How To Starting A Streetwear Brand
Streetwear brands are just stylish clothes that you wear on the street. This is not formal wear and is not fashion. These are clothes made for everyday looks. So, streetwear is usually very simple in design and manufacturing, but it’s all about branding.
Supreme is a great example of a streetwear brand. Supreme is all basics with their brand featured on every item. Even when Supreme collaborates with other brands, as they did with Louis Vuitton, all they do is paint Louis Vuitton’s signature graphics and patterns on their logo.
Sweaters are still sweatshirts at the end of the day, but what makes people want them is the Supreme branding, like luxury brands like Calvin Klein.
With streetwear, you buy the brand. You buy people who wear the brand. You trust a tribe of other people who look like you who wear this. It’s an identity more than just a nice thing to wear. And there are so many different identities in streetwear that can range from extreme sports to music genres, to big flowers and bows.
If I wanted to start a streetwear brand, I would start by doing market research. Start by asking, what streetwear niche do you want to work in? Who in the streetwear category are you talking to? Nowadays there is not only streetwear like Stussy.
For example, there is also a girly streetwear trend with flowers and big bold daisies at the moment, which is part of the streetwear. And, there are many other streetwear niche categories. It’s not just the baggy, old-school type of clothing we usually associate with streetwear.
I would then choose to collaborate for credibility within a chosen group and audience when starting a streetwear brand. Selected collaborators don’t even have to be big influencers. I would choose influencers with under 10K followers to start with.
I’m just going to make sure that their community is involved. Again, look at those savings and shares. Look at who follows them and find the voices those people relate to.
5 small influencers that people like are much more valuable than a giant influencer that doesn’t fit your niche or doesn’t fit what you’re selling. An example is a woman in a bikini.
Swimwear brands often make the mistake of looking for girls posing as bikini models on Instagram. But, they get confused when 100K likes don’t result in sales. Why can’t these influencers sell swimwear?
Don’t reinvent the wheel. You don’t need to overhaul the entire t-shirt. Your customers won’t realize that a T-shirt would be perfect if the sleeves were just an inch shorter. Because a sleeve that is an inch shorter for that customer will be too short for another customer.
And you will never please everyone. You can never make the perfect shirt. You may be able to design the perfect shirt for you, but how many people do you know with your exact dimensions? Not many. So you just have to take what’s out there and start doing it.
And remember the people who make the blanks, that’s their job. They ordered a million blanks. You better believe they’ve done their research and have optimized their sizes for the general public. Trust the size. Select the blank.
Keep your costs as low as possible. Don’t spend your money on products. Spend money on collaborations and branding around it that will make you credible. Spend the money on things that make people want to be part of the community you’re starting with your streetwear brand.
