Clothing store online

[kurara.livejournal.com]

[ This has been posted to different communities.. Sorry!! ]

Does anyone here have any experience with owning a clothing store online? I really want to open one, but I have no idea how to do this, and I have no one to help me. I really want to get help from my friends but they don't know what to do either. I have a lot of ideas for clothes to sell. Most of them would be EGL/lolita/fruits style clothes and I want to be able to sell clothes that couldn't be seen anywhere else. Can anyone help me? I mean, where should I start?

Comments

[clarice.livejournal.com]

Are you making these or reselling them? Either way, it's really easy to have a small-scale operation. Firstly, you'll need HTML skills (or a friend who has them) and some webspace. All you really need is samples of your work if you're making them, or photos of the items if they're premade. I've run a "business" like this off and on, and it's worked great for my needs.

[kurara.livejournal.com]

I'm making them..
If I was just reselling them, I would just open an ebay account. But how many items do you suggest to start with? And do I have to buy a LOT of fabric? and what would attract customers? ^^;;
Sorry for asking so many questions..

[clarice.livejournal.com]

That depends -- are you going to offer set styles or make custom designs? If you're going to offer set styles, having a sample of each is best, but if you don't, try to have a sample of as many as possible (so potential customers can gauge the quality and style of your work) and good drawings of other designs. If you're going to do exclusively custom work, post a gallery of your completed projects, along with an outline of what you'll do, turn around time, costs (if you chose to post it), etc. If you want to do both, simply have a combo page.

For me, personally, it works best to buy fabric for each order because I only do custom work and then I can be flexible with special request and I'm not stuck with a bunch of expensive fabric I'm not going to use. But, if you're potentially going to make a lot of the same style skirt or dress, it would be more economical to buy your lace in bulk spool from cheaptrims.com. It's a personal choice, really.

As for what attracts customers -- quality. Quality, quality, quality. 90% of US-based lolita seamstresses, simply put, suck. Decide what style you want, and perfect it. If you want to go gothic lolita, try copying or basing outfits on Baby! dresses. If you want to do elegant gothic loli, go with H. Naoto, etc. If you have a good photo gallery, fair prices for the quality of work, and some sort of assurances (comments from customers page is always a good idea once you get started) you'll get customers. After your first few orders, if good word of mouth spreads, you'll have more orders than you and your little Singer can keep up with. (Heck, I had more than I could deal with before I had a real photo gallery or any "name recognition").

[kurara.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I have to agree with you. I've seen a lot of stores with a lot of.. well.. ._. To put it bluntly, ugly-looking clothes. A lot of them were very bland and unoriginal as well.. And I don't want to make the same mistakes, you know?

Also, my second problem is time. I know I will need a lot of time, but what if I have so many orders that I can't keep up with them? Is it okay to tell the customers that they will have to wait a long time? Or do I just need to specify that on the website?

My last problem is kinda silly.. But.. It's about mixing styles. I don't want my store to be only EGL-related... This is what's going to be hard. I don't really want to -copy- a style, but I'd like to inspire myself of styles. What I want to do is to sell a lot of really girly and cute clothes that are inspired from Japanese street fashions including EGL. ..

But I know that a lot of people really want an actual style. I just don't like the way a lot of stores try to copy the style exactly.. I really hope I don't sound stuck up or offensive or anything. ^_^;; I'm not saying that the stores are bad either.. It's just not what I personally like and what I personally feel comfortable doing... But I see it as a problem because a lot of people seem to want only things they have seen before..

But maybe I'm wrong.. What do you think?

[kurara.livejournal.com]

Okay!! Thanks a lot for your advice!!

To be honest, I'm not an excellent seamstress.. I can do it, but I'm not completely sure how to fix certain mistakes that most EGL seamstresses make. I see what you mean about the way the clothes fit, and that's one thing that has been bothering me. Also I always notice that the dresses and the skirts have been made with strange materials, and I can't figure out what it is. When I make clothes for myself, I pretty much always use cotton. They aren't always 100% cotton, but I find that they still look pretty good.

There are lots of other things I'm clueless about related to this.. But I guess they are less important and now I have the answers I was looking for. ^^ Thank you!

[marle777.livejournal.com]

sorry about that.. stupid LJ posted it before I was done with the message! -__- Gomen!

[kurara.livejournal.com]

S'ok!!! :D

[marle777.livejournal.com]

I've been contemplating starting up an EGL/EGA clothing line myself (because yeah, the U.S. stuff sucks so far); even though I'm a novice at sewing my Mom is a professional and she's helping me. That coupled with my severe perfectionist trait should get me through when I'm ready to start.

But yeah, my point was this: for your first worry, you don't have to worry so long as you use quality materials (100% cotton lace, no icky polyester!) and good tailoring techniques. I've noticed the less attractive clothes lack shape and hang like a potato sack on the models; they also lack details. I'm sure you won't make the same mistakes because you've already noticed what doesn't look good and it's not likely that you'd make something similarly unattractive.

If you get overwhelmed with orders, do like many commission seamstresses do and close up shop for a little while until you've cleared up your backlog. They'll often say that they are booked for X number of weeks and they will post an approximate date when they will be ready to take orders again.

As for different styles, that's easy... you can have different "lines" of clothing that each style you're looking to offer falls under. If you wanted to do Fruitsy stuff you could have a label for that and a different label for your EGL inspired clothes. Know what I mean? A word of warning though, if you're looking to deviate significantly from the "traditional" EGL look and your clothes are only vaguely inspired by that style you may not want to directly call it EGL and just say it's inspired by EGL... people can get pretty sensitive about that. ^__^

All in all, do what makes you happy; if you don't feel comfortable copying a style, then don't. It's your clothing line, you can do what you want. ^__~ Me, personally, I don't see anything wrong with trying to copy the style; for us outside of Japan, it's not something easily accessible and we should be able to afford and obtain the styles we like just as well as the Japanese can. Besides that, copying styles in the fashion industry is an everyday procedure. No one even thinks twice about it. Good luck!

[kurara.livejournal.com]

Hmm.. You may be right about the different lines of clothing. Actually, I sort of thought about that... But then another problem came up.. @_@ and that's pretty much what I meant about being inspired by a certain style.. It's hard to decide what's really fruitsy or lolita or egl.. I see a lot of clothing stores that have frilly black skirts and they're just labeled as egl fashion .. But if I was selling a pink skirt with a lot of lace and bows, that wouldn't be necessarily in a certain category... Maybe I should just not try to advertise to a certain group of people, but just present the website as it is and not label it that way.. ^^;;; Btu I don't know if people would like that..

I don't see anything wrong with trying to copy the style either. It's just that I see a lot of stores who try to represent what's supposed to be the "typical EGL".. You know? Like a typical black dress with long puffed sleeves and a lot of lace. I don't suppose I can call that copying.. @_@ But.. Agh, it's hard to explain.. ^^;; I'll put it this way.. And it probably won't make sense.. But the American EGL style seems to be very different than the Japanese style.. And I don't want to sell something just because people like it.. There are elements of EGL that I like, but I admit there are elements that I dislike as well... And it's just my personal tastes, but I want these tastes to reflect on the stores.. you know?

x_x;;;

I hope I made sense ^^;;

::HIDES::

[mmymoon.livejournal.com]

Wah, I totally know what you mean about the "American Loli" stuff... buuurruu... too many leg-of-mutton-sleeves... *dies*

HOORAY FOR COTTON. Cotton is just... ugh, so much nicer to wear than most things. And it lasts longer.

*giggles* If you start making adorable pink things with bows, I will have to shop at your store! *hearts*

[kurara.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think most American Loli stuff is more like.. the older "kindergoth" trend.. It's been around for a long time.. I'm just not a big fan of goth stuff. ^^;;

And thanks ^.^!

[marle777.livejournal.com]

Wee.. I'm all late replying an stuff! But yeah, don't worry about how to label your styles and whatnot. Just go with what makes you happy, as long as you don't blatantly mis-represent your stuff people won't get upset. And gods yes, I know what you mean about the tired looking American EGL styles, it never really hits the mark on the way the Japanese clothes look. Please show us something more inspired than that stuff! But I'm sure you'll do great! ^__^

[iamdollface.livejournal.com]

Since you are new to sewing and selling, you might consider only making one or two of each design and posting them on your site. When they sell, you can make more if you feel like it or move on-- that way you don't get caight up with orders for a piece you are already bored with making. Case in point, I sculpt dolls. That is how I run my web shop. Otherwise I would still be filling orders for the silly "Joey Ramone Action Figure" I made as a lark seven years ago.

good luck!

[kurara.livejournal.com]

Thanks!