How to start a fashion label: The Organization Set Up
Your guide on how to build a sustainable and profitable fashion business if you’re not a nepo baby.
Welcome to another episode of the “Things I wish I knew before launching a clothing label” where I write in depth on how to start a successful international fashion business from the comfort zone of your computer. Today I’ll be covering the importance of setting up the foundations of organizational structure and how you can do it too even if your motto is “thriving in chaos” like I would assume most of you creatives are led to believe.
Most entrepreneurs, especially creatives when starting out their journey dive heard first into the deep dark waters, without having even the slightest idea what they’re getting themselves into. After all, you need to be slightly delusional if you want to play this game called business. Considering consequences or thinking too much of possible outcomes becomes secondary and even in some cases it’s not even a thought that crosses your mind, such as in mine for instance.
While attaining a certain degree of delusion is healthy and oftentimes necessary, striking the balance between that delusion and finding a way to make it work is still very much important. One of the things that could get you there is setting up an organizational structure around your business that ultimately could support all of the different levels you’ll be adding to it without running the risk of them collapsing down on you.
When I started, I remember carrying around with me all these thick paper notebooks where I would write down everything from random ideas to pages long to-do-lists. I considered them to be the extension of my salad brain. Now, back at that time I didn’t have a team and so for me, not only was it easier to do this, as I was the only one who needed to have access to that brain of mine, but I actually genueinly enjoyed the feeling a paper and a regular pen provided for me. The problem with this was that it was way too linear and oftentimes I would keep forgetting things, even whole segments of the business, despite the fact that they were on the list. As the business grew however, the need to externalise my brain grew with it. The random scribbles on a paper notepad expended into an outpour of more comprehensive system of boards, cards and endless checklists. So let’s go step by step, as I take you through the process of what I did to transition from paper and the apps and tools that helped me navigate the change, helping me lay firm and sound foundation.
When I started Bastet Noir, organizational tools were just starting to pop up. Being a fan of boosting and optimizing my personal efficiency and effectiveness, as well as that of the business I was willing to try everything that could potentially help me gain few more hours. I was one human after all and there were only 24 hours in a day and I wanted to do everything, all at once.
Setting up a mindmap
If I could go back in time, I would have probably first start by creating a simple mindmap. Maping out the business is essentially setting up a structure of potential paths that could get you to your desired goal. It serves as a blueprint and it’s highly effective not because it’s visual, which is always a plus for creatives, but also because you can add to it as many things as you can think of to grow the business, but you can also delete some of them, if they turn out to be ineffective or no longer making any sense for the development of you business.
Now don’t be fooled as to think that I had it all figured out, as I hadn’t. This map for me came so much later, but as my ultimate goal is to help you get to your goal faster, think of this as me handing you the keys to the Porsche. If you start by working on this first, it would be so much easier to set up the structure of your organization later on.
📋 Tools Used: Remarkable, MilaNote
Creating departments
Once you’ve created your business mindmap, the next thing you should do is create departments. Now I know what probably goes around your mind right at this moment. You’re a one woman/man show why would you need this. Oftentimes when you’re solopreneur, you’ll need to hop between doing the finances one minute to thinking about product development the very next minute to something else entirely in the third minute. Focus sometimes is a commodity you simply don’t have the luxury of having. Learning how to multitask then is a must. Therefore setting up clear departments regardless of how small of a business you’re currently running will not only help you organize yourself better but will also help you think more clearly when the time comes to make the hard decision of prioritizing tasks. It will ultimately help you regain that stolen focus.
In a fashion business these are the potential departments to set up:
Creative
Production
Marketing
Finance
Sales
Logistics
Human Resources
This is what that looks like for us
Now each of these will have their own sub organizational things for instance in our case the sales department covers all of our current and potential revenue streams and has a list for all the sales channels we’re currently pursuing, such as: direct sales, wholesale, rental and dropshipers and all of these will branch out to include the names of the partners, tasks that need to be done, or even a template email for faster reachout. In essence this department is all about how the business makes you money.
🌟Tip🌟: Don’t be a fool and put all your eggs into one basket. You want to diversify where your revenues come from by pursuing a variety of different sales channels.
When it comes to selecting the right organizational tool, it took me a while to decide on which one to use. Ultimately I landed on Trello due to the fact that Notion was not available at the time and Trello looked like a viable option for running a small business.
While we use Trello for general organization and mostly for tasks that need to get done, all of our important documents such as agreements with retailers, Excell lists of influencers and editors, as well as photo and video files are kept on our Google Drive. To bridge the two, we put a link to the folder/file on Drive. This way we don’t have to waste time on browsing and eveyone can access the files when they need them.
Creating Focus Lists
Now in order for me not to succumb to the stolen focus syndrom, I needed to have my days clearly organized, preferably with exact hours as to what I would be doing so as not to get lost in the maze of so many tasks and get overwhelmed by it. So what I did was to set up focus lists. Yes, not one, but several.
One is for monthly focus, where I list all of the tasks which I’m hoping to achieve that month.
Another one is for weekly focus, where I set a list of tasks that need my immediate attention that week.
And than there are special lists dedicated to a specific day, like The Wednesday List for instance, where each Wednesday I focus on finance only or Tuesday, which is mostly reserved for email correspondence and so on.
Before I divided the tasks to follow this template, I was always creating endless lists of tasks that need to be done and never ended up finishing them all, as I would either get overwhelmed and lean in to finish the small tasks first or just simply skip from one task to another never actually fully completing one.
📋 Tools Used: Trello, iCal
Setting Up Visual
As you might have read in my previous articles, category and product development are extremely important in our line of work. Creating an appealing visual is half the job done. This is why as I wrote before branding is such an integral part for any business really, but it especially rings true for a fashion designer.
The reason why brands like Joseph, Sezanè, Ganni and Toteme all have this unique “je ne sais quoi” appeal is because their visual is not just an extension of someone’s personal aesthetic, but it’s because there’s a perfectly balanced order to what seems so effortless. Believe me, what looks effortless, it actually takes a lot of effort to make it appear that way.
This is why you need a place where you could organize what you like so you can start noticing patterns and use them to achieve that consistant signature look only popular brands seem to have.
As I am currently working on our rebranding, I use MilaNote to help me figure out the look Bastet Noir would be known for in the future. Here’s what I have so far.
📋 Tools Used: MilaNote
Organizing Team
And lastly there will come a time at some point where you’ll need the help of other people to grow your label. If you have set in place everything I covered above, you'll be perfectly prepared for when the time comes to expand your team.
If you want to get there faster, my advice is to bring in people as fast as you can. Different people with them bring different perspectives and as much as you think you can handle everything by yourself (trust me, I’ve tried), there’s so much you can do as one person.
🌟Tip 1🌟: Hire interns
It is never too early for hiring interns. I used to believe that if you don’t have budget it’s not fair to the people you recruit. After all, monetary compensation is out of the question. I was really wrong, as I underestimated the power of mentorship and just how much it means to have someone show and lead the way. As someone who hasn’t had a mentor, learning the ropes alone takes lot of time, patience and tenacity, skills you’d be sure to dismiss and take for granted if you don’t have someone to show you just how valuable they actually are.
🌟Tip 2🌟: Team tasks
You’d want to make your team be able to think independently and that will require from you to have a lot of trust in whoever it is you’re hiring. If you want to make them fail, control them. If you want to make them succeed lean into the development of their strengths, but first make sure you set up clear direction on tasks, expectations, goals and deadlines, so they can give you their best. Organization within the organization starts with you, so if you want your team to be organized, think for themselves and actually help you, you need to help them first understand the foundations of whatever it is you’re building. And you can’t do that if chaos is where you thrive.
Well, that’s it folks. I hope this was usefull for all of you young aspiring fashion designers out there. Another part of this series is coming out next Sunday. Until then, because sharing is caring, if you know someone who is an independent fashion designer and will find this helpful please share it with them. I know I would have been grateful if I could find this stuff when I was beginning. It would have saved me a lot of time and money.
I know time these days is a precious currency, so thank you for reading.
Hasta la vista lovelies from my Salad Brain.