear)
• Accessories line (surf boards, fins, bags, socks,dry-fit hats, stickers, wallets)
• Private labels for specialty stores, making their name wear an investment with direct profit for them

Other ideas for products are under development pending patent applications.

Market Analysis Summary how to do a market analysis for your business plan.">

The increase in the number of independent specialty stores in the United States and internationally provides an opportunity to introduce a new, fresh clothing line. Within the larger surfing and active-wear market is our target market, customers of  specialty stores. These discerning customers want comfortable quality clothing for both surfing as well as everyday street wear.

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Board-Trac’s 2003 survey clearly shows the crossover between sports, finding 47% of skate boarders and 50% of surfers surveyed also snow board. Additionally, it found that participation in snow boarding has jumped from 7.96 million in 2001 to 9.9 million just three years later. (*sources www.asrbiz.com, Transworld Magazine)

Retail shops are trying to hold customers year-round, and many specialty shops who focus on one action sport are also looking to bring in products that will keep customer loyalty from season to season.

There is now a growing trend towards fitness skate boarding, serious street skating, wake boarding, snow boarding, cycling and surfing. With these large potential markets, our targeted clothing and apparel lines will be there to address their lifestyle needs.

Market Segmentation

The Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association survey indicates that surfing, skate boarding, and in-line skating now have more participation than football, softball, skiing, and snow boarding combined. Surf Expo, where for the past 29 years has introduced new and top manufacturers to retailers in the surf, skate, water sports, swim and resort industries, now comes together in a business-first buying and selling environment. Produced twice annually, Surf Expo draws buyers from across the U.S., the Caribbean and around the world. Whether an industry manufacturer or specialty retailer, Surf Expo has the target markets to reach.

With a world skating market of over 31 million and steadily growing (statistics released by the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association), our aim is to penetrate into this market by promoting our clothing line in Florida’s geographical location and be viewed as an asset to the state. The mild winters and beautiful beaches attract millions of tourists and newcomers to South Florida each year. Our primary target market will be: family-oriented consumers, teenagers that want to buy clothes to match current trends, and the local specialty stores who cater to these customers.

Target Market Segment Strategy

Our target markets are teens, young adults skaters, surfers, snow boarders and the health and fitness enthusiast. This segment can be reached over the Internet and through TransWorld Business – Skate* Surf *Snow Magazine.

We plan on developing the specialty stores market through an inexpensive postcard method. Direct mailing ads/coupons with priority codes is one the most cost-effective ways to reach potential retail store customers. Also, by offering gift certificates to specialty store owners, they will contact us for more details.

Industry Analysis

Our skating and surfing sales have undergone tremendous growth and distribution throughout South America, and we want to do the same with Hang Toes Surfing in the United States. We will concentrate on Internet marketing and direct sales to specialty stores. The Internet is one of the best communication mediums for surfers, skaters, and snow borders all over the world, and we believe this is the best way to introduce our products. Sales on the Internet are now over $28 billion (as quoted by Forester Research) on e-commerce.

Our web site will attract consumers and future distributors. We want our presence over the Internet to be strong.

Competition and Buying Patterns

The purchase decision for our customers is based on trust in our services, professionalism and quality products. We have established relationships with our overseas customers which extend beyond that of the buyers/sellers. Our products have the highest quality standards in mind.

Each segment of specialty stores has its own buying patterns depending on its own needs. The pertaining table in 4.1, Market Segmentation, illustrates this.

Strategy and Implementation Summary

Hang Toes Surfing will expand production capabilities in order to fulfill the requests of overseas customers who are placing larger orders than we are currently able to fulfill. We intend to first maximize the quantity of products offered by introducing new products and apparel to existing channels. Second, we intend to establish additional accounts through targeted marketing efforts on the West and East coasts of the United States to increase sales.

Competitive Edge

Our competitive edge comes from the advantage of having established relationships with Japanese, Italian and Brazilian franchise and distributors ,brokers and wholesalers. Hang Toes has received affirmation of the demand for their product in the form of requests from importers for larger product shipments. We feel we have a superior product offering because of the larger variety of our clothing line, and because we purchase our material direct from the original suppliers (DUPONT & LYCRA) who provide other well-known products. In addition, prompt preparation and shipment provides importers with a product that is manufactured on time.

Our company’s competitive edge exists because we address the needs of our specialty retailers, and their customers’ appetites for active wear. Accessories such as fins, surf boards, and bags encourage our customers to give us a second look.

There are several other projects we are currently working on to further broaden our product lines and open up our markets even more. We will be more than glad to discuss in length some of our future confidential plans, upon request.

Marketing Strategy

Our marketing strategy will include the use of targeted online and print media advertising and direct selling to direct customers and retailers in the United States. We will capitalize on the existing international relationships of our South American manufacturer. We will position ourselves as a differentiated provider of quality active-wear products. The primary goal of all marketing efforts will be to communicate this to existing and potential customers.

The key to our marketing strategy is focusing on dry-fit clothing lines for active consumers such as cyclists, surfers, skaters and fitness enthusiasts. We believe we can cover about 80% of these sports markets since we produce products geared towards such, and another 20% for fitness and family.

Sales Strategy

Our sales strategy focuses on meeting the increased demand of specialty stores in the United States, and international companies with whom we have established relationships for larger orders. These are critical to our ability to acquire additional accounts on both the East and West coasts of the United States. We will focus on increasing the volume in the United States while working on our international marketing.

For now, our products are seen through our website, where our e-commerce lets us sell our products direct at full retail price. We will also gear sales towards the specialty shops with our Hang Toes Surfing clothing line. Through these speciality retail shops, we will further increase our sales.

Visibility will be very important, and we will gain valuable exposure by sponsoring sporting events for surfing, skate boarding and cycling in the South Florida region. We will target our advertising through the major skate, surf and sports magazines and Internet online magazines.

Sales Forecast

We feel that our sales forecasting is realistic. We will steadily increase sales as our advertising budget allows.

The following milestones table outlines the key projects we need to focus on within our first year. We want to have a strong presence at both SurfExpos, to make contact with key distributors and specialty retail shops that cater to our customer base.

Web Plan Summary

Hang Toes Surfing sees its website as a dynamic marketing tool for sales and direct e-mail marketing. The goal will be to implement a functional and professionally-designed website that will provide information about new product lines, sponsorship, a web cam for target customers and potential business partners, and new product updates. As the company grows, its recruiting needs can be addressed by posting career opportunities and FAQs about the company. The website will also communicate company news to create and maintain positive public relations with the surfing community.

Website Marketing Strategy

We will maintain a two-way link between our website and our product suppliers. In addition to using the page as a sales tool, we will develop a monthly newsletter and coordinate with related sites to link to our site, giving us an opportunity to reach more directly to our customers.

We will also maintain two-way links between supporters of sports events and events organizations through our website. This will include a schedule of relevant sporting events that we think will appeal to our target customers.

Development Requirements

The initial creative design of the Hang Toes Surfing website will be handled by (NAME REMOVED TO PROTECT CONFIDENTIALITY), with experience in web design, and (NAME REMOVED TO PROTECT CONFIDENTIALITY), with experience in graphic design. They will work together to conceptualize the design and use of the company logo. Future redesign and ongoing support of the website will eventually be handled through an outside contractor. 

Management Summary management summary will include information about who's on your team and why they're the right people for the job, as well as your future hiring plans.">

Chief Executive Officer and Founder  NAME AND BACKGROUND REMOVED TO PROTECT CONFIDENTIALITY. Will concentrate on sales, Internet, e-commerce and promotion. She will oversee product development and production by making sure to order the products needed to maintain a smooth flow. She will also see to it that orders are filled and shipped to their destination.

Vice President NAME AND BACKGROUND REMOVED TO PROTECT CONFIDENTIALITY. Will be in charge of the administrative functions, including public relations.  

Vice President NAME AND BACKGROUND REMOVED TO PROTECT CONFIDENTIALITY. Has a background in accounting and will incorporate his expertise in areas such as marketing relations management and negotiations for future large accounts such as Burdine’s/Macy’s, Ron Jon.

Our team will help each other with the work required for a smooth running company.

Personnel Plan

Our aim is to increase salary and compensation in line with a projected increase in sales and profits. Our overall personnel costs will be $48,000 and $42,000 for the first 12 months, which includes principles only. The present personnel cost figure is subject to change as business demands it. If our sales growth in the summer is as projected, we will need to consider adding one more employee to assist with the increased administrative demands.

Financial Plan investor-ready personnel plan .">

With an increase in sales, we do expect to apply for a credit line to a limit of $150,000. The credit line will be supported by assets.

These are our strong points:

• We want to finance growth mainly through cash flow. We recognize that this means we will will have to grow at a slower pace than we would like, but this will enable us to build sales through more advertising.
• Our most important asset is inventory turnover. Our ability to schedule production from month to month will help to control inventory costs.
• We will be credited payment to our bank account within two days for all our credit card sales over the Internet. Sales on credit accounts for 25% of our overall sales.

Start-up Funding

Our initial startup expenses will amount to approximately $75,000. The anticipated funding sources are detailed in the table below.

Break-even Analysis

The following table shows our monthly break-even point. This includes costs associated with maintaining our business, such as rent and payroll, as outlined in our other tables.

Projected Profit and Loss

As the profit and loss table shows, Hang Toes Surfing expects to continue slow but steady growth over the next three years of operations, with an estimated net profit of almost 15% for both years two and three.

Projected Cash Flow

The financial outlook is positive as the company rolls out and meets its milestones. Initially our cash flow will fluctuate, with negative cash flow in several months for our first year. However, Hang Toes Surfing expects to be cash flow positive for years two and three.

• We want to finance our first year’s growth through a loan.
• The most important indicator is inventory turnover. Our ability to schedule production from month to month will help control inventory costs.
• Collection is not a problem for our direct sales, since we will be credited payment to our bank account in two days by our credit card company for Internet sales.
• Selling our products over the Internet will allow us full retail price and maximize our profit.

Projected Balance Sheet

Hang Toes Surfing’s projected company balance sheet follows.

Business Ratios

Standard business ratios are included in the following table. The ratios show an aggressive plan for growth in order to reach maximum production within three years. Return on investment increases each year as we bring the new facility to maximum capacity and production. Return on sales and assets remain strong and cost of goods decreases.

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How to create a clothing line business plan

• Nirit Braun
• Oct 29, 2023
• 10 min read

A clothing line business plan is a strategic and detailed document that outlines the essential elements of launching and operating a clothing-related venture. It encompasses crucial aspects such as brand identity, the target market, product offerings, marketing strategies, operational procedures and financial projections. Essentially, it serves as a roadmap that guides entrepreneurs through the process of starting a business as well as managing it.

In the current business landscape, having a strong online presence is crucial, making the inclusion of a business website within the plan particularly important. A well-designed and user-friendly website becomes the digital storefront for a clothing business . It showcases the products, communicates the brand's identity and provides essential information such as pricing, sizing and contact details. It can also act as an online store , if necessary.

Looking to take your clothing line online by building a website ? Wix’s website builder has you covered.

What is a business plan?

A business plan is a formal document that outlines a company's goals and how it plans to achieve them. It is used to attract investors, secure loans and guide the company's development. If you are serious about starting a business, it's important to develop a comprehensive business plan. This will help you set realistic goals and increase your chances of success and profitability.

It can also make it very clear what type of business you plan to create, whether that's starting an LLC , corporation or something else.

How to create a clothing line business plan in 6 steps

Now, we'll break down the key elements that go into crafting an effective clothing business plan in six critical steps. Following this process will provide clarity as you define your company mission, understand resource needs, assess the competitive landscape and project growth.

Executive summary

Business and domain name selection

Market analysis and research

Operations plan

Marketing and advertising plan

Financial plan

01. Executive summary

The executive summary serves as the introductory section of a clothing business plan, providing a concise overview of the entire document. It encapsulates the essence of the clothing business idea , highlighting its key components and objectives. A well-crafted executive summary should be clear, engaging and succinct, offering a glimpse into the business's vision, target market, competitive advantage, business type ( eCommerce or other) and financial projections.

Example of an executive summary for a clothing line business

“ChicWardrobe Boutique is a visionary clothing brand poised to redefine urban fashion for the modern woman. With a focus on empowering self-expression and embracing individuality, our boutique curates an exclusive collection of trend-setting apparel that resonates with confident, fashion-forward women seeking unique style statements. By merging timeless elegance with contemporary trends, ChicWardrobe aims to become the go-to destination for individuals who embrace fashion as a form of self-expression.

Our boutique stands out in a crowded market by offering limited-edition, curated pieces that blend quality craftsmanship with innovative designs. Our commitment to sustainability and ethical sourcing further sets us apart, resonating with conscious consumers who value both style and social responsibility.

Seeking an initial investment of $200,000, ChicWardrobe Boutique intends to launch its first brick-and-mortar store in a high-traffic urban district. Our online presence, represented by the domain www.ChicWardrobeBoutique.com, will serve as a seamless extension of our brand, allowing customers to explore and purchase our curated collections with ease.

With a strong foundation, a keen understanding of market trends and a passion for creativity, ChicWardrobe Boutique is poised to become a trailblazing force in the world of contemporary fashion."

02. Business and domain name selection

Knowing how to name a business is a critical step in establishing your clothing business' identity and registering your business . The name should be memorable, reflective of your brand's values and resonate with your target audience. A business name generator or clothing business name generator can offer inspiration and help you brainstorm creative options.

Similarly, selecting a domain name is essential for your online business presence. Your domain should ideally match your company name and be easy to remember. Check its availability and secure it early to ensure consistency across your brand.

Be inspired:

Clothing brand names

Boutique business names

03. Market analysis and research

This type of business plan must incorporate thorough market analysis and research. This section delves into your target audience's preferences, shopping behavior and the broader competitive landscape. Analyze competitors, identify gaps in the market and leverage insights to tailor your business strategies for maximum impact.

04. Operations plan

The operations plan outlines practical aspects of running your clothing business. Detail the proposed location, explaining how it aligns with your target audience and brand image. Describe the interior design and ambiance of your store, as well as any eCommerce website you might need to run it online. Address equipment needs, from garment racks to point-of-sale systems and discuss staffing requirements, emphasizing customer service and product knowledge. You might also want to consider what type of business and how it will be run, for example a clothing dropshipping business is run very differently from a retail store.

05. Marketing and advertising plan

A marketing and advertising plan details how you will promote your clothing business to your target audience. Outline a mix of strategies, including social media marketing, influencer collaborations, fashion shows and pop-up events. Highlight the significance of your online presence, your website and engaging content that showcases your products' style and quality.

You should have a professional logo before embarking on this step as well, as it’s a key element of your branding assets. You can use a free logo maker or clothing logo maker to find the perfect option for your business.

Learn more: How to make a clothing logo

06. Financial plan

The financial plan projects the financial health of your clothing business. It includes startup costs, revenue projections, profit margins and funding sources. Detail your initial investment, anticipated sales growth and the timeline to reach profitability. Outline a comprehensive budget covering all expenses, from inventory and marketing to store maintenance. Keep in mind that the average cost to start a clothing brand can vary widely from $500 for newcomers to $50,000 for more high-end brands.

Clothing line business plan examples

We’ve put together two clothing line business plan examples in order to show how such a plan might be crafted for hypothetical businesses, each incorporating the key sections discussed earlier.

Clothing line business plan template 1: StreetVibe Apparel

StreetVibe Apparel is an urban streetwear brand that caters to the dynamic lifestyle of modern city dwellers. Our brand encapsulates the spirit of urban culture, offering a diverse range of stylish and comfortable apparel that celebrates self-expression. With a focus on quality, affordability and trendsetting designs, StreetVibe aims to become a prominent player in the streetwear fashion scene.

Company and domain name selection

Company name: StreetVibe Apparel

Domain name: www.streetvibeapparel.com

Marketing analysis and research

Target audience: Millennials and Gen Z who resonate with urban culture and streetwear fashion.

Competitive landscape : Identifying gaps in streetwear options for affordable, quality apparel.

Market trends: Growing demand for streetwear fashion as a form of self-expression.

Location: High-foot-traffic urban district with a strong youth presence.

Premises: Contemporary and minimalist store design, creating an inviting shopping environment.

Equipment: High-quality garment racks, fitting rooms and checkout systems.

Staffing: Enthusiastic and fashion-forward sales staff who connect with the brand's target audience.

Online engagement: Active presence on social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat.

Limited edition drops: Strategically planned product releases to generate buzz and excitement.

Website: A user-friendly business website showcasing the latest collections, allowing online shopping and offering style inspiration through blog posts.

Initial funding: Seeking $150,000 for inventory, store setup and initial marketing efforts.

Projected revenue: Targeting 25% revenue growth within the first year, aiming for profitability in the second year.

Budget: Comprehensive budget covering product sourcing, marketing campaigns and store maintenance.

Clothing line business plan template 2: EcoChic Boutique

EcoChic Boutique is a sustainable fashion brand dedicated to providing environmentally conscious consumers with stylish and ethically produced apparel. Our boutique curates a collection of eco-friendly clothing that blends fashion with sustainability, catering to individuals who seek to make mindful fashion choices. By prioritizing ethical practices and offering a diverse range of clothing options, EcoChic aims to contribute to a greener and more sustainable fashion industry.

Company name: EcoChic Boutique

Domain name: www.ecochicboutique.com

Target audience: Eco-conscious consumers who value sustainable and ethically produced fashion.

Competitive landscape: Identifying gaps in the market for accessible and stylish eco-friendly apparel.

Market trends: Growing demand for sustainable fashion and increased consumer awareness.

Location: Eco-friendly district with a community committed to sustainable practices.

Premises: Earthy and minimalist store design to reflect the brand's values.

Equipment: Recycled materials for displays and eco-friendly lighting.

Staffing: Knowledgeable and passionate staff who align with the brand's sustainability mission.

Educational campaigns: Hosting workshops and seminars to raise awareness about sustainable fashion.

Collaborations: Partnering with local artisans and eco-conscious brands to amplify impact.

Website: A visually appealing website showcasing the brand's commitment to sustainability, offering detailed information about materials, production processes and a seamless online shopping experience.

Initial funding: Seeking $200,000 for sourcing sustainable materials, setting up the store and initiating marketing efforts.

Projected revenue: Aiming for 20% revenue growth within the first year, with profitability anticipated in the third year.

Budget: Comprehensive budget covering sustainable material sourcing, marketing campaigns and ongoing brand initiatives.

Why write a clothing line business plan? Benefits to consider

Creating a comprehensive business plan is crucial when starting a clothing line business, offering a multitude of benefits that can significantly enhance the chances of success. In a lucrative industry that’s expected to reach sales of $494.89 billion by the end of 2023, having a plan of action gives you a leg up on success. Here are some key advantages of writing a business plan for a clothing line business:

Attracts investors and funding: Investors and lenders require a well-structured business plan to assess the viability and potential returns of the clothing business. A thorough plan showcases your understanding of the market, your unique value proposition and your strategies for success. This instills confidence in potential backers and increases the likelihood of raising money for a business .

Organizes your resources: Starting a clothing business entails coordinating various resources, from fabric suppliers to production facilities and skilled personnel. A comprehensive business plan compels you to analyze these needs in detail, ensuring that all elements are in place for a smooth launch and operation. This includes understanding production timelines, material sourcing and the expertise required within your team.

Provides operational clarity: The operational aspects of a clothing business are intricate, involving design, production, inventory management and more. A well-crafted business plan outlines these processes, minimizing confusion, streamlining operations and contributing to efficient resource allocation. It ensures that everyone involved is aligned with the business' operational goals.

Outlines market research: A clothing line business plan prompts you to conduct thorough market research to identify your target audience, their preferences and buying behaviors. Analyzing competitors and industry trends helps you position your brand effectively and tailor your products to meet customer demands.

Guides marketing and branding strategies: A comprehensive plan guides your marketing efforts by outlining marketing strategie s to reach and engage your target audience. This includes establishing your brand identity, designing a unique brand story and creating a consistent visual presence. It also emphasizes the importance of utilizing a business website as a central platform for showcasing your products and interacting with customers.

Allows for risk mitigation and contingency planning: Anticipating challenges and developing contingency plans are essential for any business. A well-structured clothing business plan allows you to identify potential obstacles and devise strategies to mitigate risks. This proactive approach enhances your ability to navigate challenges effectively.

Informs financial projections: The financial section of your business plan provides a clear projection of startup costs, ongoing expenses, revenue forecasts and potential profit margins. This data assists in making informed decisions, securing funding and creating a realistic timeline for profitability.

Fosters long-term success : Beyond the initial startup phase, a business plan provides a strategic framework for the clothing business' long-term success. It outlines growth strategies, expansion plans and the steps needed to maintain your brand's competitive edge.

By leveraging these benefits, you can navigate the complexities of the clothing industry with a well-informed and strategic approach, increasing your chances of starting a business that is successful and sustainable.

Can clothing lines be profitable?

Yes, clothing lines can be profitable. In fact, some of the most successful businesses in the world are clothing brands. Nike, Adidas, and Lululemon are all multi-billion dollar companies that started as small clothing lines.

However, it's important to note that the clothing industry is very competitive. There are many new clothing brands launching all the time, and it can be difficult to stand out from the crowd. In order to be successful, clothing brands need to offer high-quality products that people want to buy. They also need to market their brands effectively and build a strong customer base.

Here are some tips for making a clothing line profitable:

Focus on a specific niche. Don't try to be everything to everyone. Instead, focus on a specific niche market, such as sportswear, streetwear or luxury fashion.

Create high-quality products. Use high-quality materials and construction methods. Your products should also be stylish and on-trend.

Market your brand effectively. Use online and offline marketing channels to reach potential customers. You can also partner with influencers and celebrities to promote your brand.

Provide excellent customer service. Make sure your customers are happy with their purchases and that they have a positive experience with your brand.

Clothing line business plan FAQ

How much does it cost to start a clothing line.

The cost of starting a clothing line varies depending on the size and scope of your business. However, some of the common costs associated with starting a clothing line include:

Product development: This includes the cost of designing, sampling and prototyping your clothing.

Production: This includes the cost of manufacturing your clothing, including the cost of materials, labor and overhead.

Marketing and advertising: This includes the cost of promoting your clothing line to potential customers.

Operating expenses: This includes the cost of rent, utilities and other general business expenses.

How do I start a good clothing line?

How much does having your own clothing line make, is it hard starting a clothing line, how many pieces do you need to start a clothing line, want to create another type of business plan.

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How to Start a Fitness Apparel Business

A fitness apparel business is a retail establishment that sells shoes, apparel, and equipment designed for athletic consumers. Products are sold on a local level and to online shoppers. These businesses support local athletes through community events and offer advice regarding the ideal products for their customer’s individual needs.

Learn how to start your own Fitness Apparel Business and whether it is the right fit for you.

Ready to form your LLC? Check out the Top LLC Formation Services .

Start a fitness apparel business by following these 10 steps:

• Plan your Fitness Apparel Business
• Form your Fitness Apparel Business into a Legal Entity
• Register your Fitness Apparel Business for Taxes
• Open a Business Bank Account & Credit Card
• Set up Accounting for your Fitness Apparel Business
• Get the Necessary Permits & Licenses for your Fitness Apparel Business
• Get Fitness Apparel Business Insurance
• Define your Fitness Apparel Business Brand
• Create your Fitness Apparel Business Website
• Set up your Business Phone System

We have put together this simple guide to starting your fitness apparel business. These steps will ensure that your new business is well planned out, registered properly and legally compliant.

Exploring your options? Check out other small business ideas .

STEP 1: Plan your business

A clear plan is essential for success as an entrepreneur. It will help you map out the specifics of your business and discover some unknowns. A few important topics to consider are:

What will you name your business?

• What are the startup and ongoing costs?
• Who is your target market?

How much can you charge customers?

Luckily we have done a lot of this research for you.

Choosing the right name is important and challenging. If you don’t already have a name in mind, visit our How to Name a Business guide or get help brainstorming a name with our Fitness Apparel Business Name Generator

If you operate a sole proprietorship , you might want to operate under a business name other than your own name. Visit our DBA guide to learn more.

When registering a business name , we recommend researching your business name by checking:

• Your state's business records
• Federal and state trademark records
• Social media platforms
• Web domain availability .

It's very important to secure your domain name before someone else does.

Want some help naming your fitness apparel business?

Business name generator, what are the costs involved in opening a fitness apparel business.

Successful fitness apparel shop owners report a starting capital of $150,000 to $350,000, depending upon the size, amount of inventory, and geographical location. Manage start-up costs by investing in a modest location of 2000 square feet or less. As you get to know your customers, you will gain a deeper understanding of their needs and expand accordingly.

Once a location has been chosen, you will need to fill the space. Fixtures, business management software, and specialized equipment such as a foot and gait analysis system should all be included in your initial budget. Inventory should include apparel, footwear, accessories, and exercise equipment. A marketing strategy will help boost your business and simple, yet intuitive website will keep the community informed and allow you to reach customers on a national level.

What are the ongoing expenses for a fitness apparel business?

Industry leaders report monthly expenses ranging from between $4,500 and $21,000. The size of your store will define utilities and insurance costs and influence the amount of merchandise you will need to keep in stock.

Who is the target market?

When developing your marketing strategy, target athletes of all skill levels and financial means. This includes everyone from the high school tennis player to the ultra-marathoner. Runners are known for investing a great deal of time and money in their sport, so shop owners are encouraged to specifically target the running community in their advertising efforts.

How does a fitness apparel business make money?

A fitness apparel store generates revenue from the sale of each item. While a large portion of your sales will come from local consumers, an online store will extend your reach to athletes outside of the community.

Pricing varies from product to product. In addition to inventory cost, overhead expenses should be taken into account when setting an item price. If you are inexperienced in this aspect of the business, consult with your vendors for advice.

How much profit can a fitness apparel business make?

While many retail stores realize a profit in the first year, it typically takes three years to build a well-established business. Store owners who are committed to the community and maintain a pulse on the latest trends repot a profit of over $76,000 after the third year.

How can you make your business more profitable?

To boost profits, your inventory should include items with a higher profit margin, such as compression garments and insoles. Hosting educational workshops, fitness classes, and guest speakers will help bring both current and prospective customers, boosting sales in the process. Lastly, sponsor local sporting events as part of your community involvement. It is satisfying to see your business’ name on t-shirts and event advertisements and is a great way to boost visibility.

Want a more guided approach? Access TRUiC's free Small Business Startup Guide - a step-by-step course for turning your business idea into reality. Get started today!

STEP 2: Form a legal entity

The most common business structure types are the sole proprietorship , partnership , limited liability company (LLC) , and corporation .

Establishing a legal business entity such as an LLC or corporation protects you from being held personally liable if your fitness apparel business is sued.

Form Your LLC

Read our Guide to Form Your Own LLC

Have a Professional Service Form your LLC for You

Two such reliable services:

You can form an LLC yourself and pay only the minimal state LLC costs or hire one of the Best LLC Services for a small, additional fee.

Recommended: You will need to elect a registered agent for your LLC. LLC formation packages usually include a free year of registered agent services . You can choose to hire a registered agent or act as your own.

STEP 3: Register for taxes

You will need to register for a variety of state and federal taxes before you can open for business.

In order to register for taxes you will need to apply for an EIN. It's really easy and free!

You can acquire your EIN through the IRS website . If you would like to learn more about EINs, read our article, What is an EIN?

There are specific state taxes that might apply to your business. Learn more about state sales tax and franchise taxes in our state sales tax guides.

STEP 4: Open a business bank account & credit card

Using dedicated business banking and credit accounts is essential for personal asset protection.

When your personal and business accounts are mixed, your personal assets (your home, car, and other valuables) are at risk in the event your business is sued. In business law, this is referred to as piercing your corporate veil .

Open a business bank account

Besides being a requirement when applying for business loans, opening a business bank account:

• Separates your personal assets from your company's assets, which is necessary for personal asset protection.
• Makes accounting and tax filing easier.

Recommended: Read our Best Banks for Small Business review to find the best national bank or credit union.

Get a business credit card

Getting a business credit card helps you:

• Separate personal and business expenses by putting your business' expenses all in one place.
• Build your company's credit history , which can be useful to raise money later on.

Recommended: Apply for an easy approval business credit card from BILL and build your business credit quickly.

STEP 5: Set up business accounting

Recording your various expenses and sources of income is critical to understanding the financial performance of your business. Keeping accurate and detailed accounts also greatly simplifies your annual tax filing.

Make LLC accounting easy with our LLC Expenses Cheat Sheet.

STEP 6: Obtain necessary permits and licenses

Failure to acquire necessary permits and licenses can result in hefty fines, or even cause your business to be shut down.

STEP 7: Get business insurance

Just as with licenses and permits, your business needs insurance in order to operate safely and lawfully. Business Insurance protects your company’s financial wellbeing in the event of a covered loss.

There are several types of insurance policies created for different types of businesses with different risks. If you’re unsure of the types of risks that your business may face, begin with General Liability Insurance . This is the most common coverage that small businesses need, so it’s a great place to start for your business.

Another notable insurance policy that many businesses need is Workers’ Compensation Insurance . If your business will have employees, it’s a good chance that your state will require you to carry Workers' Compensation Coverage.

STEP 8: Define your brand

Your brand is what your company stands for, as well as how your business is perceived by the public. A strong brand will help your business stand out from competitors.

If you aren't feeling confident about designing your small business logo, then check out our Design Guides for Beginners , we'll give you helpful tips and advice for creating the best unique logo for your business.

Recommended : Get a logo using Truic's free logo Generator no email or sign up required, or use a Premium Logo Maker .

If you already have a logo, you can also add it to a QR code with our Free QR Code Generator . Choose from 13 QR code types to create a code for your business cards and publications, or to help spread awareness for your new website.

How to promote & market a fitness apparel business

When developing your business plan, research what sports are most popular in your community. Get to know them on a personal and professional level, noting what needs are not currently being met. This will assist you in ordering inventory and allow for a more targeted marketing strategy. While printed and online advertising will prove beneficial, the best gift you can give is your time and attention. Organize group runs, host special events at your store, and sponsor local sporting events. Your commitment to their cause will boost your reputation and spark a deep commitment from the athletes you cater to.

How to keep customers coming back

Word of mouth can either make or break a business. Your involvement, strong customer service, and knowledge will go a long way towards building community support. These things, along with an inspiring disposition, will position you as a fitness leader, ensuring your store is the first name that comes to mind when people look for that new pair of workout gloves or shoes.

STEP 9: Create your business website

After defining your brand and creating your logo the next step is to create a website for your business .

While creating a website is an essential step, some may fear that it’s out of their reach because they don’t have any website-building experience. While this may have been a reasonable fear back in 2015, web technology has seen huge advancements in the past few years that makes the lives of small business owners much simpler.

Here are the main reasons why you shouldn’t delay building your website:

• All legitimate businesses have websites - full stop. The size or industry of your business does not matter when it comes to getting your business online.
• Social media accounts like Facebook pages or LinkedIn business profiles are not a replacement for a business website that you own.
• Website builder tools like the GoDaddy Website Builder have made creating a basic website extremely simple. You don’t need to hire a web developer or designer to create a website that you can be proud of.

Recommended : Get started today using our recommended website builder or check out our review of the Best Website Builders .

Other popular website builders are: WordPress , WIX , Weebly , Squarespace , and Shopify .

STEP 10: Set up your business phone system

Getting a phone set up for your business is one of the best ways to help keep your personal life and business life separate and private. That’s not the only benefit; it also helps you make your business more automated, gives your business legitimacy, and makes it easier for potential customers to find and contact you.

There are many services available to entrepreneurs who want to set up a business phone system. We’ve reviewed the top companies and rated them based on price, features, and ease of use. Check out our review of the Best Business Phone Systems 2023 to find the best phone service for your small business.

Recommended Business Phone Service: Phone.com

Phone.com is our top choice for small business phone numbers because of all the features it offers for small businesses and it's fair pricing.

Is this Business Right For You?

This type of business is best suited for the entrepreneur who is passionate about living an active and healthy lifestyle. They enjoy interacting with athletes in the community, sharing their knowledge of current trends in activewear and the newest in fitness-related medical findings.

Want to know if you are cut out to be an entrepreneur?

Take our Entrepreneurship Quiz to find out!

Entrepreneurship Quiz

What happens during a typical day at a fitness apparel business?

You and your staff will spend much of the day interacting with customers. You will consult with them regarding their unique needs, offering guidance on everything from the best shoe for their gait to nutrition and training schedules. The most successful fitness apparel stores draw athletes throughout the community, offering a place to gather and meet other like-minded individuals. Therefore, downtime should be spent creating an environment that encourages athletes of all kinds to participate and interact. Additionally, inventory is tracked daily and orders are placed on an as-needed basis. The store must be clean and well-maintained, with displays changed out regularly. Your customers are looking to you for guidance, so researching industry developments and trends should also be an integral part of your team’s day.

What are some skills and experiences that will help you build a successful fitness apparel business?

Interaction with customers, vendors, and your staff will be an integral part of each day. Therefore, strong interpersonal and communication skills, coupled with business acumen, will help set you up for success. Your commitment to customer service and fitness will help you integrate into this tight-knit community, building a loyal customer base along the way. Those considering entering this business venture are encouraged to work in a similar setting. This real world experience will help you gain a deeper understanding of the intricacies involved in owning retail store and offer networking opportunities along the way.

What is the growth potential for a fitness apparel business?

Most athletes are drawn to the individualized attention they receive when visiting a small, locally owned store. For this reason, many store owners concentrate on keeping their shop small, opening additional stores based on community needs. With the right vision and branding, entrepreneurs looking to expand further can open stores across the country and even offer franchising opportunities to other aspiring fitness apparel store owners.

TRUiC's YouTube Channel

For fun informative videos about starting a business visit the TRUiC YouTube Channel or subscribe to view later.

Take the Next Step

Find a business mentor.

One of the greatest resources an entrepreneur can have is quality mentorship. As you start planning your business, connect with a free business resource near you to get the help you need.

Having a support network in place to turn to during tough times is a major factor of success for new business owners.

Learn from other business owners

Want to learn more about starting a business from entrepreneurs themselves? Visit Startup Savant’s startup founder series to gain entrepreneurial insights, lessons, and advice from founders themselves.

Resources to Help Women in Business

There are many resources out there specifically for women entrepreneurs. We’ve gathered necessary and useful information to help you succeed both professionally and personally:

If you’re a woman looking for some guidance in entrepreneurship, check out this great new series Women in Business created by the women of our partner Startup Savant.

What are some insider tips for jump starting a fitness apparel business?

While sports enthusiasts love to spend money on their activities, they come from all financial brackets. Therefore, your store should carry quality products, with price points that fit every budget. A flexible return policy will offer that last push some customers need to purchase an item they’re considering. When choosing your vendors, inquire about their return policy. Many have made it a policy to accept returned shoes at no cost to the store owner.

How and when to build a team

Depending upon the size of your new business, it may be possible to operate the store yourself during those first few months. As business increases, you will need to start building your team. Many fitness apparel store owners have found success hiring high school athletes. This keeps payroll costs under control and offers another level of support within the sporting community. Every employee should possess extensive knowledge of at least one activity and be able to communicate with all demographics. Strengthen your team by hiring new employees that can help build on your current skills and knowledge.

Useful Links

Real world examples.

• Rogue Fitness

Have a Question? Leave a Comment!

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Clothing Line Business Plan

How to create a clothing line marketing plan.

By combining the results of both analyses, you can create a great fashion marketing strategy that focuses on your USP.

Want to create a SWOT analysis for your business?

Craft a powerful SWOT Analysis in just minutes using our user-friendly and free online SWOT Analysis Generator Tool!

4. Set Measurable Marketing Goals

Before you start marketing, do not forget to set SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound) business goals. As it will help you understand what is working and what is not.

Here are some common primary goals for a clothing brand:

Increasing brand awareness

You can set a goal to increase your fashion brand awareness by 50% through discounts, gifts, engaging content, social media, and other channels.

Increase sales

After spreading brand awareness, set a measurable goal for more sales too. For example, keep a target of increasing activewear sales by 10% in one month.

Improve Customer Loyalty

Encouraging repeat sales and fostering brand loyalty among your existing customer base is essential for long-term success. You can achieve customer loyalty through loyalty programs and discounts. For instance, you can set a goal of raising existing customers by 15% this quarter.

Partnership & collaborations

Collaborating with other brands or influencers will help you reach a wider audience. You might set a target of collaborating with 2-4 influencers a year to improve your clothing brand awareness.

Each of these goals should be time-bound with a deadline; for example, you might set the target for 6-12 months or 1 quarter.

These goals provide a clear roadmap for your fashion brand’s success, enabling you to track progress and celebrate every achievement.

5. Describe Your Marketing and Sales Strategies

In this fast-paced fashion industry, converting potential customers into existing ones needs strategic tactics. So, the next step is to mention your marketing and sales strategies in the fashion marketing plan.

Sales strategies

Sales strategies are techniques and marketing measures to sell your clothing brand products. Some of the sales strategies are:

• Customer loyalty programs: Create a loyalty program to reward loyal customers. Give them benefits like discounts, early access to new collections, and exclusive deals to keep them coming back for more.
• Promotions and sales events: Promotions and sales events can be planned during key seasonal times like “Black Friday” sales or “Back-to-school” sales. You can offer BOGO sales, clearance sales, flash sales, bundle sales, etc.
• Visual merchandising: Create visually appealing displays in physical stores and online platforms. High-quality images, product videos, and 360-degree views can help customers visualize the clothing, leading to higher sales.

Marketing strategies

Whereas sales strategies are measures to sell your products, marketing strategies are to promote your product in front of your target audiences, some of the marketing tactics are:

• Content marketing: Content is a powerful tool but for that, you need to create marketing materials on a prior basis. Some of the content marketing tactics are fashion blog posts, video content, user-generated content, etc. Remember to create content that entices new customers to visit your clothing brand.
• Email marketing: Collecting email addresses from customers and website visitors enables fashion brands to send product descriptions, product updates, offers & discounts, fashion insights, and more to engage and retain customers through emails.
• Social media marketing: Social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok will help you spread your marketing efforts in no time. These platforms can be used to showcase product photos and run paid targeted ads to drive sales.Social media platforms let you target your ads to a specific audience based on the audience’s location, demographics, or interests. Simply run an ad for the audience that’s most likely to be interested in your brand.

In conclusion, sales strategies focus heavily on the actual selling of things. Whereas, the goal of marketing strategies is to define the target audience, produce interesting content, and promote the brand to draw in new customers and retain them.

6. Determine Your Marketing Budget

Before setting the budget, first, know your financial situation and look into how much you can allocate to marketing without hampering any other essential aspects.

Now consider your business goal; are you aiming to increase loyalty, spread brand awareness, or increase sales? Because if you are a new clothing line business, then you might want to spread brand awareness.

Then it is time to evaluate your target market and the channels you will use like social media, print media, or are going to appoint brand ambassadors. This way, you will know which channel needs more investment.

In general, according to a CMO survey, companies spend nearly 54% of their marketing budget on digital marketing. Keep this in mind, and don’t forget to note what your competitors are doing, so that you can be in the competitive landscape with them.

Lastly, know your projected annual income which will help you put aside your budget. Generally, entrepreneurs keep 3-5% aside from projected sales as their budget and spend money wisely.

7. Implement Clothing Brand Marketing Ideas & Strategies

Whether it is marketing online or traditionally, proper implementation of all the tactics is necessary for launching your clothing brand.

Firstly, break down the plan into smaller tasks, like first publishing Instagram posts, then incorporating influencer collaboration, etc. Then implement everything according to the marketing calendar you make.

By putting your marketing plan into action, you can make sure that your efforts aren’t wasted and reach your target market. Additionally, this stage facilitates customer engagement, buzz-building, and excitement-building for your fashion brand.

In conclusion, the implementation phase brings your clothing brand to life in the eyes of consumers, making it an essential step toward achieving your market goals.

8. Monitor the Success of Your Marketing Plan

Monitoring the success of your marketing tactics ensures that all your efforts are going to the right place and you are getting the correct response.

It allows you to measure the effectiveness of your efforts and lets you know the effects in terms of sales, brand awareness, customer engagement, or customer loyalty.

Also, it helps you pinpoint which strategies are working and which are not. By tracking website traffic, footfall, social media engagement, and sales, you will get to know which strategy is working and where to invest more.

For example, if you find that social media advertisements are giving more results than email marketing campaigns, then you can shift your focus and resources accordingly.

Some of the key metrics to measure success are sales revenue, social media engagement rate, customer acquisition cost (CAC), customer lifetime value (CLV), email engagement, etc.

Moreover, monitoring allows you to adapt to changing circumstances. The fashion industry is dynamic, and consumer preferences can shift rapidly, especially with seasonal trends.

Regularly assessing your marketing plan’s performance enables you to spot trends or shifts in customer behavior early on. This, in turn, empowers you to make timely adjustments to your strategies, ensuring your brand remains relevant and competitive.

The Quickest Way to turn a Business Idea into a Business Plan

Fill-in-the-blanks and automatic financials make it easy.

In conclusion, a well-crafted fashion marketing plan, coupled with a thorough business plan, plays a key role in the success of a clothing line business.

Utilizing business plan software can simplify the planning process significantly.

So, take the chance to boost your fashion business. Put in the effort to create a strong marketing and business plan today because your business’s success depends on it.

Related Posts

How to start a clothing line business

Startup cost for clothing line business

How to Create a Competitive Analysis

How to do a Market Analysis

How to Conduct a Customer Analysis

Frequently asked questions, what are the 4 p’s of fashion marketing.

The 4 P’s also known as fashion marketing mix are:

Are there cost-effective marketing strategies for a clothing line?

Yes, there are several cost-effective marketing tactics to promote clothing brands. Some of the strategies are:

• Social media marketing
• Leveraging content
• Email advertising
• DIY photography and videography
• Referral programs

What are the key trends in the clothing industry right now?

Several trends are shaping the future of the clothing line industry, but sustainability is on the lead and it is not going anywhere soon. Apart from sustainability, other trends are:

• Gender neutral clothes
• Small-scale retail stores for customization
• Tech-infused clothes

Where Can I Find Templates or Examples of Clothing Line Marketing Plans?

You can find business planning resources and guides on SBA’s portal . Apart from that, you can find fashion business plan templates and marketing guides on business plan software such as Upmetrics , they also have 400+ business plan samples .

How do seasonal trends affect my clothing line marketing plan and how should I adapt?

Seasonal trends tend to change customer preferences, weather-related collection, seasonal shifts in inventory, and other things. The slightest shift in season needs modification in the marketing plan.

Remember your marketing plan for a clothing brand is a living document, it will need changes according to the trends. You can adapt to the changes by making seasonal plans on a prior basis.

About the Author

Upmetrics Team

Upmetrics is the #1 business planning software that helps entrepreneurs and business owners create investment-ready business plans using AI. We regularly share business planning insights on our blog. Check out the Upmetrics blog for such interesting reads. Read more

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Tag: activewear business plan

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Qualities You Must Check Before Deciding On a Private Label Fitness Apparel Manufacturers

• 09 Jun 2018
• posted by activewearmanufacturer

If you are willing to open a private label brand and make something of yourself, the first thing you need to find is a producer. To get your hands on one of the best private label fitness apparel manufacturers, you...

Private Label Fitness Apparel Manufacturers

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Studio owners revise plans for $1-billion update of historic Television City

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The owners of Television City have scaled back their plans to enlarge and modernize the landmark Los Angeles studio where CBS began making shows to broadcast nationwide at the dawn of the television age.

Formerly known as CBS Television City, the studio sits next to popular tourist attractions the Original Farmers Market and the Grove shopping center in the Fairfax district where it has been operating since 1952 as a factory for such hit shows as “All in the Family,” “Sonny and Cher” and “American Idol.”

CBS sold the famous studio for $750 million in 2019 to Hackman Capital Partners, one of the world’s largest movie lot owners and operators. CBS continues to occupy Television City as a tenant.

Hackman Capital announced a $1.25-billion plan two years ago to expand and upgrade facilities on the lot at Beverly Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue in hopes of harnessing strong demand in the region for soundstages, production facilities and offices for rent on studio lots.

Hackman Capital on Friday will update its application to the city to enhance the studio, saying it is responding to feedback about the project from nearby residents, stakeholders and city officials. If approved, the new project is expected to be completed by 2028.

The studio owners also brought in a new design architect, Foster + Partners. The London-based firm is led by Norman Foster, a prominent architect whose designs include the pickle-shaped Gherkin skyscraper in London and the master plan for the $2-billion One Beverly Hills condominium and hotel complex under construction in Beverly Hills.

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Hackman Capital, which operates studios in the U.S., Canada and U.K., is also responding to changing conditions in the office rental market, which has contracted since the COVID-19 pandemic drove many companies to work remotely at least some of the time. Plans still call for creating new offices, but there would be fewer of them.

Foster’s new design eliminates a 15-story office tower on the west side of the lot, cutting 150,000 square feet of offices to rent to entertainment-related firms. Another 15-story office tower remains in the plan, but other building heights have been lowered, particularly along the perimeters, Hackman Capital said.

The plan still represents an addition of more than 980,000 square feet to the 25-acre site at Beverly Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue that retains a suburban-style low-density appearance with soundstages, low-rise offices and support facilities flanked by asphalt parking lots.

The company’s proposal calls for combining old and new space to create 700,000 square feet of offices to support production on the lot and an additional 550,000 square feet of offices for rent to entertainment and media companies, the company said.

Office space behind studio gates is in high demand in the Los Angeles area and has been snapped up at other studios by such big Hollywood players as Netflix and Amazon.

“The industry wants to have a location where they can do production and have offices in a self-contained campus environment,” said real estate broker Jeff Pion of CBRE, who represents Hackman Capital. “Having all of the different components that make up production in one location is very attractive to the industry.”

Plans for Television City also call for a new commissary and more than four acres for production base camps. The streetscapes would be improved to be more visually appealing to passersby, with wider sidewalks.

On Fairfax Avenue, where pedestrians now pass by a fenced parking lot, there would be shops and restaurants serving the public on the ground floor of office buildings that could be reached only from inside the lot.

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The separation is part of the balancing act Hackman Capital is attempting to make Television City feel more friendly to the neighborhood while retaining the security and exclusivity of a closed campus that appeals to celebrities and others who make movies and television shows.

Landlords can also charge a premium for office space on movie lots because they are close to the action for independent production companies and offer the cachet prized by many in the entertainment industry.

Filming activity in Los Angeles has fallen off substantially in the wake of strikes by writers and actors last year, according to FilmLA , a nonprofit organization that tracks on-location shoot days and filming permits in the region. The downward trend compounded a dip that emerged in late 2022 as on-location filming in Los Angeles took a dive as studios pared back movie and TV production that surged during the COVID-19 pandemic.

California is finding it particularly hard to rebound from the strikes because it’s more expensive to shoot here, multiple production executives told The Times . That makes Los Angeles less attractive to studios looking to cut costs after major industry disruption.

To Hackman Capital Chief Executive Michael Hackman, the downturn and filming pullback from California suggest that regulators and studio operators should further support production companies.

“Our actual customers tell us all of them want to stay in Los Angeles,” he said. “We have the best crews in the world here, but we don’t have enough modern soundstages in premier locations. We also have to push the state on tax incentives so that we don’t lose business outside of the city.

“The entertainment industry is our city signature industry and if we don’t invest in the future, we’re really at risk of losing it,” Hackman said. “We’re still emerging from a once-in-a-generation dual strike. And the production stoppage cost Angelenos approximately $6.5 billion or more in lost wages and economic activity, which makes it clear how important this industry is to our city, and especially the people who work in entertainment every day.”

Hackman Capital’s proposal calls for raising the number of Television City stages to at least 15, from 8, along with production support facilities.

To make room for the planned additions, parking would be converted from surface lots to garage structures and underground spaces capable of parking 4,930 vehicles.

Two stages built in the 1990s on the east side of the lot would be demolished as part of a planned reconfiguration of the site.

The four original stages built by CBS in 1952 would be preserved along with other historical design elements created by Los Angeles architect William Pereira, who also designed such noteworthy structures as the futuristic Theme Building in the middle of Los Angeles International Airport and the Transamerica Pyramid office tower in San Francisco.

Pereira’s long-range plan for Television City conceived in the 1950s was expansive, said Bob Hale, creative director of Rios, the master plan architect of Hackman Capital’s proposed makeover. Hale said Pereira’s original concept called for the complex to grow to 24 stages and 2.5 million square feet of production space, including several multistory office buildings.

“It was built in a way that it could be disassembled and incrementally extended,” Hale said. “For a number of reasons, that didn’t happen.”

In an effort to make it happen now, Hackman Capital set out to get the support of Councilwoman Katy Yaroslavsky and the surrounding community. Over five years, the company met with nearly 3,000 neighbors, Hackman Capital said.

Among the groups supporting the project are the Holocaust Museum LA, Los Angeles Conservancy, Los Angeles/Orange Counties Building and Construction Trades Council, Mid City West Neighborhood Council and FilmLA, Hackman Capital said.

The first proposal drew fire from neighboring businesses the Grove and Farmers Market, which sent letters to residents in 2022 calling the Television City project a “massively scaled, speculative development which, if approved, would overwhelm, disrupt, and forever transform the community.”

In July 2022, an executive representing Grove owner Rick Caruso appeared before a committee of the Mid City West Neighborhood Council and said the Television City project would create “complex” issues for the neighborhood, including traffic, parking and construction. Caruso himself has said he does not oppose the redevelopment of Television City.

The Beverly Fairfax Community Alliance, which was founded by the Grove and Farmers Market, has been more blunt, warning that the expanded site would clog Fairfax Avenue, Beverly Boulevard, La Brea Avenue and 3rd Street with traffic.

“Even those accustomed to living with L.A. traffic and parking nightmares will be shocked at how much worse it can be,” the group said on its website.

To address such concerns, Hackman Capital said the new plan will reduce the number of estimated daily car trips to Television City by 5,000 to 8,700. The landlord also plans to move its “mobility hub” from The Grove Drive on the east side to Fairfax at 1st Street on the west side of the lot. The mobility hub would serve public transit, rideshares and other passenger drop-offs as well as employee shuttle buses to the subway stop being built at Fairfax and Wilshire Boulevard.

“Our goal with Television City, particularly along the perimeter on our public edges, was to find a really great interface with the community. So it wasn’t just a studio with a blank wall, but we were active and engaged,” said Brian Glodney, a development executive for Hackman Capital.

Community members told Hackman Capital said they want the streets outside the studio to have a sense of connection between mom-and-pop businesses on Fairfax, the Farmers Market, the Grove and Pan Pacific Park, Glodney said.

Outlets on the edge of the lot such as shops and restaurants will be limited to a total of 20,000 square feet, he said, “just enough to help activate the streets but not compete with our neighbors.”

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A Roadmap for Responsible Business Conduct

Three years ago, a Dalit woman was murdered by her supervisor at a garment factory in India. Her co-workers did not wait for the company to respond. They organized collectively and engaged major global fashion companies, developing an enforceable agreement between the buying companies, the factories and their trade union to identify, remedy and prevent gender-based violence and harassment in their workplaces.

Known as the Dindigul agreement , the initiative established independent monitoring entities and trained female shop floor monitors with special retaliation protections to take immediate action on cases of gender-based violence and harassment. The agreement ensured that there were trusted and reliable grievance mechanisms in place. It also held companies accountable to resolving issues and providing workers access to remedy.

By 2026, companies are projected to spend over $27 billion a year on voluntary social audits to report on labor abuses in their supply chains. Yet, no audit would have stopped the tragedy in India. And in 2013, the Rana Plaza factory collapsed in Bangladesh , killing over 1,100 workers – days after an audit found no problems in the building. Voluntary third-party audits have all too often shown their limitations.

We believe businesses can and must do better. That’s why we’ve released the Responsible Business Conduct and Labor Rights InfoHub , a one-stop shop for information, guidance and tools from the U.S. government and international organizations to support the private sector in integrating labor rights and responsible business practices in their operations and across their global supply chains.

This comes as part of the U.S. government’s second National Action Plan on Responsible Business Conduct, founded on the Biden-Harris administration’s bedrock belief that businesses can have success while doing good, and that governments should create the conditions for responsible business conduct to take place.

The InfoHub provides companies with the knowledge and tools they need to comply with federal statutes, agency rules and trade provisions around responsible business and labor rights. It also makes government reports and advisories easily accessible, so businesses can stay up to date on emerging risks in priority sectors.

The site complements existing due diligence tools the Bureau of International Labor Affairs has created, such as Comply Chain and our List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor . The InfoHub also builds upon ILAB’s commitment to amplifying worker voice as a critical component of worker-centered due diligence.

We urge all stakeholders — from civil society to the C-suite — to use these resources, tools and legal standards to engage in meaningful action, strengthen their due diligence and ensure workers in their supply chains can exercise their internationally recognized rights without fear of retaliation.

We are entering a new era of corporate compliance, one where binding commitments to support worker voice, as we see in the Dindigul agreement, emerge as powerful and viable tools. The businesses at the top of global supply chains have the power to make these agreements widespread and effective and to ensure that workers are at the center of these new processes and institutions. This requires not just standing up new processes to map and track impacts within supply chains, but on concrete, positive outcomes for workers. It requires not just setting up hotlines, apps or suggestion boxes for workers but respecting their rights to organize and bargain collectively.

Through the Responsible Business Conduct and Labor Rights InfoHub and other resources, the U.S. Department of Labor is providing companies with the tools to chart a path forward on meaningful due diligence and bolster the rights and protections of all workers.

Thea Lee is the deputy undersecretary for international affairs at the U.S. Department of Labor. Follow ILAB on X/Twitter at @ILAB_DOL and on LinkedIn .

• Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB)
• supply chains
• labor rights
• Responsible Business Conduct

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Ford delays some North American electric SUV, truck production

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New York cannabis regulations invalidated by state judge

A New York state judge has invalidated most of the state’s cannabis regulations in a case that challenged marijuana advertising rules.

I quit my tech job to be a stay-at-home boyfriend who cooks, cleans, and sews for my girlfriend. I have no plans to return to the 9 to 5.

• William Conrad, 25, and his girlfriend Levi Coralynn, 26, have been together for three years. 
• Conrad is a stay-at-home-boyfriend, while Coralynn, a content creator, supports them financially. 
• Conrad previously worked in tech but has no plans to return.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with William Conrad, a 25-year-old stay-at-home boyfriend and content creator from Canada. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

For the last three years, I've been a stay-at-home boyfriend. I cook, clean, and do the laundry — and I've never been happier.

My girlfriend Levi is big on social media and makes enough to provide for us both financially. She works from home, and I do 90% of the domestic chores. Our dynamic very much flips societal norm on its head, but it works for us, and we love it.

On a typical day I wake up a little earlier than Levi to make us some coffee. We usually share a coffee, hang out for a while, and do Wordle together. Then, she'll do some work while I either prepare food or do other household chores. If we're not ready to eat, I might do some work on the computer alongside her.

Since she works from home, we pretty much spend every minute of every day together, which I love because she's my best friend before anything else.

We lead a very communal life, and that applies to how we navigate money too. We've never had the perspective of "this is my money, this is your money." It's very much a joint venture, and most of our purchases are done together anyway.

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I help with the backend of her business, doing the accounts and bookkeeping, just as much as I do things around the house.

Being a stay-at-home boyfriend allows me to do what I love

Levi and I met on Hinge around three years ago when we were living in different cities. I was living in Toronto, near where I grew up, while she was in Alberta. We started talking online and knew we needed to meet in person, so she came to see me in Toronto.

Our first date was a week long and we stayed in an Airbnb . Shortly after that, we moved in together in Ontario, and we've been together ever since.

Growing up, I didn't have a strong sense of what I wanted to do, but I knew I didn't want to sit in an office all day looking at a monitor. I've always liked creating things and working with my hands. But I ended up studying computer science at college and then found a job at a tech startup .

When I met Levi, I was doing freelance jobs here and there, and some more consistent stuff in the tech world. She was deep into her career as a content creator and needed help running her online business. She thought I'd be the perfect fit and asked if I would work for her. So I quit my job and became a full-time stay-at-home-boyfriend.

It wasn't that I didn't enjoy my job, but this was just a greener pasture that I could step toward. It was an opportunity that was better suited to me, I think, in the long run. I was really into cooking and sewing before I even met Levi, and this meant I could focus on those interests more and hone my skills.

I have no plans to return to the 9-to-5 and would only do so if our online businesses stopped working.

I started posting online to show the world a softer type of masculinity

In August 2022, I started posting snippets of my life on TikTok. My videos mainly showcase the meals I cook for Levi, but sometimes it's me braiding her hair, hemming her clothes, or fixing things around the house. I'm soft-spoken and have a gentle manner, and the comments from my mainly female audience have been overwhelmingly positive. These are all things I do anyway, but it was Levi's idea to share it with the world.

It was around the time that Andrew Tate , the anti-feminist influencer, was really popular, and there was an oversaturation of toxic masculinity online. We saw this need and an opportunity to present a kind, loving man in the online space. One thing I'm very proud of is showing the duality a man can have. I have both feminine and masculine characteristics, but I'm still a man.

I was raised in a very nurturing household where both my parents worked and split the domestic tasks evenly. Everyone contributed to the household, and gender was never tied to a specific role, so living this way has never affected my sense of masculinity.

Social media is giving young men a skewed image of what women want

Women often comment things like "Where do I buy mine?" on my content. And while it's always nice to hear that someone thinks I'm a good boyfriend, it's also sad that a loving dynamic seems to be a scarce thing.

Lots of women are looking for a man who will cook them a nice meal and be gentle, but maybe not enough men value these things.

I think toxic masculinity on social media might be giving young men and boys a skewed perspective of what women want. I hope to inspire other men to lean into their feminine traits more without feeling like it threatens their manhood.

Watch: It's tougher out there, says Diageo North America's chief marketing officer; "Productivity is really important"

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