Have you been thinking about setting up your own vintage business? Here’s what you need to know:

Decide which type of clothing to specialise in

So, you have made the decision that you wish to run a vintage clothing business, but to build up a dedicated customer base, you will need to specialise in a specific era or trend for the customer to have faith in your products. For example, it wouldn’t be wise to mix ladies 1930’s fashions with 1980’s punk because your audience will be confused as to where your expertise lies and whether your stock is genuine vintage. A trusted vintage store is one that concentrates on a particular period and can provide a substantial amount of knowledge on the item of clothing they are selling.

Build up your inventory

Being a good vintage business owner is being in the know of the best places to source clothes. Many turn to the likes of eBay, thrift stores or garage sales to find unwanted belongings that are going for low prices. Before you make any purchases, research whether the item you have found will make a substantial profit and ask for the specific details to avoid being ripped off. Don’t overlook clothing in poor condition (e.g., with tears and holes), as these items could make you the most significant amount of profit, rroviding yourself or a professional company can make the necessary repairs to restore them back to their former glory.

Choose where to sell

Many businesses are now choosing to run solely online as it is much easier to keep the outgoing costs to a minimum, with no large overheads to think about. While some businesses choose to use platforms such as eBay and Etsy, it would be advised to look into selling your clothing on an ecommerce platform such as Shopify. This site allows you to create your own domain name, build your online store with customisable themes and keep track of orders with the single dashboard feature. Not only can you do without having to invest in a good website, but all of your business dealings are kept in one place and can be accessed from your smartphone. It means that wherever in the world you may be, you’re always kept in the loop on how efficient your business is running.

Use clear photographs

It would be wise to hire a professional photographer to take photos of your stock if you haven’t yet invested in a high-quality camera or studio set-up. Although this can be costly, there is a greater chance of your clothing selling, rather than simply hanging them on the back of the door looking lifeless. Not only will this come across as unprofessional, but potential customers are likely to be off-put if they can’t see what the garment looks like when worn. With this in mind, you may also need to purchase a mannequin or hire a model to showcase your clothing properly. Outdoor shots are great for magazine-style photographs; whereas studio shots are ideal for focusing the attention on solely the garment.

If you are home based entrepreneurs or a small business owner, then you will one day reach a point where you want to grow some more. That was the whole point of owning a business or becoming an entrepreneur. At this point, you are possibly considering how advantageous an e-commerce internet merchant account can be. If you are accepting check and cash payments, you will want to increase the number of ways your customer can pay you for your services or goods. With a merchant account, you can increase to accepting credit card payments and so much more and this is why so many people doing business on the internet opt for an internet merchant account.

If you have not yet put your business on the internet, now is a good time as ever. In this day and age, you need to have an online presence. With the opening of an e-commerce internet merchant account, you can now go forward with putting a website in place to promote your business. More consumers are doing business online, and they are searching for the right companies to be loyal to.

The act of conducting business on the internet is known as e-commerce which is also sometimes spelt as e-commerce. E-commerce is currently growing at a very rapid rate. With an operational website, you can reach far more consumers than you are now entering. You can bring out new product lines faster and provide consumers with all the information that they need right at their fingerprints. You can include prices, descriptions and anything about your product lines that will hit home with your target market. When customers from all around the world can find you on their computer and can pay you with their favourite payment method, then they will bookmark your website and keep coming back.

Getting an e-commerce internet merchant account can get you up in ranks competing with larger companies in your niche market. While you are still just taking cash and checks, they are offering consumers more payment methods and so are capturing the market share. Why not even up the playing field by also offering more payment method options to your potential customers. And you can do this with an e-commerce internet merchant account. This can help you to increase your sales volume and promote your business to grow.

Once you start accepting more payment methods, then you will start looking even more attractive to your target audience. You will be offering consumers convenience and customers want satisfaction in every way, shape and form. Adding a website with useful information and your great products and services will win over even more customers which is what you want.

Apply for an e-commerce internet merchant account, so you can start benefitting your customers more and attracting new ones. With new customers, there is always growth to be expected, and this is why people go into business. The sky is the limit when you start using an e-commerce internet merchant account.

You will find a lot of books online selling the way to make money online. They will go into some amount of detail, but they never reveal the details of what is necessary. They just want you to spend your money on getting their system and following that system should make you money online. But at the end of all of that, you are left at the mercy of those who will visit your website. And what if no visitors come? Then you won’t be earning. This is why you will need a website design company who can help you design the most efficient website at the most affordable price.

You want your website to be attractive and compelling if you are going into business. This is how you are going to get on the internet and make your mark while earning an income. It is essential to have a good quality website, and affordability is equally essential. Starting out you don’t have a lot of money to get going, and you don’t want to start with massive overheads. This could lead you to debt, and that is never the point of starting a business whether online or offline.

Some companies offer affordable e-commerce website design who are experts in the field. They will provide you with all the tools necessary to make your presence felt in the market once your website goes live. With the right site in place, you can quickly create your product or service the next big thing. You want to start off with a bang with a fully functioning website that is impressive. It needs to draw customers to it and impress them right away.

Getting the website nicely designed and up and running is the first hurdle on the road to success with an internet business. Once you have this site in place, you now need to ensure you are marketing it to the best of your abilities. Most often your web design company can help you with that aspect as well or can steer you in the right direction.
Affordable e-commerce website design is not hard to find. And when I say affordable I don’t mean you should go out there looking for the cheapest service provider because we all know cheap is so often not good. Instead, you want an affordable service provider with a track record of success in creating top quality websites, so you know you will be getting value for money.

The easiest way to set up payments on your e-commerce website is with the use of open source e-commerce scripts. Typical examples of these are zen-cart and oscommerce shopping carts. You can quickly get these scripts set up with your web hosting and thereby have the opportunity to collect credit card payments.

You have two choices for accepting payments. You can receive these payments directly from your website, or you can have your customers routed to another site (called a gateway website) where they will make their payment. The option you choose has a lot of dependency on your budget. But if you are trying to reach a broader target and you have the capital you will want to start out with both options. If you are concerned about your budget, then a third party merchant will be the most affordable option as well as it will be one of the most comfortable options for you to choose from. The most popular third-party currently is PayPal, but they are not your only option. You can also select from 2checkout payment processing or VeriSign payment processing. There may be other options as well that will meet your needs better and help you to reach an international target market as well.

When you choose a third-party merchant, the customer is provided with a link that takes them to the third party. They then make their payment on that third party website before returning to your e-commerce website. When choosing third-party merchants though you may want to pick a merchant that will help you reach a target market in a different part of the world you want to ensure that you choose a trustworthy provider. If you are finding no fee or low fee options they may not be the best options at all. Stick with more reputable providers to keep yourself safe and to keep your customers safe; an evil third party merchant can ruin your reputation so beware.

If you haven’t started your e-commerce website as yet, you may want to find a web hosting provider that provides you with a package that includes a merchant account to be integrated into your e-commerce store. One such option is ixwebhosting. This is especially true if this is your first venture into the world of website creation. Get the experts to design your website from start to finish and to have your payment integration done as well. This way you can be confident when you start to market your store knowing that customers will be able to pay for their products and services in the most convenient manners for making payments online.

E-commerce is easier than you think, and our how-to guide will help you get your online clothing store up and running now.

What you need to do is:

1. CHOOSE A BRAND NAME:

• Is it easy to remember
• Non-exclusive to a particular garment or style
• Available for Business Name Registration
• Available for domain names

2. GET PRODUCTS:

What are you going to sell? Shorts, shirts, dresses, skirts, shoes; all of the above?

Know your niche and target demographic. Get inside their mind. What do they want? Once you have your product don’t just release it into the online world and hope for the best. Test it.

Hold a “focus group” [for market research] to see whether people like your product. Have some friends and other opinionated people [from all age brackets and demographics] come and see your product, try it on, and give their two-cents about it. Have a list of questions ready, including what do they like/not like about the product and how much are they willing to pay for it?

A great way to start out if you have designs for clothing graphics but don’t want to print them all yourself is with The Printful, they drop ship all sorts of products featuring your designs and you can decide how much you want to charge your customers.

3. GET A SHOPPING CART:

The easiest and fastest way to get your online clothing store live is to register with a shopping cart. We use Shopify as the interface is easy to use and suits small e-commerce stores with the option to upgrade as you grow. They keep updating their templates and applications so there is heaps of flexibility and freedom to tailor your website to customers. For the 10 best Shopify apps click here.

A shopping cart is easier than self-hosting because you can have a website set up in 30 minutes through a shopping cart without having to worry about trust certificates and getting someone to design your webpage. If thinking of self-hosting you have to pay for the domain name, pay for hosting, security, webpage design, get coding done and you can’t just go in and easily edit your website when you like.

With a shopping cart software like Shopify you can go in behind the scenes and change your logos or page information, add or delete products, change freight information, choose your own credit card payment gateway and select or edit a new template store design. There’s no mucking around with html (although you have the freedom to if that’s your realm of expertise or enjoyment).

It’s so much faster and easier to get your website up and running through a shopping cart and getting your site live is first priority. You can always change to self-hosting down the track if you wish.

4. GET A DOMAIN NAME:

You can either buy a domain name [www.clothes.com] through a host or buy it through Shopify and have it all integrated. It’s worthwhile buying the additional domain endings for your site if they are available (i.e. .net; .net.au; .co etc.). It’s a small price to pay for extra security and so that if people forget the ending of your website they can still reach it.

5. PUT PRODUCTS ON YOUR SITE:

So now that you have a website you can start uploading products to sell (although before you’re ready to go live you may want to set up a landing page/under construction banner).

Useful pages to have on your website include:

• ABOUT US
• COLLECTIONS
  • WOMENS
  • MENS
  • DESIGNERS
  • CATEGORIES
• SIZING
• FAQs
• RETURNS & SHIPPING
• CONTACT US
• BLOG

You’ll need photos of products, including descriptions (pricing, sizing, colour etc.) which all adds to SEO so don’t just skip over this part. It will take time but if you do it right now it will save a lot of time later on.

Be sure to include a sizing chart, especially if including international shipping. Have both a measurement chart (in centimetres) and an international conversion chart.

6. UPLOAD SITE INFORMATION:

Now that you have pages on your website you need to upload information correspondingly.

If you want to integrate Google Shopping with your products you need to get the categories right otherwise Google won’t use them. For more information on Google Shopping click here.

When writing product descriptions and page content it is important to integrate with keywords so that your site is optimised for Google. You’ll need to use Google Keyword Planner which is part of a Google Adwords account. Basically you can see what the monthly search volume is for a specific word or phrase, and if there is much competition for these search results. The aim is to pick ones which have a high search volume but which are low in competition.

You can use adwords here so that an ad pops up at the top of Google. The less competition there is the cheaper the adwords will be. You have to make sure that you are targeting people who are looking to buy, not just those searching for information on a specific product or designer.

Be creative and interesting with site content; you need both quality and quantity. Know your demographic and write for them; use jargon which is suitable for your audience.

7. INTEGRATE PAYPAL:

So your products are uploaded with prices and descriptions, pages are finalised with stimulating and optimised content. Now it’s time to integrate PayPal (or another payment gateway of your choosing). This is easy to do through Shopify.

8. SET UP SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNTS

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Instagram
• Pinterest
• YouTube
• Tumblr
• LinkedIn
• Google+

At least get the usernames for all the above social media websites even if you don’t end up using them. Your target demographic will dictate which ones you use primarily but target Facebook, Twitter and Instagram initially. Have similar content to your website but slightly different, but maybe more personalised and socially directed.

9. PROMOTIONAL STRATEGY

• Social media strategy:

After acquiring social media accounts you need to think about a strategy which targets your market demographic. What hash tags will you use, will you run competitions to increase sharing, will you build an online community and hold one-off events for your followers/customers?

Write down a list of things you would like to do through social media and break it down into daily tasks. Draw up a schedule and set a reminder so you don’t forget to post regularly. Think of ways to create interesting content which you can post across all channels of social media. Include photos, write quirky things and don’t just sell. Be creative because at the end of the day people aren’t going to buy from you if you just push them to buy all the time. Build a relationship with your followers and you’ll have more chance of getting repeat customers and recommendations.

• Advertising:

You may also want to inquire about advertising online on a specific website or in an e-newsletter to reach more people. Costs vary depending on the type and placement of the advertising as well as the reputation of the website and how well-known it is. Advertising on blogs is quite popular but can be more expensive than banner advertising on a site. Responses vary so you’ll want to research and compare the input vs. output cost and outcome.

• Markets:

Another promotional strategy is to have a stall or a pop-up stall at local markets. Not everyone is a fan of online shopping so if you go to markets and people see, try on, and buy your clothes, they are far more likely to buy from you online. It is a way of getting known in the local community and spreading via word-of-mouth. Building credibility online takes time so to help speed the process strengthen the relationship between you and your customers, markets can be a sure-fire way to accomplish this.

10. LAUNCH TIME

So probably by now you’re at a stage where you are ready or close to being ready to launch your product or clothing label. There are a series of things you can do to promote yourself further by launching and getting your name out there:

• Live website
• Hype (YouTube video) – circulate via social media
• Launch party with some industry people
• Blog post/news article on your new brand