When it comes to creating a fashion company, it is challenging to get funding from any investors without at least a few seasons of proven sales and trade show performance. However, you may be able to communicate your design styles and planned production to communicate that you know exactly what to do and how to develop a strong fashion brand. The following article will help you to better understand how to prepare a professional pitch deck for fashion industry investors.
When it comes writing a fashion pitch deck, they are usually submitted to private investors that are already familiar with the designer. However, it still helps to prepare something professional that will be enticing to investors and help to communicate the strengths of your business. If you are just starting out, this only may be design sketches. If you have a few seasons behind you with sales, then it is about communicating these metrics to prove you can deliver for future seasons as well.
The designs are important for a fashion pitch deck, especially if you don’t have the sales to back up that the designs are profitable. In many instances, investors will only have sketches and concepts to go by and perhaps a single set rather than a full line. It is important to understand that the closer you are to being in stores and having sales – the better. Many designers opt to begin with a capsule collection so that they may introduce new product lines and seasonal trends that are slightly more risky, but enable seasonal sales rather than consumers buying a single line and never ordering again.
Manufacturing for the fashion industry has been an ongoing challenge and tradeoff. Many offshore manufacturers are difficult to deal with, communicate with, and generally provide poor quality. While many ‘luxury’ brands do manufacture offshore, they often have contract manufacturers that work exclusively for their brand and have staff in the city to ensure that quality control is met. The other challenge is that generating high quality in the United States, especially with small production levels is very expensive. This tradeoff has served as an inhibitor for many Startup fashion brands but you must weight the cost and benefits of each to determine which manufacturing strategy is right for our business.
The sales and marketing approach of a fashion company at first is demonstrating the product’s success in trade shows and if possible, fashion shows. This will help to get the product on store shelves and in-front of consumers, especially if the price is high and designs are appealing to those that prefer higher quality products and can afford to pay for them. When it comes to mid-range fashion products, these are often slightly harder to get on the shelves because the market is largely dominated by mainstream brands like H&M and Zara rather than boutique stores that shelf many different items. However, the direct to consumer shopping model is proving to have significant potential and may provide opportunities to new and upcoming fashion designers.
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