The Ultimate Guide to Starting a Fashion Brand with No Experience

Starting a fashion brand from scratch can feel both thrilling and intimidating, especially if you have no prior experience in the fashion industry. Maybe you’ve been dreaming about seeing your designs online and in-store or envision a brand that stands for something meaningful to you. But as you’ve probably already discovered, bringing this dream to life takes more than creativity alone.

This guide will walk you through why each stage of launching a fashion brand is essential, highlighting the purpose behind each step.

Think of it as a taster, giving you a bird’s-eye view of the journey and setting you on the path toward your new venture!

1. Brand Vision and Identity: Why It’s Crucial to Get Clear on Who You Are

Creating a fashion brand begins with knowing exactly who and what your brand is. Successful brands aren’t born from generic ideas; they come from a clear sense of purpose and personality. Your brand identity is more than a name or a logo—it’s the heartbeat of your brand, influencing everything from design to marketing. When you have a solid brand identity, every decision flows from this foundation, making it easy to connect authentically with your target audience.

Why? Without a clear brand identity, it’s easy to lose direction and end up with a brand that blends in rather than stands out. Your audience wants to know what makes you unique. This is why developing a solid vision is one of the first things we dive into in The Fashion Startup Academy—because it all starts here.

2. Target Audience: Why Knowing Your Customer Is Your Secret Weapon

Fashion brands succeed when they resonate with the right audience. Knowing who your customer is goes beyond simple demographics—it’s about understanding their needs, values, and how your brand fits into their lives. An in-depth understanding of your audience helps you design pieces that will truly speak to them.

Why? If you don’t know who you’re designing for, your collections may fall flat. It’s like trying to have a conversation without knowing who’s on the other side. In The Fashion Startup Academy, I teach you how to dig into audience research so that your brand speaks directly to the people who’ll love it most.

3. Design, Range Planning, and Product Selection: Why a Strategic Approach Is Essential

The design phase is where your vision becomes tangible. From choosing fabrics to selecting colours, every design choice contributes to your brand’s story and appeal. Range planning is equally crucial—it’s where you decide the balance of pieces in your collection, such as core items, statement pieces, and seasonal trends. Product selection, on the other hand, helps determine which items make the final cut and ultimately represent your brand in the marketplace.

And then, there’s the tech pack—an essential yet often overlooked part of the process for new fashion founders. A tech pack is a blueprint that translates your design into a language that manufacturers understand. It includes technical specifications, materials, sizing details, and construction notes, ensuring that your vision is brought to life with accuracy and consistency.

Why? A strategic approach to design, range planning, and product selection ensures that your collection is cohesive, on-brand, and aligned with customer needs. Without a clear vision and balanced range, even the best designs can fall short in the market. By thoughtfully selecting products that fit within a well-planned range, you create a collection that is not only visually appealing but also commercially viable. Without a tech pack, the production process can become a game of guessing, leading to costly mistakes and miscommunications. By preparing clear, precise tech packs, you ensure that your designs are executed precisely, saving you time and resources.

When you work with me, I take you through each stage. This ensures you’re not just designing what looks good, but what will connect with your customers and succeed in the competitive fashion landscape.

4. Sourcing and Manufacturing: Why Choosing the Right Partners Is Key

Finding reliable, ethical, and high-quality manufacturers can be one of the trickiest aspects of starting a fashion brand. Choosing the right partners means ensuring that your brand values are upheld throughout production and that your final product meets your quality standards.

Why? Partnering with the wrong suppliers can lead to production delays, quality issues, or even ethical dilemmas. This stage of the process is foundational for creating a reliable brand, which is why I've got your back with my little black book of manufacturers who welcome working with startups and offer smaller MOQs. I can guide you on sourcing and working with manufacturers who align with your vision to make the whole process seamless.

5. Product Development: Why Quality and Uniqueness Matter

Your products are your brand’s ultimate representation. This is why understanding the product development process is crucial, from concept to prototype and production. The fashion market is saturated with options, so creating pieces that stand out and reflect quality is a must.

Why? Rushing through product development can lead to quality issues and lacklustre products that don’t resonate with your audience. A well-thought-out product not only builds customer loyalty, but also sets the foundation for your brand’s reputation, bringing designs to life without compromising quality or uniqueness.

6. Brand Marketing and Storytelling: Why Marketing Matters as Much as Your Product

Brand marketing is more than advertising—it’s about telling a story that your customers can connect with. People are increasingly buying from brands they feel a connection to, so crafting a message that’s authentic and resonates with your audience is crucial.

Why? Even with amazing products, if you don’t market your brand effectively, no one will know about it. Good marketing is how you turn your brand into something people can’t wait to talk about. Understanding how to create a unique marketing plan that captures your brand’s story in a way that feels authentic to you is paramount.

7. Launch Strategy: Why Timing and Planning Are Everything

Your brand’s launch is your first major step into the industry, and you want it to be memorable. A well-executed launch strategy sets the tone for everything that follows and can make or break your entry into the market. Understanding trends, retail, seasonality and a realistic calendar is going to be your first step to getting it right.

Why? Timing, strategy, and preparation are key. A strong launch creates buzz, positions your brand, and can help you start building a loyal customer base.

8. Building Long-Term Success: Why Consistency and Growth Mindset Matter

Once your brand is up and running, the work doesn’t stop. Successful fashion brands are built on a commitment to growth and evolution, maintaining consistency in quality and branding while adapting to industry changes.

Why? Building a brand is a long-term journey, and adapting to new trends, customer feedback, and industry shifts keeps your brand relevant.

Ready to Start Your Journey?

Starting a fashion brand without experience might feel like an uphill climb, but with the right guidance, each step becomes a manageable part of your success story. This guide has hopefully given you a taste of what’s involved in creating a brand from scratch. To go deeper and learn how to bring your vision to life, consider joining The Fashion Startup Academy.

In the course, you’ll get practical, actionable advice on every stage of launching a brand, with insider insights from someone who’s been in the industry for 20 years. Don’t let lack of experience hold you back—let’s turn that passion into a thriving brand!

Book your behind the scenes tour here and see if it's a good fit for you or schedule the free tour from my calendar below

See you in the front row,

Michelle.

#FashionStartup #FashionBrand #FashionDesign #FashionEntrepreneur #FashionBusiness

How To Really Get Started With Your Fashion Brand.

Information is abundant online and available to any budding fashion start-up, via search engines, YouTube, social media, and websites from industry experts like myself etc, which sounds like a fantastic resource, doesn’t it?

But is this actually helping you launch your clothing line or is it overwhelming you to the point of paralysis?

In theory, access to all of this information should be like gold dust given that within seconds, information is available at our fingertips on any search you conduct online. You should become proficient in your chosen areas or find out how to do something you previously struggled with because this wealth of information is so accessible.

Through talking to my clients, and working with so many fashion start-ups over the last decade, my experience is that instead of this information being helpful, it often turns into the exact opposite and suddenly becomes a hindrance.

On client discovery consultations, I find founders like you aren’t approaching me feeling confident about starting up a fashion brand, having gathered this information online. Consuming this information isn't leaving you more empowered, and knowledgeable, or feeling you have it all figured out, rather you're confused, often a little bit worried, very unsure, and generally lost. Are you feeling this way?

So why is having access to this information holding you back? The simple answer is information overload causes overwhelm, which in turn, causes paralysis. When you don't know what you're doing it's hard to understand which parts are right for you and so you're left feeling stuck.

Trying to digest the advice from various sources, you’ll find one expert telling you how to do something one way, and another telling you that’s the route to avoid.

This conflicting information is difficult to decipher and work out which is the correct answer. And that's because it's super generic, so in reality, both are probably true, but they're only true for certain startups and not for everyone. Generic advice is the worst in a lot of ways and a blanket approach really doesn't hep you move forward. Knowing which methods are correct for you and your brand is the key to unlocking what you need to do next.

The second reason this overwhelm occurs, is when you start researching how to start a fashion brand you inevitably come across information for all of the different stages involved, but not necessarily in the right order, and I think that this can be quite damaging to your progress and ability to follow it through.

Here is an example to map out the typical experience I see happen on a day-to-day basis working with clothing brand founders who are exploring setting up a clothing label, and I bet this story sounds familiar to you.

Stage 1 Jekyll & Hyde

It all starts with an idea, and this stage can feel seriously exciting when you’ve landed on a brilliant business idea. Perhaps you have identified a gap in the market, or maybe you want to introduce something innovative into the marketplace. Maybe you’re eternally searching for something that you can’t find to wear yourself, or you know you could improve on current available options.

As well as having this exciting energy, you also have the matched opposite negative energy, which arises from doubts, risk and, and the realisation you don’t know how to go about any of this.

So you’ll probably spend weeks or months in this stage going back and forth with yourself, wondering whether your idea is viable or if this is something that you can realistically achieve. There will be some days where you feel ultra motivated and then there’ll be other days where you think you're crazy to even entertain this. Additionally, you'll repeatedly park the idea for a few days, weeks or even months but you’ll keep returning to the idea, regretting the break and wish that you’d kept going.

Spoiler alert...this is a really good sign that you want to pursue this as a business idea and a great reflection of your passion to follow it through.

Stage 2. The Magpie

During the magpie stage you realise that to understand the viability of this venture, then you need to start learning what you need to do in more depth. Exploring the stages involved in launching a fashion brand will see you start to set some time aside for research. You’ll find yourself signing up for many things, following an influx of new accounts on social media and stalking various experts online to see what you can glean from them. This is the stage where the overwhelm really starts to kick in.

When gathering this information, you uncover what is involved from all aspects of the journey, from design, getting samples made, finding and working with a factory, designing a website, marketing your brand, and launching and selling the finished products.

At this stage, it's easy to go off on tangents because they either feel like quick wins or another area you don't know much about to add to the expanding to-do list.

You want to take some action, and feel like you are nudging forward in some way, so you start to do things like sign up for a web design account then you realise that you need to investigate e-commerce, or start thinking about marketing, and enrol in a short course around this. You realise you need to think about a brand name and come up with a logo, so you start investigating graphic designers or branding agencies, you then also start thinking about working with factories so you go ahead and start researching where you can get something manufactured.

It’s a classic case of "shiny new object syndrome", where you’re jumping about all over the place without a plan or goal, and it’s very time and energy-intensive. It' also not sustainable.

Stage 3 The Hermit

This is where you feel utterly exhausted from trying to consume all of the information you've gathered and realise that jumping about trying to shuffle every single aspect of what might be involved in launching a fashion brand, is taking up all of your spare time. You can't read all of this info, keep up with the new people that you’re following on social media, open the emails and the downloads in your inbox, playing around with web design and graphics whilst also thinking about your products and make designs for your collection.

It’s too much for anyone to do at once, so you reach burnout and give up. This is really common!

At the hermit stage, you'll take a break from your business venture because it’s just too much and you want to re-evaluate things. This is the most risky stage, because it’s this stage where you either let the overwhelm win and let yourself drown, seeing your brilliant idea float away into the void. Or you decide things need to change for the better. Don't be surprised if this stage lasts for six months!

Stage 4 - The Bear

After your hiatus, you're like a bear coming out of hibernation. You're rested and on the hunt to get started. You’ve let things settle and taken in some of the information but also had a rethink, and it’s at this stage that most founders will come to the realisation that their previously employed scattergun approach doesn't work and has gotten them nowhere.

When you've spent six months, or even a year or two going around in circles in these various stages, dedicating tons of time, but not making any progress, it can feel frustrating. 

Now is the time to tame some of the noise that is the excited jumble of ideas in your head, and master the menagerie of tasks on your to-do list, working out only the next few steps. It's a new season and you're ready to take a new aproach.

Stage 5 - The Phoenix

Like a phoenix rising from the ashes you're actually finding your wings at this stage and making progress. Once you have that plan in place and understand the more ordered approach gets you further faster you feel like you're working smarter. Yes, it's still going to require dedication and hard work but instead of generic advice you're finding investing in tailored help is fast tracking your brand. You can cut out a lot of that unnecessary background noise, hit unsubscribe on the emails you're not reading and concentrate on the task in hand for the next few steps.

I show people what those next steps are for them by implementing The Fashion Expert® Plan Create & Launch method, and clients find that this is a much more successful approach which actually gets results.

The method is all about road-mapping and breaking things down into bite-sized chunks that are prioritised so you have a plan of what to focus on. That way you can direct your precious time and energy, and where appropriate your startup capital, to the tasks you need to do next.

Here are my top tips for getting it right...

1. First of all, understand which methods, tasks and steps are most appropriate for you and what you're trying to achieve. Remember your product or clothing line may require a different route to market than someone you've seen online. It's not a one size fits all. Without this clarity, you'll never get it right.

2. If you need some help figuring that out, then work with an expert who knows what you don't. I run hour-long sessions and 2-hour deep dives where we can map all this out on a call together. You'll go away with a plan, a to-do list, tons of knowledge and the confidence you understand what to focus on next.

3. Make a list of all the tasks you think you need to cover in your journey. It's ok if this is a brain dump for now, we will get to the organisation next.

4. Review this list and organise tasks into short, mid and long-term goals. This will help shift your focus on what needs to be done next, and give you insight into what is ahead. Understanding the order of the whole start-up process means you won't be wasting time on things that don't matter right now, and you're less likely to make costly mistakes.

5. Check in regularly with these short, mid and long-term lists and refocus or rearrange them when necessary. Just because something is written down doesn't mean it's set in stone.

6. Be patient and understand you probably won't tick everything off your list in the desired timeframe everytime...and that's OK...it's called life. Just make sure you get back on it when you can.

7. Make sure you're not falling into the busy fool scenario of working on everything yet achieving nothing. Be a phoenix, not a Magpie!

If you need help with getting clear on a plan that's right for your fashion startup brand then drop a comment below, email me info@thefashionexpert.com or book a free chat here and I'll help you get started today.

See you in the front row,

Michelle.

#fashionstartup #fashionbusiness #fashionadvice #fashionmentor #howtostartaclothingline #startaclothingbrand #startafashionlabel #howtostartafashionbrand

How You Can Use Pantone's Colour Of The Year.

In case you missed it, Pantone announced their Colour Of The Year - Peach Fuzz 13-1023 and I personally love it! OK, I'm a little biased as it's pretty on-brand for me. But love it or hate it, you're going to be seeing a lot of it in store this year and beyond.

"PANTONE 13-1023 Peach Fuzz captures our desire to nurture ourselves and others. It's a velvety gentle peach tone whose all-embracing spirit enriches mind, body, and soul. In seeking a hue that echoes our innate yearning for closeness and connection, we chose a colour radiant with warmth and modern elegance. A shade that resonates with compassion, offers a tactile embrace, and effortlessly bridges the youthful with the timeless." Leatrice Eiseman, Executive Director, Pantone Color Institute™

So as a fashion brand, how can you incorporate it into your collections?

Tactile fabrics.

This colour is screaming to be applied to anything with a texture whether this be something with a pile such as velvet, velour and towelling to something more subtle like a brushed finish on cotton, both jersey and wovens. In Autumn think borg, faux fur and wool.

If we don't see an iconic best-selling coat in these peachy tones I'll be astounded.

Dresses and skirts.

Although not limited to these categories, this peach tone is a perfect base for ditsy prints and large-scale abstracts alike. Add terracotta, white and khaki for a Mediterranean feel or zing it up with aqua and hot pink.

Shirts and tops.

This is sure to be a perfect summer injection colour in T-shirts, polos and jersey styles across all markets. The colour pairs well with classic colours such as navy and grey as well as neutrals such as coffee, tan and creme brulee.

Athleticwear.

Peach Fuzz lends itself nicely to Yogawear and the well-being market in general not least because of it's evocative connection with mind body and soul. Add some boldness to athleticwear with bright sunset-rich colours and pops of black and white.

Accents.

You don't have to go full-on with this colour and if you're not sure about it, try using it as an accent in branding, trims and accessories.

I'd love to know what you think of the colour and if you're hoping to use it in your collection. If you need help defining colours for your collection or any aspect of design and industry help just drop me a line at info@thefashionexpert.com

See you in the front row,

Michelle.

#fashiontrends #fashionbusiness #fashionstartup #ss24trends #colourtrends #ss24colours #runwaytrends #pantone #pantonecolouroftheyear #pantonecolouroftheyear24 #fashionexpert