How to fund your fashion startup

Each fashion startup must consider the pros and cons of how to fund their new venture. Some will do better with a loan while others might be better off crowdfunding or relying on other funding sources like pre-selling clothes, support from family members, etc. Here below are 11 different ways that you can fund your fashion startup:

There's a misconception that fashion designers must be independently wealthy to start their own fashion line, but this isn't always the case. If it doesn't make sense for your budget in the beginning stages of your fashion business, you can work a day job to support yourself financially. I've personally supported myself through freelance work and doing jobs at other companies. This allowed me to fund my own business ventures while still getting paid from my day job.

Then, once they have posted the photo of your product and tagged your brand, repost this image back onto your feed / account. This demonstrates to your audience a level of social proof. A great technique as well for social proofing, once you have quite a few different tagged posts by influencers is to repost these regularly in your stories, that way you are showing inspirational photos of your products to your audience and gently reminding them of the many other people who also love your products.

Instead of asking for investments, you can ask your customers to pre order items from your fashion line. Once enough people have preordered the item, it will be sent off to production and sold on a crowdfunding platform. This can be a very useful method if you already have a large audience on social media.

Crowdfunding is the process of raising funding by asking a large number of people for small amounts of money to contribute, usually through social media or an online platform like Kickstarter or Indiegogo. This can be one way that fashion designers fund their fashion startup because it costs little to no upfront money.

Fashion investors can come in many forms from friends or family members to professional venture capitalists. These people will invest their own funds with the hope that they'll get a return on their investment, like an annual percentage of profit for example. This type of funding is often done without any formal agreement and fashion investors are often not liable for the fashion startup's debts.

Loans can be a good way to fund your fashion startup because it usually has lower interest rates than other types of funding and you don't need collateral like with bank loans. The downside is that there may be quite a few stipulations in order to get approved.

If you're good at telling a story and spreading the word about your fashion startup, then it may be worth asking for donations from friends and family members or even strangers on social media sites. One suggestion is to offer something in return - whether that's preordering an item or getting a mention on your fashion startup's webpage.

As an alternative, you can also find an investor who will pay for the initial investment of producing and marketing fashion products. The downside is that investors usually want something in return - like owning part of the company as well as some control over how the fashion startup operates.

If you don't have enough money to start your own fashion business, then it may be worth considering finding someone else who's interested in fashion and getting them on board as well - whether that means they're an investor or co-owner of the fashion startup.

If you're a fashion designer and don't have enough money to start your own fashion business, it may be worth looking into partnering up with another fashion company that's just starting out (or even one that has more funding). This is especially beneficial if the partner will pay for all costs up front, so you can focus on fashion design without worrying about business expenses.

If your fashion startup is entirely focused around designing clothes then it may be a good idea to teach other people how to do this as well and generate some revenue from that activity. One suggestion would be to take these classes in person in order to charge a fee for attending the class.

Fashion designers can also generate some extra income by creating fashion designs for other companies and taking on outside projects that are unrelated to their fashion startup - which is beneficial because it helps keep your creative juices flowing without having to worry about running out of money if this fashion startup doesn't succeed.