This article should be a very rough outline in the process of creating a store or boutique based on e-commerce. In the high-performance and competitive world of fashion retail, your store is only the first step and, frankly, has little effect on how successful your store will be. For example, Bluefly.com estimates 840K monthly traffic, but since the publication in 1998 has never made a single year of profit. As of December 31, 2009, Bluefly had an accumulated deficit of $ 147,468,000. Your guess as to how they stay in business is as good as mine, but I think so. Even if you earn only 1 dollar of profit in the first year of your business, then you are technically better than Bluefly.
Please note that many of these steps can be performed simultaneously. For example, while you are submitting your legal forms, you can work on your web design. This is especially true if you are dependent on third-party developers and create your own website. They may work for a longer period than you thought. I strongly recommend that you first focus on the business plan. For example, if you decide that you are going to develop your website with a certain concept when you are writing your business plan, then you can find after researching that your concept is not the one with which you are going to move forward. In this case, you probably spent 40-60 hours on non-productive output.
1. Write a business plan.
To be honest with you, when my girlfriend and I launched our site, we didn’t have a business plan, but we did write. The simple fact is that if you are planning for success, then you must write a business plan sooner or later. In business school, you write this sooner rather than later. A business plan is important because it forces you to do research on the industry, your competitors, and your resources. In addition, it makes you think deeply about how you will succeed in this highly competitive industry. If you think you will be the same as Modcloth, then why expect them to be successful compared to Modcloth when they work with millions of venture capital funds for labor, marketing, inventory, etc. I have no answer for you, but I want to say that you need to develop a plan before you invest your life in this new venture. In addition, a business plan is important because it also makes you appreciate how much money you need and where it comes from. The reality is that if you do not have a real background in finance, you will not be able to build a projected model of discounting cash flow for 5-10 years and figure out your WACC, but having some approximate idea is better than nothing.
You should also include a plan on how you are going to set up your website first. For example, using a subscription-based basket will change your budget than if you decide to use an open source basket. In addition, you should also do your initial research on web hosting companies, as they can range from $ 10 per month to more than $ 300 per month. My only suggestion is that you get the fastest and most reliable version of your budget. Please note that all I suggest is that you plan what you are going to do in relation to web design and hosting, and not that you go out and pay for these services right now. The only expense that you can consider at the moment is that for registering a domain name. This is because they are reliably cheap to register, and you do not want you to miss the registration of your desired domain.
You need to come up with a budget and a plan for marketing, public relations and search engine optimization. Most likely, it will be your biggest expense in the future. Remember that buying inventory is not an expense, but an asset.
Last, but not least, you also want to schedule your order. It’s just a fancy way of telling you how you’re going to pack and ship your product, as well as the return procedure and policy you’ll have. Will you use USPS, UPS, FedEx or DHL? Will you have free shipping, returns and / or exchanges? That's all you need to plan, but it will change over time.
2. Apply for an Employer Identification Number with the IRS
Once again, if you are planning success in the future, you will have to run your business legally. You will need an EIN to open a bank account, apply for a business license, and obtain the seller’s permission. Just search for “EIN” in the Google search engine, and the IRS website should be the first result. When applying for an EIN, you need to know the legal structure of your business. For example, if your business becomes a show for a single man or woman, you will apply as an individual entrepreneur. If it turns out that you and your mother are going to manage the business, then you can choose a partnership or decide on the inclusion.
Choose your fictitious company name, Doing Business As, and tell your court clerk.
One of the most interesting steps in setting up your business will always be choosing a name. My friend chose TIL Darling because, before we were officially couples, she would tell me that in Thailand, in her home country, we could never go out alone, like even friends. I told her: "This is London, dear." So, I think our brand name should be TIL, Darling, to be more grammatically correct. If you have a fictitious company name, you need to make a pretty good attempt to make sure that no one else uses the same name. Otherwise, years down when you make money, you can expect a letter from a lawyer telling you how they are going to file a lawsuit with designer pants.
If your county / county clerk has a website with downloadable forms, then search for the DBA application form, fill it in and bring it to the county clerk. Otherwise, you will need to do everything personally. There you will probably have your first business account with a registration fee. Your second expense will be a requirement for you to advertise your new name in an approved newspaper or public publication so that if someone has a problem with your database administrator, they can take a step forward. The county clerk will be able to point you in the right direction for this step.
3. Open a bank account
Again, when planning future success, you will want to open a separate bank account for your business. Thus, you can track and easily separate business expenses from your personal expenses, write checks or make transactions under your company name and just feel like a real business.
4. Start creating and customizing your website.
There are actually several ways to promote your site. I will explore several options, starting with the most expensive and least expensive. Although I’ll have to wonder if the online business is working for you, but if you have limited experience with web design or you just don’t understand the Internet, you may need to do everything third-party. If you realize that you need someone to design your site, initially set up your domain and site, then you will probably need to find some kind of subscription basket. For example, if you have the money to spend, then search for “boutiquecommerce” in the Google search engine. This company will do anything from web design, domain registration, web hosting to ongoing support. There are many third-party shopping carts that fit almost any budget. Honestly, I have no experience with any payment or subscription basket, so I will limit any opinion that I have.
Another alternative is to purchase a website template designed on top of the free source platform (free). Find "templatemonster" in the Google search engine. Filter your search to enable e-commerce templates and select “mod” as a category, although you can at any time customize any template to suit your needs.
Before you start buying a template, you must set up your server. While researching a business plan, you had to figure out which web hosting service is best for you, but now is the time to spend some money, because you cannot check your template if you do not have a server to upload it. It also means that if you have not already done so, you will finally need to register your domain name, which you would also need to know in your business plan. Most web hosts will actually register your domain for free, but feel free to use a service like godaddy, and you will need to change the namerservers to point to your web host.
After you have a template and a web host, you need to upload your template and start customizing it. You can use the “template customization” service, or if you have enough experience with html, php and photoshop, you can do it yourself. Unfortunately, this step can be quite difficult even for some Internet-savvy users, because here you need to learn a little about setting up a database, setting up a database user and using an FTP program to download your site. Therefore, some may choose a third-party shopping cart, but this option is by far the most flexible and cheap if you have the time and want to learn.
You also need to find out how you will accept payment on your website. If you want to accept the credit cards that you need, you will need a payment gateway. The most popular will be PayPal Pro and Authorize.net. You will need to apply for an account.
Of course, there is the ultimate DYI approach, where you can not only create your own website, but also encode your own shopping basket. If this is the case, then I highly doubt that you need to read this section of my textbook.
5. Make business cards
Yes, I actually made it an individual step, because you need a business card to register for exhibitions, as well as a deal with suppliers. Since you are also working on the design of your website, it is also more efficient to work on the design of a business card. In addition, you need some time, because printers will charge extra for speeding up printing and delivery. So, if you plan ahead, you can save a lot of money.
6. Apply for a business license in your city
Once again, if you have a business-related website in your city, you should be able to download the application for a business license. In some cities you can even apply for a home business license. Of course, just fill out a license for a home business, if that's your business. Bring or even possibly send a completed application and submit the application to the appropriate place. The reason I put this step after designing your site is that the license fee for a business is an annual fee, and therefore why pay when you don’t even come close to launching your site.
7. Apply for Seller’s approval
At this stage, you should be quite experienced in the design of forms. The last application you need to have a file for your vendor is sometimes mistakenly called a resale license. The seller’s permit will allow you to buy from your wholesalers without paying sales tax, but also requires you to pay sales tax on any goods sold in your state every quarter. Of course, in modern commerce you can receive sales tax from your customers.
8. Find out how you are going to display your products.
Before you really start using your products, I think it is wise to first find out how you are going to display your products on your website. Are you going to use a dummy, model, or just put it in place. You will outsource your product photo or do it right in your bedroom and we will start with it. If you do it yourself, you still need to make sure that it fits your budget and business plan for the purchase of equipment. If you need equipment, then it’s time to either go online, or go out and start making real investments in your business.
9. Plan your product range and find suppliers.
While you are figuring out how you will absolutely display your products, you will want to start researching where you will buy your products. If you have not done this yet, then you will want to think about your product. Of course, it should fit perfectly into your business plan, concept and budget that you already set in step 1. Fashionable buying is another topic, and I highly recommend that you read it if you can.
Once you have some kind of purchase plan, it's time to find suppliers. If you're lucky, you can catch the MAGIC Marketplace in Las Vegas. They have sellers for vintage inspired clothing, clothing for juniors, indie clothing, etc. This is, in fact, the largest fashion show in the United States and, possibly, in the world. If you can not find suppliers in MAGIC, I would be honestly surprised. If you can't wait for a biennial exhibition, then you most likely need a trip to the Los Angeles fashion district. If you are looking for the glamorous world of designer labels, you'll spend your time on the “Crossing”. At this crossroads you will find the California Market Center, Cooper Design Space, Gerry Building and The New Mart. Here you can find brands like ABS By Allen Schwartz, BCBG and Betsey Johnson. If you are in this market, be sure to bring copies of the license to your business license, business card and seller. In addition, as an online business, be prepared to abandon many showrooms. If you really like me, it will only inspire you to success, so that when the time comes, you can abandon them.
If your price is much lower, then you really want to spend time around the San Pedro Mart area. You will probably find that 80-90% of these wholesalers are not suitable for your target market, but this means that you have to find 10% -20%, which is right, and you can focus on building these relationships in the future.
Of course, you can always access the Internet by registering on sites such as fashiongo and lashowroom. In addition, you can contact representatives of individual sales representatives, and they should send you the linear sheets and see the books. In fact, this will be the most in the future, but I invite you to visit the exhibitions and the shop windows so that your feet are a little wet.
10. Launch a product photo and add content to your site.
Since you should have previously planned for a product photo, this step should be clear. You want to add products to your site and prepare it for a more formal launch.
11. Start your marketing campaign, search engine optimization campaign and PR campaign.
Again, these campaigns should have been planned for the first stage. This step is almost a hundred different items separately, and therefore I will not go deep into it. The most rudimentary start is to submit your site to search engines such as Google and Yahoo!, Sign in to Google AdWords and launch your Facebook and Twitter account. There is probably a good chance that will have to depend on paid advertising to get decent traffic at the beginning, but I strongly recommend that you plan and budget accordingly.
It may take one day or a whole month, but you will receive your first order, and at this point you can finally say that you really created your own clothing store on the Internet.
12. Keep learning as much as you can.
As I said, the creation of an online clothing store is only the first step. In fact, you will need to learn as much as possible about buying fashion, merchandising, marketing, search engine optimization, html, php, ajax, javascript, analytics, etc.
