How can I start my own clothing line?

I get approached all the time by entrepreneurs who say, Evan, how can I start my own clothing line? It's one of the hardest industries to break into. It can cost a lot of money, take a lot of time, drain all your resources, and there's tons of competition. So today I'm going to share my 3 tips for anybody who's now trying to start their own clothing line. Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael. I believe that hungry entrepreneurs do you deserve help. And my 3 tips are this: Number 1, find an angle. You have to be different. You've got to have something unique, something that nobody else is doing, because it's such a competitive industry that you're about to break into that if you're the same as everybody else, if you're even close to anybody else, you're going to get lost in the shuffle. You need to make people pay attention to you, and that comes from having unique clothes and a unique way to promote yourself. You need it to be easy for people to talk about you. Say, "Oh yes, this company, they're the ones who do blank." What's that blank for you? You have to find that. If you can't have your message clearly communicated in one simple sentence, you're gonna lose people. They're gonna go somewhere else. It's that cutthroat, it's that brutal, and you're gonna lose your business. So you have to find that different angle. #2: Model success. Whatever you want to accomplish, somebody has already done it before. Don't try to figure it all out yourself. It's not going to happen. Success leaves clues, you just have to follow them. So if you want to start a fashion company, you want to start your own clothing label, look at people who've done it before and model their success. Look at people like Russell Simmons, Calvin Klein, Giorgio Armani, Vera Wang, whoever it is. People you look up to, people who have done exactly what you want to do. Research their stories. It's not hard. This information is online. There's books, there's resources, there's videos. You can find it. The bigger the name is, the easier it is to find out their story. And look at how they got started. Look at how Russell Simmons was in your position. Look at how he got started. He went from nothing. Look at how he got his first order, and look at how he built up from there. There's clues there that will help you succeed. Follow them. Don't try to come up with everything yourself. And the more that you like that entrepreneur, the more you're going to believe it, and the more you're going to believe in yourself. Because we get down on ourselves and we feel like this isn't going to happen. And when you see that these other successful entrepreneurs all went through the same thing and they're no different than you, it makes you realize you can do it too. You can have your own empire as well if you put the effort in and you follow their success. And number 3 is get some experience. If you just jump into a new clothing line and you've never worked in the business before, you never had your own company, you have limited experience in the clothing business, you have pretty low chance of being successful. And most of the people who come to me and say, "I wanna start my own clothing line," have never done anything in business before. You have a chance of working it out, but it's really slim. And I don't want you to go out and take loans from people, take investments from people, put your life savings into this new venture and not have it work out. I want you to have the best chance of success that you can give yourself, and that's gonna come from getting a little bit of experience. Know what you're getting into. So whatever company you wanna start, go find a company who you wanna be like. If you wanna start a clothing label, don't go look to Nike, don't go look to Calvin Klein now. Look to a smaller company, look to a company that has 10 to 20 employees a company you can see yourself being in the next year or two, and go work for them. It doesn't mean you have to get locked up into a job for 10 years, be in the rat race and never escape. But you're working to learn. You're learning how do they create their new designs, how do they market it, how do they build a team, how do they raise the money for it. All of that is so important, and you're gonna learn while getting paid. Most people have to hire consultants to help them with their business. You are getting paid to figure out how to eventually build your own business, and it might mean you have to take 6 months or a year or a year and a half even, or 2 years working at this business. As long as you feel that you are learning and you're taking in new things that will help you, stay there. At some point you're going to realize, I've tapped this out, I'm ready now, my chances of success have gone up dramatically because I have some contacts, I have the experience. I know what mistakes not to make. I know what my product is going to be and how I'm going to promote it. If you take those 3 simple steps, you dramatically increase your chance of making this business work. So you've got to find something different. Find your unique angle. Model success of people who you look up to. And then go work for somebody who's done it before. Those 3 things will save you. Otherwise, you're likely to follow the path of most people who start a clothing line. You think you have a great idea, you put lots of money into your design and to order an inventory, and it sits there in your garage or in your apartment and no sales come in. And then you have to go back and get a job to pay off the loans that you took out or to start to replenish some of the life savings that you drained. And I don't want that for you. Give yourself the best chance of success possible and follow those 3 simple steps. Good luck. For those of you watching, if you like the video, please give it a thumbs up below. Always makes me want to do more for you. And if you like this video and you want to say something about it, or if you have a question for your business, please leave a comment in the comment section below. I really always love seeing those come in. I always read them every morning while I'm having my breakfast. So thank you, and I'll see you on the next episode.