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Tarrant Apparel Group will settle with the IRS for a sum of $14 million for back taxes, penalties and interested owed over a seven year period ending in 2002. The agreement is for Tarrant Apparel Group to pay $4 million immediately and $250,000 per month until the debt is settled.

Tarrant Apparel Group is a private label apparel producer based out of California responsible for such private labels fashion lines by Chicos, Dillards, Federated Department Stores, J.C. Penny, K-Mart, Kohl’s, Lerner New York, Sears, Mervyn’s, Lane Bryant, Mother Works and Walmart.

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The fastest growing segment of the apparel industry is footwear, regardless of that fact there is still many barriers to entry and very stiff competition from dominant brands.

Many entering the footwear industry are carving out there own niche, therefore creating specialty footwear brands that cater to certain disorders and consumers. An example is the launch of a footwear collection that provides shoes for diabetic or obese consumers with foot problems or are just on their feet a lot and seek comfortable shoes.

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This is a rundown of what should be included in a Line Sheet we spoke on this earlier in the blog, but for our new readers who might have missed the first edition and what I’ve learned since that time we’re going to give you the ingredients for an informative line sheet.

What should your line sheet include:

1. Terms of sales accepted (COD, cash and carry, Net…etc)
2. Delivery dates for the season at hand (What is the cutoff for orders to be placed and when will they be delivered)
3. Wholesale and suggested retail prices (Self explanatory)
4. Sizes ranges
5. Colors and fabrication- Different color assortments and fabric content
6. Clothing origin- Where the clothing was manufactured
7. Short description of clothing styles
8. Sketch or photograph (Most use sketches)
9. Minimum orders- Minimum for each style
10. Style name or numbers (Preferably numbers in my opinion)
11. Company name and information

A fashion line representative emailed me and asked what were they doing wrong and why their clothing wasn’t selling as they expected, because after marketing, promoting, sales incentives and building an online shop products were still moving at a slow pace and it seemed as if they’re headed for a dead end. After looking at their website I came to the conclusion below.

The key to marketing and promotions is not having a million dollar budget, the best fashion public relations company behind your collection or even having a big name in the fashion industry back your clothing line even though all of the above helps, but most importantly you have to actually have a good quality product targeted to the right market, if you don’t start there.

It seems so many people spend so much time worrying about how they’re going to get in stores or how to get a celebrity to wear your clothing that you forget about the basics of the fashion industry and that is the overall design and function of the product you’re selling. Otherwise all the promotions, marketing and incentives in the world won’t save your brand or move a piece of merchandise

Seems like Kellogg wants a larger chunk of the urban-youth market with the so-called launch of Under the Hood clothing company which is supposedly a premium licensed brand from the Kellogg Cereal Company by a company named WJ Holdings.

Now either someone is incredibly stupid and knows nothing about intellectual property, trademarks, copyrights and all that good stuff or Kellogg has made what they think to be a strategic move to gain ground in a new market. If the former is true I hope they have a great lawyer, because that is copyright infringement to the tenth power with the use of their name, characters, and registered trademarks. (Tony the tiger, Tucan Sam and more)

Even though many of us might dream of the day we’re able to flip our clothing brand for a nice profit that is not always the case when brands are put up for sale. Steve Madden the trendy shoe brand has put the for sale sign up in front of the company, because stock for the shoemaker has seen better times considering the stock has dropped by 50% compared to a year ago in the same period.

The drop in sales is due to their lack of innovation and fresh styles within the shoe market. Most of their sale through was fueled by the consumers mindset of “got to have the new look or must have/buy now mentality” has went out because they have failed to present new styles or put anything fresh on the market for their customer base to crave.

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Yesterday while covering the weekly wrap up of the better of the forum post. One of the topics was on Resources that can be used to regain funds on unsold merchandise.

So I promised you guys we would go a little deeper into the subject. Last night before going to sleep I brainstormed some ideas that you could use to rid of the unsold merchandise some will help you regain funds while the others might make you sleep better at night.

I also thought about what some of the big guys in the fashion industry do as opposed to the smaller independent brands.

These are all methods I have seen or done myself so they are all tried & tested!

Warehouse Sale

I know for sure this method has been used by many in the independent clothing industry. I’ve seen The Hundreds and even online retailers like Digital Gravel host warehouse sales where they clear out inventory of unsold merchandise from the season before.

When starting your clothing line the first thing you will do is create a name for your brand. Whether you decide to copyright your name or not you should make sure that it is truly available. Don’t just Google it, but checking with the appropriate Trademark and Copyright offices. This will save you time, money, and a headache in the future. Nobody wants to spend time and energy building a business from scratch to later get sued for copyright infringement. Unless your clothing brand is self-titled (You may still want to check) and you have a very distinct name like “Fredrickus Williford” (The one and only ) should you then proceed without doing an online check.

I’m pretty sure you have heard that saying many times before, but not in the sense of running your own clothing line. The article Never Assume and Never Delay kind of goes hand and hand with not putting all your eggs in one Clothing Manufacturers basket.

One of the sentences from the article says “For instance, the supplier that I source my t-shirts from has been out of size medium in the style that I use for quite some time. On Monday they had the medium in one color that I wanted but not the other.” Needless to say when running an apparel line you just don’t have time for these types of inconveniences. Especially if you are using blanks and piecing together your garments using three or four different sources (blanks, labels, hang tags, screen printing) to have one finished garment. Let’s face it this is the real world and things happen that are unfortunate, but can easily be corrected if you are prepared for the worst…because sometimes the worst will happen!

Getting your first store order is what every clothing brand dreams of after getting your first run of garments made of course, but most don’t think about the long run affect it will have on your clothing brands growth if stores never reorder.

That’s part of the reason why I talked about not just selling to any store in the Career Suicide: Top 5 ways to sabotage your own clothing business?article, because fact is your clothing brand might not sell and selling to a store that is not targeting your market most likely will decrease the chances of your brands sell-through. If a buyer doesn’t make the store owner?a good return on their investment in your clothing line then most likely you will not hear from them come next season….so don’t expect a reorder.

Obviously the design and quality have to do with store reorders, but once you have tht under control think about how you can increase your sell through and create store reorders. Here I present five tips that should help your brand sell through faster and increase the chances of getting a store reorder:

Clutch decisions take on two rolls in business: they come often and they are severely crucial. Fred spoke on clutch decisions before and they tie into what I’m trying to get across now, which is in business there is never time to assume and there is never time to delay. These two actions can set you back and halt your forward business growth. For instance, the supplier that I source my t-shirts from has been out of size medium in the style that I use for quite some time. On Monday they had the medium in one color that I wanted but not the other. So I thought ok, I’ll just wait until the other color is in and order them both at the same time to save on shipping costs thinking I would be doing myself some good. So finally the other color that I was waiting for came in yesterday so I proceed to order the new color and go back for the other and low and behold they are sold out again leaving me in a bigger jam because I’m already behind in printing because the printer I’m sourcing through doesn’t have the right size screen press for my designs saying it won’t be in until next week. So now I have no shirts printed, only one color in a medium size and now I have to wait for the next opportunity to jump on the other color, all of this and I will now miss my launch date of June 1st. So learn from my mistake and never assume that an opportunity will be there when you go back for it and never delay on even what seems to be the smallest of decisions. This article is definitely related to the article on Time Management: Having ample time to access all your opportunities and Making “clutch” business decisions.

How’s everyone? It’s Jay again back to make sure you guys remember to have the back ends of your business straight. Running a business is a daunting task like fred spoke on in the post below and things can get quite overwhelming leading you to sometimes forgetting about certain things that never really mattered before. Remember to save all the receipts and bank statements from your business. I recently had to go back and print up a couple of my bank statements because I was so used to throwing them out with my personal account. Also remember to keep accurate tax records because this can bite you big time if an audit is ever needed. That’s it for now guys, back to handling the finishing touches on the line.

Ace of All Trades

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