There’s a new type of mum in town and they’ve been aptly named “mumpreneurs”. This stay-at-home mother has decided to take matters into her own hands and launch her own business from home, allowing her to stay with the kids while building and launching her own dream fashion label. Sound like something you’d like to do? Stay tuned.

While building a business from scratch involves lots of hard work, dedication and commitment, there are lots of ways to start creating a brand from home using the fashion technology and networks that are now available. With an estimated 10 million “mumpreneurs” working from home, this is no small trend. Here, we take a look at how to start your own fashion business as a stay at home mum.

Can I Build a Business Working from Home?

If this is a question you’re currently asking yourself, then you’re in the right place. Working from home for the first time comes with its perks as well as cons, both of which should be considered carefully before taking the plunge and starting your own fashion business.

To read about the pros and cons of owning your own online fashion company in detail, check out our blog post all about it, here.

What to Expect:

• Late Nights

If you’re a stay at home mum looking to start an online fashion business, you will know better than anyone else the value of time. You should prepare for some late nights as an online business requires dedicated hours and sometimes you just won’t be able to finish everything that needs completing throughout the day, which will mean putting in the extra hours.

• Financial Investment

Pretty much any business will require some sort of financial investment. When it comes to starting up a fashion business, you’ll need to create your own budget at the beginning to check you have enough resources in place to launch. From designing to sampling and actual manufacture, alongside marketing and websites, if you’re paying for everything yourself, be prepared that even the smallest business needs financial backing.

• Working with other professionals

Even if you start your business with only you, you’ll be working with professionals and experts along the way, which can really grow your business network and help to streamline your company. From manufacture specialists to web designers, expect to work alongside others to build a successful company.

Let’s Look at The Steps You Can Take to Start Your Own Fashion Business…

1 Create a Brand Idea and Think About Your Products

The first thing you’ll need to do is to come up with your own defined niche and start small in terms of product line. Decide who your brand is and what it stands for, alongside really defining who your customer is. Getting very detailed about this at the beginning will help you to create the best possible collection and use the right selling techniques from the start. When you’re creating a start-up, it’s always best to start small and then scale up later. This applies to niche, customer and product line.

2 Work on Getting Your Designs Taken from Sketch to Tech Pack

When you’ve really got to grips with your brand identity and your customer, you need to create your designs. You can do this yourself if you have the skillset or outsource to a designer if you need (and can afford) extra help. Once you’ve got the designs drawn up, you’ll need to create tech packs for each product. You can find out some more about tech packs, here, but they basically specify every detail about each garment for the sake of manufacturing. If you aren’t able to do this yourself, you can find expert specialists to work with you on Sewport.

3 Fabrics & Trims

Alongside your designs, you’ll need to select your fabrics. Research this in detail with the help of your competitors. You can source fabrics in three ways; source it yourself, outsource a fabric sourcing expert for your brand or use Sewport to find the perfect specialist.

4 Find A Factory to Work With

This can often be the trickiest part for start-up entrepreneurs. However, using Sewport you can find factories that are willing to make small runs of garments to help smaller start-ups launch. When you’ve narrowed down your options on production specialists on Sewport, you can get samples made to check you’re happy and then get the production run going when you’re ready.

5 Create Your Site

You’ll be selling online if you’re working from home, so use this time to focus on your website. It will be your shop window to your brand, so you need to ensure everything, including the content and imagery, is amazing and prepare for your products with perfect product copy to get the best out of your site. This will be the direct link between yourself and your customers so it’s essential that you get your website right. There are many self-build platforms you can use to build a website, see some of the top-rated options, here.

6 Marketing

Even as a small stay-at-home-mum entrepreneur, you’ll have to market your brand to make it a success. If you have a limited budget, ensure you work hard on social media. Use your time to learn as much as you can about branding on social media. With a small budget, Facebook advertising can often be the best option. Use online resources to learn the platform as it’s complex but can be incredibly successful for small labels starting out and consider bringing on an expert if you can’t commit to learning it yourself.

7 Keep Going

Working from home and building a business alone can be draining. The beginning will be the most important time to use your time wisely, so stay positive and enthusiastic and be resilient if times get tough.

Building a successful fashion business online is no small task. One of the best techniques for success is to start small with a defined niche and customer and gradually scale up your business as you start to see some success. This way you’ll find yourself much more in tune with your customer and able to create better products for them. It’s also a great way to get to a launch point without a massive financial investment. Never underestimate the need for marketing and ensure you’ve created enough budget within your plans to market your brand properly once you’ve committed to your manufacturing needs.