How to Start an Online Clothing Store for Fashion and Apparel business

Traditional clothing stores are entering into a massive digital transformation and as a result today we can see numerous online clothing stores. The returns are pretty good and they get to reach a wide range of audiences with a single clothing platform. This is why fashion eCommerce is getting greater response nowadays.

If you think about how to start a online clothing store, then you should be clear with the facts and the scope of the online clothing business in the market. For this, we can have a deep look at what statistics have to say about the future of this fashion industry.

Sounding Successful of Online Clothing Business

• Around 77 million online conversions in the online clothing business have taken place in 2021.
• 150 brands that are considered the world’s most prestigious brands have entered the online fashion and clothing market.
• In 2018, the global online clothing market was worth $533 billion and is expected to grow up to #813 billion by 2023.
• 66% of online sales in the clothing industry were coming through mobile devices and they also contribute 76% of online traffic to online clothing platforms.
• Every November around Black Friday sales, Cyber Monday, Thanksgiving Day and Christmas will have the traffic at its peak on all clothing platforms.
• In 2021, the Fashion industry is recorded to have less cart abandonment rate compared with any other eCommerce industry.

How To Start An Online Clothing Store Business – Step by Step Guide

  1. Choose Your Online Clothing Niche

Before just jumping how to set up an online clothing store, you need to decide on which niche you are going to sell the apparel.

Choosing the Perfect Niche Ensures you

• To choose the right product and organize the whole business plan around the type of your target customers. 
• To drill down to the market and reach your potential fashion customers in a very easy way.

Steps to Choose the Niche:

• Choose the niche which stands out from the crowd. Be unique.
• Select a niche which you are really interested and passionate about.
• Ask to yourself that if you can add more value with yourself as an authority.

 2. Select The Clothing Store’s Products

Once you have chosen the niche, it’s time to select the products for your online clothing store. Will you be selling ethnic or western wear or both? This clothing and apparel online market is infinite, so make sure that you sell unique products to attract more customers.

Steps to Choose the Online Clothing Store’s Products:

• Start simple product as you grab your product list on the ground. Including many numbers of products, upfront will add extra admin costs from photoshoot of the product to the web setup.

• As apparel trends may change frequently, you need to choose a stable product initially which can be easily changed to fit the ideas at the beginning.

• Make sure you are forwarding towards the end goal at each step you take. This will make sure that as you add a number of products to your range and you started growing in your niche, you will be able to implement trending products on to your online clothing store seamlessly.

  3. Choose Your Online Clothing Store Business Model

Now, you own your own niche and you have loaded with the type of products you are passionate about, it’s the right time to pick a ecommerce business model for your online clothing store.

Types of online clothing stores:

• Custom cut and sew
• Print on demand
• Private label
• Dropshipping

  4. Outline Your Online Clothing Store Business Plan

You are all ready with your niche, products and the business model, now its time to outline the business plans for your online clothing store.

• You should know your market, products, biggest competitors, business model, company description.
• The next important part of your business plan needs to be the pricing.
• Fix the pricing according to
  • Web development, equipment, hosting charges, etc
  • Design and development
  • Production cost per product, including that of samples
  • Materials
  • Labor and transportation

  5. Creating Your Clothing Store for Fashion & Apparel

Now comes the fun part to start an online clothing business.

• The very first thing you need to have is the domain which you need to buy separately upfront as soon as you have an idea of how to start an online apparel business.
• Secondly, choose the platform and the theme. It is the crucial thing in designing any online store because the design gives the user-friendliness to the users.

  6. Launching Your Online Clothing Boutique Store

Once everything till domain is set, its time to launch your online clothing boutique store globally. Here, there are few tips which you need to take care of

• Define your launch strategy like FB live video, teaser emails, promotion, etc.
• Set ready your social handles ready before you launch the store. Have active contents to grab more customers towards you.
• Ensure that all the automation emails are set up and tested.
• Make sure that your Google Ads and Google Analytics accounts are set up.

  7. Drive Traffic To Your Online Clothing Business

This is the last but one of the most important steps in launching the online apparel store. The major traffic drivers to your stores are PPC, email marketing, content marketing, social media guest post on popular blogs and influencers.

Launch your Own Branded Boutique Clothing Store Online With ZielCommerce

Zielcommerce is the most recommended platform to start an online clothing boutique. The software will help you to have all renowned features. Grow your business by creating a supportive rapport between your fashion vendors and the buyers.

Provide your vendors to use their store management dashboard that can help them to understand their sales flow with easy reporting. You can seamlessly process the marketplace payments with this dedicated online ecommerce software.

Monetize your marketplace with Zielcommerce that has inbuilt features to collect signup fees, product listing fee, subscription plans and many more.  With the predefined product categorization you can help your buyers to buy the clothes that are right size and fitting.

Zielcommerce gives you an extremely flexible, affordable and customizable platform for how to start an online fashion store that can give a unified shopping experience to the visitors. If you are wondering how to start an online clothing boutique, then Zielcommerce is a perfect idea to attain greater conversion.

Highlights of ZielCommerce

ZielCommerce is one of the best readymade Marketplace solutions for a small scale or larger online stores.

• With ZielCommerce , you can include umpteen products to your online store which makes your online store massively scale depending on your needs.
• It not only offers excellent ecommerce design templates, but you can easily edit them depending on your preferences.
• You have complete access to the template code and provide multiple payment gateways for transactions.
• Through the integrated API, you can add any number of features to your store.
• You can also easily start selling on multiple channels like Amazon, Flipkart, etc.

The Promising Features that are Necessary to Start an Online Clothing Store

Here are the main features of the ZielCommerce eCommerce Platform. Let us know about some of its features which makes the marketplace richer to attract the customers.

• Allows Multiple Product Types: ZielCommerce allows multiple product types to be added by the vendors in the marketplace to sell. It makes your vendors seamless opportunities to sell variable, downloadable, subscription, virtual products, and bookable products.

• User-Friendly Design: Zielcommerce has a user-friendly and rich front end dashboard which allows the customers an awesome experience to manage inventories, sales, discounts, orders, etc. The plugin also permits the vendors to make a professional lookout for their business through various templates available.

• Order Management: Vendors can manage the store on the go since Zielcommerce is mobile friendly. Vendors can view like if an order is processed or pending and they can ship the items to the billing address.

• Reviews And Ratings: To gain customer trust amidst the competition inside the marketplace, the Zielcommerce allows the customers to enter their reviews and provide their ratings for the product purchased. This will, in turn, increase the brand value as the customers who come to purchase always trust the ratings and reviews provided by the old customers.

• Global Shipping: With Zielcommerce, vendors can freely set global shipping for each store to make them hassle-free from the calculation of the shipping rates through the front end dashboard.

• Manages SEO: Zielcommerce allows the vendors to manage SEO for their store page to promote their store to have visibility in search engines. Vendors can write SEO meta, permalink, and description from their front end dashboard.

• Integrating Social Media: To facilitate the vendors to increase their sales, Zielcommerce provides vendors the option to add their social media handles like Facebook, Twitter, etc into their store profile.

Success Story: How A Spanish Based Online Fashion Marketplace Platform Achieved It’s Growth With ZielCommerce

Ramaro, a Spanish-based online clothing store, has started its operation in March 2019. With great and unfailing efforts, it has gained greater online credibility among its customers. Zielcommerce has a crucial role in the success of Ramaro.

The fascinating and user-friendly online clothing store offered by Zielcommerce has grabbed the attention of the audience and assured better conversions. The effective content management system integrated with the clothing platform helps Ramaro to communicate better with its customers.

Our exclusive mobile application has delivered a seamless and omnichannel shopping experience to customers. With our SEO-friendly online clothing store, Ramaro has gained better traffic and getting genuine leads that support their revenue.

Summing up

Starting an online boutique is the need of the market. Understand your market and fulfill the demands that can get you good business. When you look for how to start a online clothing store, you need to follow all the above steps. Be unique in all your presentations that can attract the visitors and be more determined in delivering quality products and admirable service to the users.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. How do I start an online clothing store?

Starting an online clothing store is the right choice as it has greater scope in the coming days. Before you start an online clothing store you need to check on the prerequisites of starting this business.

• Determine your business plan
• Choose the best eCommerce platform.
• Select a perfect domain name.
• Customize your online clothing store
• Finally, launch the platform and reach your audience.

2. How much does it cost to start a clothing store online?

There are two methods to start an online clothing store.

(i)             Build the online store from scratch – this is a costly plan and you need to have a huge investment. Sit with a developer. Explain your requirements and get the product completed. Make a note that the project completion will take months.

(ii)            Go for a readymade marketplace solution – there are many readymade clothing platforms available in the market that will have all salient features necessary to run the platform. It is very cost-effective. Pay once and own the platform.

3. Do online clothing stores make money?

Online clothing stores support multiple revenue channels. On every sale, the admin can get a commission, through affiliate modules, more orders can be processed that increase the revenue of the platform. Also, through third-party advertisements, the admin can earn well. Starting an online clothing store can get you good returns.

4. Is selling clothes online worth it?

The market is wide and you can easily attract more audiences to your online clothing store. With an effective inventory management system, you can maintain your stock properly and can have uninterrupted sales.