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New & Aspiring Designers – How startingaclothingline.com is Helping
How do you start and run a fashion design company? Graduates of the world’s top fashion colleges often don’t know. “My only gripe about fashion schools,” says Michael J. Harper, co-creator of www.startingaclothingline.com, “is that most of them just teach you how to work for someone else at the end of day. Very few go out on their way at this time to teach you how to start your own fashion line.”
In most cases those looking to start a fashion company will get advice from a business advisor, but they rarely know anything about the fashion industry. And while it’s the creative side that inspires people to get involved in fashion, it’s the industry side that determines whether a line is commercially successful or not – and how successful it will become. As Jay Arrington says, “… most people don’t understand the fashion business. You start a brand and you make it hot! And then you start licensing out the name to other companies to create more products and that helps to build your brand and your company. That’s how you get to the billion-dollar mark.”
You might not be considering licensing right now, but there are plenty of other things to think about on the way to fashion stardom, such as trend prediction, working with pattern cutters, where to have your clothing manufactured, labels made, buy buttons, or get T-shirts printed.
Sound complicated? Don’t worry. Michael J. Harper and Jay Arrington are making things a whole lot easier. They’ve pulled together the essential resources for aspiring and established designers at their website www.startingaclothingline.com. There you’ll find plenty of free articles to guide you through the design and manufacturing process, including how to start a clothing line from scratch, set up a T-shirt or denim line, and using design software.
Harper Arrington also produces books and e-books, such as The Official Step By Step Guide to Starting a Clothing Line, The Ultimate List E-Book, listing over 400 fashion industry manufacturers and contacts, and The Clothing Retailers List E-Book, containing over 1600 retail locations in the USA. All essential reading for the fashion designer.
And while fashion design software can cost literally thousands of dollars, Harper Arrington has developed professional standard software and made it available for a fraction of the price. Their Digital Fashion Pro System was created to help designers illustrate and tailor all types of garments, create storyboards, T-shirt prints, embroidery details, denim lines, and even shoes and sneakers. And, though it’s easy to use, unlike other software, it comes with its own training videos.
Not surprisingly, their software is used by companies and colleges in the US, Europe, Australia, and Canada. Learn more about StartingaClothingLine at www.StartingaClothingLine.com
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