the collection to the public online.
9) Escalate promotion of your brand.
10) Media outlets announce your new brand.
11) Your brand develops a fan base and customer base.
12) Continue to promote your brand in any way possible.
13) Whether or not your first collection was a big success, design and produce a new collection within 2-5 months.
14) Repeat steps 7 through 13 as many times necessary until you’ve made enough profit to save several thousands of dollars.
15) Open up a brick-and-mortar retail store to sell your products face-to-face with your customer base.
16) Keep your clothing exclusive to your online shop and retail store, no matter how many other retailers show interest.
17) Experience an immense increase in revenue as you sell your merchandise through your online shop and additional brick-and-mortar stores you open across the country.
18) SUCCESS ACHIEVED!
Pathway To Success
These are just two ways to get to the top, and many have made it via alternate paths as well. Overall, having a good idea of where you’re headed and how you’re getting there is the best way to start your journey. With these common step-by-step plans in mind, you can begin to think about a more elaborate business plan and figure out your short-term and long-term goals.
CHAPTER 4
PLAN EVERYTHING
The planning process may be one of the hardest steps in creating your t-shirt brand, but it is arguably the most essential step to creating a successful business of any kind. As the old saying goes, “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” The following guidelines can be used as a basis of what to plan and how to plan it effectively.
Setting Goals
A major part of planning for your t-shirt brand is goal-setting. You need to know exactly what you’re looking to accomplish with your brand in order to make progress. One of the best methods for setting goals is the S.M.A.R.T. method, which stands for:
Specific – The “who,” “what,” “where,” “when” and “why”
Measurable – Can be measured in numbers
Attainable – Realistic; Possible to be reached with effort
Relevant – Resonates with you and inspires you
Time-bound – Has a deadline or time limit
One of the most important aspects of the S.M.A.R.T. goals acronym is the ‘R’ for Relevant. You have to set goals that are attainable, but which are also relevant or inspirational. For example, a goal of selling two t-shirts in your first month may be easily attainable, but it's completely uninspiring and the payoff is really weak, so you may not be motivated to achieve that. On the other end, setting a goal of 300 t-shirt sales in your first month may be inspiring, but it is most likely an unrealistic target (assuming you’re not running a million-dollar promotion campaign or you’re not a celebrity).
We can't tell you exactly what your sales goal should be, but if you're just starting out, a sales goal of at least ten t-shirts sold in a month should be both reasonable and inspiring enough. Of course, selling ten t-shirts isn’t anything to brag about, but achieving that simple goal should give you the momentum and confidence to sell at least 15 t-shirts the following month, and then 30 t-shirts the month after that. And then after several months of building your brand exposure and reaching previous sales goals, the goal of selling 300 t-shirts in a month will be pretty realistic.
It’s good to set product sales goals for your brand, but you also need to consider other goals that may help increase your sales. Here are some questions to consider when setting goals for your business:
1) How many t-shirts do you want to sell this month?
2) How many retail stores do you want your t-shirts to be sold in, and by when?
3) Which trade show or event do you plan on exhibiting at 6 months from now?
4) What magazines do you want your brand featured in 6 months from now?
These four goals should be sufficient to get you started and working in the right direction. Make sure to actually write or type your goals so that they’re easier to remember and work toward.
Setting Objectives
So now you’re looking at a sheet of paper with a list of your goals. Each of your goals have solid deadlines. You made sure that your goals are S.M.A.R.T.
But wait! How exactly are you going to reach these goals? Setting goals is nice, but it’s even nicer to actually reach them. To make sure you reach your goals, you need to map out a plan of action. Take each goal that you set and define the objectives, or “mini-goals,” that will help you reach your main goals.
For example, let’s say it’s currently early June and you’ve set the goal of selling ten t-shirts in the month of July. Let’s also suppose that you haven’t ordered any t-shirts yet, but you have already decided on your brand idea, created your designs, and saved up enough money to get your brand started. In this case, your objectives may look something like this:
1) Launch seven products for sale in online shop.
2) Have brand featured on five blogs.
3) Get 100+ daily visitors to website.
Your objectives should be the “meat” of your goal. The objectives you establish should be designed in such a way that completing them will equal reaching your goal. In the beginning, it can be hard to know for sure that completing your objectives will lead to the completion of your goal, but by establishing them, you’ll have a clear sense of how to go about reaching that goal.
Setting Daily Tasks
A great way to make sure you stay focused when you’re running your brand is to set daily tasks and objectives to complete. Without having clear tasks for the day, you’ll end up sitting at your computer for 12 hours, bouncing back and forth between dabbling on some t-shirt design in Photoshop, checking your e-mail, posting links on your friends’ Facebook walls, and browsing clothing brand sites. You’ll be really busy all day, but at the end of the day you’ll realize that you really didn’t accomplish much. I’ve been there and it sucks when that happens.
It’s really difficult to concentrate on tasks that you haven’t defined beforehand. It’s a bad idea to just wake up in the morning, hop on your computer, and “get to work” without having a written checklist of what work you’ll actually be doing throughout the day. It’s best to define what tasks need to be done each day in order
