thread's not dead - doITlab

Things you can outsource:
• Art and Design
• Printing or Manufacturing
• Website Design and Upkeep
• Advertising and Marketing
There are lots of things you can outsource. What are the aspects of your clothing
company that you don’t enjoy doing or aren’t good at? Get other passionate
people to do it for you. You can focus on what you do best.
However, the more you outsource, the more you take yourself out of your business.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing. That means you don’t always have
to be the one doing everything in order for your business to succeed. That’s a
tough concept for designers to grasp as they can’t imagine taking themselves
out of their own brand. Marc Ecko, for example, isn’t the only one designing his
t-shirts or responding to emails. He’s built an enterprise around his vision and
has taken it big-time.
Employees
The next step towards growing your clothing company is hiring employees. They
can help with order fulfillment, website upkeep, social media, or some additional
design work like ads or flyers. Maybe you want to bring in someone who
can take charge of your marketing? They could spend their time spreading the
word or negotiating sponsorships or ad rates in magazines. Or maybe you need
a dedicated customer service person to answer emails in a timely manner while
you’re out negotiating a deal with a department store. Don’t forget, if you’ve got
employees, they need to be paid! This is where payroll and taxes come in.
Payroll and Taxes
THREAD’S NOT DEAD • Jeff Finley
• Order Fulfillment
• Payroll, Accounting, Legal Stuff
• Customer Service
• Just about anything
You could pay your freelancers however they prefer, but your in-house employees
are different. You could pay them in cash under the table, but you want to
be legit and do things the right way. If you want to go big time, you need to do
it right.
At Go Media, we use PayCor to manage our payroll. It automatically takes out
the required taxes for each employee and gives them W2s at the end of the year
(for the US). I don’t know all the ins and outs of running payroll, but using a
provider like PayCor or PayChex makes it easy to be legit and takes a lot of the
guesswork out of it.
Rob Dobi had his Full Bleed line of t-shirts on the shelves at Hot Topic a few years ago
How to Get into Retail Stores
For a lot of brands, the holy grain of going big time is getting into well-known
retail shops. There’s certainly an appeal to being able go into your local mall
and see your brand on the racks. How do you get there? Here are some general
tips for breaking into retail.
Be Proven. Your line needs to have a history of selling well. If you consistently
sell out online or have built up a large fan base online, this increases your
chances of getting into a retail shop. If all you have are mockups and no history
Going Big-Time 76