How to start a clothing store online in 12 steps

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This article is intended to be a very rough overview of the start-up process for an e-commerce-based clothing store or boutique. In the fast-paced and competitive world of fashion retail, setting up your store is just the first step and honestly has little to do with how successful your store will be. For example, Bluefly.com has an estimated monthly traffic of 840K, but since it went public in 1998 it has never made a single year of profit. As of December 31, 2009, Bluefly has a cumulative deficit of $ 147,468,000. Your guess on how they stay in business is as good as mine, but think of it this way. Even if you only make a $ 1.00 profit in your first year of business, you are technically doing better than Bluefly.
Note that many of these steps can be done at the same time. For example, while filing your legal forms, you can work on your web design. This is especially true if you rely on a third party to design and configure your website. They may work for a longer period of time than you initially anticipated. I suggest that you focus on the business plan initially. For example, if you decide that you are going to design your website with a specific concept while writing your business plan, it is possible that after doing your research, you will discover that your concept is not what you are going to move on with. In this case, you probably spent 40-60 hours on non-productive results.
1. Write a business plan. To be honest with you, when my girlfriend and I launched our website, we didn’t have a business plan, but we eventually wrote one. The simple fact is, if you are planning for success, you must write a business plan  Pop Smoke Merch sooner or later. In business school, you write it sooner rather than later. The business plan is important because it forces you to research the industry, its competitors, and its resources. Plus, it forces you to think deeply about how you are going to succeed in this highly competitive industry. If you think you are going to be like Modcloth, why would you expect to be successful compared to Modcloth when they are working with millions of dollars of venture capital funds for a workforce, marketing, inventory, etc. The answer is for you, but my point is that you have to come up with a plan before investing your life savings in this new company. Also, the business plan is important because it also forces you to estimate how much money you will need and where that amount will come from. The reality is, unless you have real finance experience, you won’t be able to build a 5-10 year projected discounted cash flow model and calculate your WACC, but having a rough idea of ​​your cash flow is better than nothing. . .
You should also include a plan for how you are going to initially set up your website. For example, using a subscription-based shopping cart will change your budget than if you decide to use an open source shopping cart. Additionally, you should also do your initial research on web hosting companies as they can range from $ 10 / month to over $ 300 / month. My only suggestion is that you get as fast and reliable as your budget allows. Keep in mind that all I’m suggesting is that you plan what you are going to do when it comes to web design and hosting, not that you go out and pay for these services right now. The only expense you may want to consider at this time is domain name registration. That’s because they are relatively inexpensive to register and you don’t want to miss out on registering your desired domain.