Where to Sell

What you take from this lesson: Choose where to start selling based on the stock and capital you have available.

Direct sales through social media

It is the cheapest channel to open and the most expensive to sustain: it costs no money, it costs consistency. You have to post often and reply fast, and in the beginning you can't outsource that.

What works best: the garment worn and in motion, not a photo on a hanger, and a visible price. Hiding the price so people message you privately does not filter buyers: it scares them off.

Wholesale

You sell for less per unit but much more at a time, and without having to convince customers one at a time. For anyone producing with their own sewing patterns, it is the channel that scales best.

It asks for two things: the ability to restock (if the reseller sells well and there is no stock, you lose the customer) and a clear price list with minimums per style and per size.

Fairs and events

This is the channel where you learn the most, beyond the day's sales. At a fair you see live which garment people pick up, which size is missing, which color sells out, and at what price a garment goes back on the rack.

It pays to go with the full size range of a few styles and with stock loaded in the middle sizes, which are the ones that sell the most.

Made-to-order production

School uniforms, company apparel, sports team kits, event merchandise. It is the lowest-risk channel, because you produce against an order that is already confirmed, and often with a deposit.

It is also the channel that makes the best use of a full size range: an institutional order asks for all the sizes at once, which is exactly what a sewing pattern with the entire size range solves at no additional cost.

Which one to start with

With little stock and little capital: made-to-order and social media. With steady production and the ability to restock: wholesale. It pays to add fairs always, even if it is just one every so often, for the information they give back.

In short

Social media and made-to-order to start without stock, wholesale once you can restock, and fairs always, for what they teach you about what sells.