Mark Roemer Oakland Discusses How to Succeed with An Online Personalized Clothing Store

 Introduction

Clothing is an industry that will never go out of fashion. However, there are a few key tricks to win in this competitive sector. According to Mark Roemer Oakland, with the advent of online clothing stores, barriers to entry into the industry has reduced dramatically. Here’s how you can succeed with your own online personalized clothing store:

The Discussion

1. Select a niche - A niche will help you create a unique brand for your personalized clothing store so that you can target the right audience without going over-budget. For instance, if your niche is hoodies and t-shirts with funny clothing, it is too broad and includes a wide range of age groups and interests. Instead, you need to tighten up your resources and use them more effectively. For instance, instead of t-shirts and hoodies with funny slogans, it can be for t-shirts and hoodies with funny slogans for pet owners.

To evaluate your niche, you can look through the list of popular hobbies on Wikipedia and then scan through that niche’s subreddits. Compare the subscriber count of those subreddits with the size of that niche on Facebook with the social media platform’s Audience Insight Tool. You can also go with your gut and cater to communities you are a part of.

2. Don’t skimp on quality - Print jobs and fabrics aren’t made equal. You can’t skimp on quality for a few extra bucks in profit since that may hurt your brand and do more damage in the long run. It’s ok to stick to traditional hits like t-shirts, jiggers, masks, and hoodies instead of bandanas and socks. However, you need to carefully source the products and check their material, softness, weight, fit, sizing, and more. After you have a list of blank apparel you want for your store, it’s time to have a physical inspection with a few samples.

3. Create amazing designs - Yes, you want a personalized clothing store where people would be able to order customized apparel with their own designs. However, people always want more choice and that means you need to have a few great design templates. For inspiration, you can head over to the competition and the subreddit of your niche. Google Trends is a great resource for designs as well.

You can also create designs from scratch if you’re good with Photoshop and Illustrator, or hire a designer. Design communities like Dribble, Behance, and DeviantArt are good places for talent and design hunting.

4. Mockups and customization - You must have mockups ready for your own templates and anything that comes from the user. You can load mockups from MockupWorld for Photoshop. If Photoshop isn’t your thing there are other resources like Printify mockup generator and Placeit. You can also use customization plugins like Customify from Shopify to empower your users and show them the final result before they order.

Conclusion

Mark Roemer Oakland suggests that you also validate the market and check the demand for your niche before you invest in your personalized online clothing store.