Do You Wish to Open a Fashion Store? Start by Taking These Steps

Understand that fashion is fast

The first tip is that fashion changes fast each season and new stock must be moved in or your store will be seen as out of date and sales will rapidly decline.

This means constant advertising and sales promotions will have to be planned for in your sales forecasts.

It is all about size, depth and range

Successful fashion stores know that you will need to stock each item in a range of sizes, colours and styles to have any chance of making sales. This means for each product you wish to sell, you will need at least five different sizes, with 3-5 different colours, and all in 2-3 different styles. You will need to shelve or display over 30-45 separate items for each single piece of clothing you wish to sell.

Floorspace is a good measure of the price of clothing

In retail leasing each square meter of floor has a cost that needs to be recovered by selling stock. This means that cheap clothing will need to take up more space to earn the same rent that more expensive items make. This naturally means that cheap clothing stores cram as much stock into their store, while the expensive stores have room for space and polished floorboards.

Changing rooms bring in the money

You need to have a changing room or two as this is where you will make most of your sales. In fact more than 26% of your sales will come from your changing room sales processes.

Be aware and control your old stock

With each slow down in fashion tastes you will end up with significant stock left to try and sell. You will be unable to sell old fashion stock after a certain time as it will:

• turn your brand into a discount sales store
• increase the expectation to wait for your sale days instead of paying full price
• eat up your stock costs and reduce the space you have to sell new items
• increase your advertising and promotion costs to try and move it all quickly

Fashionable clothing is quickly copied

The other problem in trying to open a fashion retail store is the number of copies of the items you are trying to sell. Customers will be able to source cheaper versions of your products quickly, so you will need to sell as many as possible within the first few weeks of the stock hitting the fashion trends.

Remember, if you are buying your stock from overseas because it is cheaper, so will your customers. The fashion industry has been hit hard by online sales, so you will need a strategy to manage the effects on your retail store from the Internet.