There are various categories in the fashion industry, one of them being activewear. The global activewear market has been rapidly growing in recent years to $394 billion in 2023, meaning that there is plenty more space to grow for new brands that cater to extraordinary and innovative designs and concepts. Also, due to the pandemic, many people have looked for different ways to stay active yet away from each other to keep a social distance. The rise of activewear is one of the fastest in the entire garments sector, as discussed in this article by Forbes.
Now, have you ever thought of starting your own activewear business but be all at sea to make it happen? Here are the 5 steps to successfully begin your activewear business!
Starting Up
Starting an activewear business means finding the concept and your peculiar identity before you start anything else. Maybe for the last few years, you haven’t been satisfied with the existing activewear around you, or you have a fantastic idea for a concept that can fill the gaps in the current activewear business.
It’s crucial to know who your target customer is in order to set the activewear niche you are going to cover in the market. Now, it’s time to develop and advance both your concept and identity. Once you have a strong belief in your extraordinary concept and peculiar identity, you can start to go out and make it happen by connecting your idea to the customer’s needs.
Market Research
The next step is to understand your competitors and check out the current trending clothes in the activewear business by researching the market. You can hop from one store to another and take notes of what’s happening in the industry. By understanding your competitors, you can make your brand stand out from the crowd. You can start with this list of the most famous existing activewear brands.
After that, define your target customer. Knowing your target customer is one of the most important things, along with the activewear niche in the market. This is why it’s vital to have an exceptional idea so that your target customers will remember your product and can’t get it from another seller.
Now, you’re all ready to set up your business plan, and budget, and looking for your dream team!
Start to Design Your Collection
After you’re done with steps 1 and step 2, now you can prepare for step 3 to build your activewear business.
You have to define the range. When the foundation step is all set, now is the time to start designing your first collection. In this step, you will focus on choosing the best and most suitable materials. This is where you develop the design into the product by crafting mood boards first to ensure your collection is clear and cohesive.
This is the fun yet exhausting part; designing your collection! After you’ve found your aesthetic direction, you will have a structured and defined collection. It may be helping to hire a freelance fashion designer to ease your work. But, ensure they know and understand your brand and target market! The styles should also fit in with the values, vision, mission, and identity of your brand.
Furthermore, you can depend on designers to craft great tech packs for you to start the sampling and manufacturing process. These tech packs will be the blueprint of your products and help manufacturers to quote your prices and to create your prototypes.
Choose Reputable Manufacturer
You don’t want your first collection to come out poorly, so make sure to choose a reputable and trusted activewear manufacturer.
Sampling
After you find your desired manufacturer that can meet your expectations, you move to the next step! This step is a crucial part of the activewear business process. Although you already have great activewear designs, you’ll still want your designs to be transformed into pretty wearable while looking and fitting activewear the way you want them to and finding a great pattern based on the tech packs.
The tech packs will be the blueprint for you to start making samples because it offers technical information that you can use to develop product samples. After you approved the sample, you can create a spec sheet containing all the measurements and grading in case your product comes in different sizes.
With the pattern, you can start crafting your prototypes. In between every prototype process, you will measure, fit, and adjust the pattern/fit to make some improvements. Usually, you will need 2–3 prototypes for each style before you have a sample ready to show and sell.
Mass Manufacturing & Shipping
Once you have your final sample, you can start to plan the mass manufacturing. Don’t forget to discuss everything with your chosen garment manufacturer from the very beginning, because they have to plot your production schedule to their timeline. They also need to know how large your production will be, and the number of styles and sizes per style.
When your production is all set, check in with your logistics and find a trusted shipping partner to help you deliver your products to your customers. All these contacts will be useful for you when it’s finally time to deliver and expanse your products to your customers.
Marketing Your Brand
Nowadays, everything is about marketing. Even though you have the best product in the custom activewear business, it doesn’t matter when no one buys them. You need to convince the market with the best story and great marketing. You want your product to sell in order to produce the next collections! Planning on how to start an activewear business these days is connected a lot to marketing your product creatively.
The modern, easy, and cheap way to market your activewear business is to introduce your brand on social media!
