2006
Who Should Sell The Line? Sales rep, Showroom, Entrepreneur
Posted by: Fashion06 in Starting your own line |
Serious about starting a clothing line? If so subscribe to our RSS feed or Email notifications for exclusive articles/updates that you don't want to miss!
If tradeshows and pounding the pavement isn’t your thing there are other options when deciding how and who should sell your apparel line.
Sometimes choosing to delegate the work is better, being a lot of designers get bogged down trying to play every role in a business. You can decide to hire a sales rep-refer to daily definition and let them handle the dirty work for you. Of course hiring a rep is going to cut into your bottom line, but where is a bottom line if you have no sales! Choosing to have a rep can help your line being they already have solid contacts with industry buyers, a proven track record, relationships with stores, and some travel all over the United States attending trade shows-which could increase the visibility and reach of your apparel line. If you have already started your business and have contacts in the retail business you can ask buyers to recommend some good sales rep too you, if not ask other designers if they can connect you with some experienced sales reps.
Also you may consider working with a showroom-which is a fixed location where buyers come and review the collections of several lines in a related fashion field.Once you decide to work with a rep or showroom don?t just decide on the first one you find. Visit the showroom talk to designers who offer their collection through that showroom and ask about their service. Are they courteous, do they produce, are they expensive and most importantly are they well connected and knowledgeable in your segment (street wear, junior, sportswear) of the fashion industry.
Sales rep cover different territories so if you want start by finding one who covers your portion of the map (East coast, Midwest, South,) so that you could monitor them closely. Some sales reps can be shady, but so are a lot of people in the fashion industry so make sure and work out a contract where you pay them on a percentage per sale basis and they will be paid on ? (Part 1)
What are your thoughts so far?Sell yourself?…Sales rep?…Showroom?
Fashion Industry Ceo
Serious about starting a clothing line? If so subscribe to our free newsletter for exclusive articles/updates that you don't want to miss! or Our RSS Feed
Continue This Discussion In Dobizo Forum
Popularity: 1% [?]
Share
November 30th, 2006 at 5:11 pm
THIS ARTICLE IS VERY INFORMATIVE I’M A SALES REP FOR A CAR DEALERSHIP BUT I KNOW I’LL NEED EXTRA HELP AND SOMEONE WITH CONNECTS IN THE FASHION INDUSRTY
December 1st, 2006 at 2:05 pm
…sales reps can be shady, but so are a lot of people in the fashion industry Funny you should say that. That’s why everyone should always be up front and be honest; there’s no room for anonymity. Otherwise, people will think you’re hiding something and you can never know what the reason is. I think it’s great that you’re trying to help people. I do the same sort of thing but even with over 25 years of experience, I still have to do a lot of reading and research to keep up. Going back to the reference you made about a lot of people being shady in this business, having intellectual integrity and honesty means that somebody should not give advice unless they’ve done their homework, especially if they are new to the industry and don’t have a lot of experience, much less experience in the inner workings of existing factories themselves. I’m sure you’d agree with that. It’s one of the reasons that teachers are required to be licensed, so people can be assured they have some level of competency. In spite of that, we all know many teachers are lousy and among private education (for adults etc) -where no licensing is required, the quality of information is routinely much worse. There’s no standards. This is a big problem in the apparel industry. A lot of people set themselves up as consultants, ripping people off and they don’t know squat. Not that you are doing that but I’ve known plenty of fakes who are. I know you haven’t been in the business long but I’m sure you’ve run into a couple yourself :)I’d be happy to recommend some books if you’re interested. You also might want to check out my blog; you wrote me there, remember? I didn’t hear back from you. I’ve written a LOT about shadiness in general and sales reps in particular on my site.
December 1st, 2006 at 2:49 pm
you said you didn’t hear back….when did you reply I checked my email and didn’t?have any from you. let me know and by the way im always willing to learn something new.
PING:
TITLE: IeriWinner_89
BLOG NAME: IeriWinner_89
HI! I’ve have similar topic at my blog! Please check it..
Thanks.
[url=http://www.google.com][/url]
http://www.google.com