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what's going on guys John Santos and today we made it into downtown LA and we're gonna show you guys how to start a clothing line with no money that's right haters will say it can't be done but in this video I'm gonna show you the exact steps resources and information that you need to launch and build a brand and business from the comfort of your home alright so let's jump into this video but before we do that make sure you hit that subscribe button if you're a new visitor to this channel let's get going this video is brought to you by The Ground Up Academy an online training program and community designed to help build your brand and business from the ground up take advantage of the free online training mentioned at the end of this video to jump-start your clothing line well they said it couldn't be done in this video we literally just took our art files for the collection that we're designing and we're gonna make it in real time to show you guys how made-to-order works and how you can leverage this technology in this new way to actually build and launch a clothing line with no money down the legit way all right so let's head on over here to get started on that process and what's important to note is that during this process you need to find the right partners and the right people in order to help you fulfill that all right so today we're here Oh likewise thanks for having us here and I was speaking with everybody about the importance of made-to-order but what better way to get it than from the man himself Thanks so if you're looking to start a clothing line and want to keep things legit I would definitely consider doing a made-to-order type of process it's essentially where you're getting orders on your website and in the back end you're working with a partner that's fulfilling those orders as you're getting them the benefits to made-to-order is that it reduces your upfront capital risk you're not shelling out a ton of cash upfront to go and get product made and said you're just keeping even right so as cash is coming in you're spending cash to make products the second thing is major orders like a really fast process so it lets you rapidly prototype designs test out things find out what's gonna work for you for your brand for the niche market you're going after and then as soon as you find something that works scale it up really seamlessly and then the third thing is focus focus focus so by working with a partner to get your products created you don't get sucked into all the manufacturing and stocking things in your closet and every day you're opening up your laptop and shipping orders those are all the things that you absolutely need to do to have a clothing line but if you're doing those things you're not focused on marketing sales and really growing the clothing line so it's it's a really good way to get started it starts with the DTG guys so the DTG is essentially direct-to-garment printing and we literally created these orders earlier this morning in order for them to get fulfilled right here as we're making this video so throughout this video you guys will see that let's jump in to check it out so as you can see this is artwork that we submitted it's getting into the system here and this DTG printer is actually reading those files and it's gonna print full-color quality photo onto a t-shirt that we provided and that they actually are able to source and you could choose from online what's going on right now literally we sent our design over this guy just laid the t-shirt down and it's getting printed right now as we're speaking okay so this is all being done in real time and DTG allows you to essentially print full color on any garment whether it's cotton polyester or any blends and it's key as you guys are building a made-to-order brand and an e-commerce brand there it is guys it's one part of many that come in to actually creating your own collection using made to order now it's important to note that this video is also a part of a full course that we have available which is also going to be linked down below so if you guys are really interested in building out your brand and you need the resources additional suppliers or perhaps a little bit more help definitely make sure that you consider checking that out but before we get to all of that I want to show you guys this entire process to really help you see how you could build your brand with no money alright so let's head on over to the other side of this I guys so what you're seeing right here is the actual dryer now the during the drying process the artwork that was applied with the DTG is actually cured into the shirt allowing the shirt design to last all right so I'm actually like getting ahead of myself but I really want to grab it right now there it is check it out this is one of the designs that we submitted and as you could see this is obviously just a black on white design comes out super clean and you wouldn't be able to really tell the difference if this was screen printed or direct-to-garment printed which is the beauty of using a direct to garment printer to make the designs you're not limited by the colorways obviously this was just a simple black and white one but we have a full-color one coming out right now what's important to note is that you want to make sure that you create a collection that's cohesive and later on in this video we're gonna jump into those details as well as to what you really need to consider to design the collection that's gonna sell online now if you were to do this design on a screen print you now have two different colors which they would charge you a screen charge alright so just out of the gate being realistic you guys would have to pay $50 just to create one sample all right by using Apliiq or a made-to-order system you are able to design all of these different apparel designs and literally you don't have to make them until they're sold that's the key with building your brand with zero dollars is in using the funds in the right way all right so instead of spending a thousand dollars on a hundred screen printed shirts you can use those thousand dollars to actually go market your brand and start making the sales and then the shirts are being made at the same time isn't that genius so that's the beauty of working with a supplier like Apliiq and utilizing a platform such as Shopify and we're literally going to show how that is all made in a few minutes right upstairs right now what we want to show you guys is how the labeling and how the affixing of those labels helps create your brand cool guys so now that we had the DTG completed the next step that I feel is very it's very original - what Apliiq does is the labeling of your garments so I constantly get questions like "John how do I apply my own labels to the garments how do I you know like I'm using blank t-shirts how do I actually put my own brand in them so people don't know that I'm using blank t-shirts? " well what Apliiq does here is they actually relabel your apparel which is which is genius because it allows you to use blank apparel to actually build your brand and what I want to show you guys right now is that process so as you guys can see right here they're taking the design that we just quickly mocked up in order to apply it and show you guys this example and this label machine makes it right on the spot when she has this label she's able to take the shirt order that you put in and easily affixes it to it so it keeps a clean look and your customers will never know that you're just using a different brand so this is one key selling point when it comes to applique and over other drop shipping and fulfillment companies is that they do offer this service to fully private label your own brand and as you guys can see I created the mock-ups and we sent these mock-ups over last minute so let's see how it comes out there it is guys check it out just came out really clean the team actually made this here for us this morning because I didn't have a chance to order the woven labels but as you guys could see comes out super fresh and this is your own branded t-shirt alright you guys so now that you guys see how the DTG process and the labeling process for your apparel line works the next thing that you need to consider in order to build out your brand's products is embroidery now the embroidery process is one that allows you to really get creative with how your embroider but there are some limitations right yeah definitely embroidery is great for any fleece products so that would be a crewneck sweatshirt and hoodies and joggers and that type this up as well as head wear so it's definitely the go-to embellishment way or way to get your artwork on hats caps all that type of stuff in general there are some restrictions with embroidery so you'll just want to manage colors overall meaning we want to have a limited set of colors obviously embroider is created by stitching your designs into things and you don't have an unlimited palette to work from and then just overall design complexity you can't embroider something like a photograph it just needs to have like illuminate amount of like fine third nice illustration or graphic artwork text all those types of things are a great example you now have your design so with these designs in hand we're gonna run a couple of other designs on different hats with that in hand you are now closer to fulfilling the order so the orders that we submitted here today are gonna get fulfilled and that's the next process that we're getting to is in seeing how the whole entire collection and the line that you created gets fulfilled and shipped to your customers without you having to be here and without you having to put out all this money to create everything because the key strategy here is create designs sell them and then make them and ship them to collect on your profits alright it's that simple let's head on over to look at the film it now so now that you guys have your apparel printed labeled and you have your head wear embroidered the next step in actually fulfilling these orders is fulfillment alright and I want to say that the important thing about fulfillment and about this process in the made-to-order process as you guys are building and developing your brand is in finding a supplier that can do this off for you alright so typically you had to kind of piece all of these projects out yourself so if you wanted to create your own brand you needed to find a blank that you could use you needed to either screen print your design which required you to actually set up a couple hundred units for production and then you actually need it to find the sower that could sew on your labels well all of this is done in-house and as you guys can see there's ways to also add custom woven labels to the t-shirts which fully brand your brand guys so you now no longer have to take everything on yourself or even have to put any capital out in order for this to happen all right that's key and starting a clothing line with no money legitimately all right and we're going to show you guys this and much more through the Academy and the in the products that we have available for you guys to purchase as well as the system that you guys can access from applique all right this makes it possible to do all this on your own with littles knowledge and technology as long as you have an idea and you have a vision for your brand so let's go check out how the fulfillment process works so you guys can see that you no longer have to stack inventory in your mama's garage or in your apartment and get kicked out by your landlord you can literally do this on the go from anywhere that you go from your laptop from your cell phone you manage your customers you do the work and promoting it and putting it out to the world which we're going to share and then we're also going to show you guys how this is all done on the back end all right it may seem like a lot but let's go check out the fulfillment process so we got some orders here for you yeah you know sell your order coming through all right so when we're doing fulfillment but it's really a two-part process the first part is just always a quality check make sure that the product that we're shipping out is the right product so we've got our tag set up here and that'll pull our order up and this food we have a ton of software automation to help us make sure everything's getting shipped out correctly so for this particular product we can get it pulled up here you see that we have our digital print our labeling everything's good and it's set in the product so it's fresh you will take this tag off and then a big part of the shipping process is just making everything look clean and nice so when the customer gets it it's proper so we will quickly fold it every individual piece will get polybag so and like a clear plastic mailer like this just to keep the shipment safe when it's in the mail in case it's raining or snowing somewhere in the country you don't want to you know you don't want to show up with a wet t-shirt and then we'll go and and do this for everyone another big part of that procurement processes we will package orders in a gray hall email or you'll see there's no branding on it it doesn't say applique anywhere and you will be able to go here and of course your shipping label has your own branding on it so you see your shipping information can have all of your own company name company info same with your packing slip the package zip will always go inside the package see your customer knows that you know the pieces there is the incentive them and it's ready to be fulfilled guys that is the fulfillment in the creation process that happens right here in app leaks workshop and it's something that you guys can easily do as you guys are starting your brand with no money all right so let's head on upstairs and we're gonna talk about how you can actually make this thing happen from the comfort of your home we're gonna share the tools that you need as well as the system and how it operates all right guys now that we've seen how product gets made it's time to plan out your collection there's a lot that goes into collection planning and we're gonna boil down the most important details for you remember if you're just starting your clothing line and you're going for the lean route we have to adapt a pretty traditional retail strategy to make it work for e-commerce the number one mistake that people make when they're planning their collections is they try to go too large and they they're thinking 20 or 30 pieces that need to go into this collection it really comes from traditional fashion and for seasonal collections and creating line sheets and selling through retail and boutique channels but since you are going to be selling direct to your customers through your own online webstore you want to keep your collection small you should really be thinking about three to five pieces and releasing those collections far more rapidly so think about a single collection of three to five pieces per month you get a lot of benefits out of that the first benefit is that as you go to market your collections customers are not going to be overwhelmed by too much choice so instead of having to try to make a decision of one of 15 products they'll quickly be able to see your entire collection be able to understand it of course you've done really good job of building outline cohesion using labeling and really making a strong brand impact all of your art work needs to be coordinated so it feels like a cohesive collection as well but you'll get a lot of e-commerce conversion rate benefit over reducing that overall amount of choice that your customers have to experience as they want to support your wine in your collection the second benefit that you're going to get is you can do things much more quickly instead of coordinating artwork files for 20 or 30 different pieces you're only working with a handful of pieces it's super manageable if you want to do sampling for your own photography needs it's really cheap and cost-effective to get samples produced for you so that's the second benefit that you're gonna get out of it and third and most importantly having a small collection helps you line up all your marketing efforts that go into it because as soon as you have your collection finalized and you have your samples and your store set up you're going to want to take that out to social media and start crushing it and by having these smaller collections it allows you to constantly be releasing new product and that allows you to go back to the same people and let them know that something new has happened you have a new collection and it's a reason to consistently bring perspective and existing customers back to your webstore and get them to keep purchasing and building that like higher lifetime value that you want to get out of your customers so that's all about how to create and plan collections for doing dropship ecommerce clothing line a common question you may be asking yourself is what design programs can I use in order to actually design my line if you're a creative designer and if you know how to navigate things Photoshop and illustrator as are going to be the tools that you guys should consider looking into as you're developing your clothing line they allow you to quickly mock-up illustrations as well as create the vector files that you need whether it be for embroidery or whether it be for t-shirt designs even if you get into some of the cut and sew aspects of it as you're growing your brand Photoshop and illustrator are great tools to have and they're gonna be linked in the show notes down below as well as some other free resources that I include as a part of this video all right and then the next thing if you're not so tech savvy or perhaps you don't have the time to learn a new design program another thing I highly consider and encourage that you guys consider isn't to hire in this out to graphic designers who are skilled in the trade all right there's platforms such as design crowd and many others which I'll leave in the notes down below that you guys can access and actually start working with designers in order to create that the ideas that you have whether you have them in a sketch or whether you have a an inspiration board of where your line is going these graphic designers will be able to help so once you guys actually have those design files the next step is into actually bringing them to life alright and this is where applique and other fulfillment services are allowing you to essentially create new products without having to manufacture them and not know if they're gonna sell or not so essentially applique has a new Shopify app that's available through Shopify so what I'm going to show you guys right now is how that app integrates and allows you to design your collections which are made in this Factory and shipped directly to your customer without them knowing that it's going from here to there alright so come on over and I'll show you guys how that's done aren't you guys in order to get started I highly encourage that you check out the show notes down below to follow along as well as get your 14-day free trial from Shopify which will allow you to sell online alright and once you create that account you'll have a dashboard that looks something like this alright this is a test account that we created where we're gonna be showing you guys how easy it is to actually integrate applique to your Shopify store and then launch your online site now that in this video it's gonna be more of a condensed version so definitely be on the lookout for the upcoming video where we walk you step-by-step through actually creating this online site and then going to market with your brand all right so what you'll do is you'll go to the App Store and on the App Store you could plug in a bunch of different apps where applique is one of them so we have already installed it onto our Shopify account but if you're new you'll simply search for a right here and it'll come up right here ready for you to install once you install it it'll ask you to create an account and that's free so you don't have to pay anything and once you create that account you'll essentially have access to appliqué full back-end dashboard what's important here is this launch checklist so before you get any order started make sure that you add a payment method consider setting up a woven label option which will allow you to brand every single product that goes out of their door as your own branded product the third step isn't adding a shipping label so essentially you want to put your brand's information and your brand's address versus it's showing up leaks information so you'll simply do that right here and these are essentially your three steps in order to launch and let's jump into how you can actually customize some products so applique has a variety of products that you guys can customize so you guys know what you're looking for and what you're looking at in terms of product pricing and what you can expect so essentially they have a bunch of different options hoodies from joggers to jackets to even denim jackets that you customize so for this example we're just gonna go with the classic Bella canvas 3001 t-shirt once you click on it you'll find a bunch of information right here related to both quantity orders so applique does do mask quantity ordering if you guys need it but if you're doing a printer order model then you won't necessarily to look at that right now they do have an option right under the gate to customize a pocket tee so if that's for your brand I courage you that you encourage that you try this out customize some pocket tees for this example we're just gonna go as a classic logo tee and we'll show the different options that you have to customize it on the backend all right so we'll get started with uploading a logo and essentially this is our brand's logo here which you'll see that it's a transparent background with a yellow and black you have different options to customize this digital print is essentially direct-to-garment which is what we showed you guys earlier in this video which allows you to print full-color without having all the different screen setups screen printing does require quantities of and you artwork is limited to colors so this is where you could choose the different colors that you'd want for your screen print a cut and sew option is more of an option where you could kind of applique your brand use different fabrics to actually create the design that you're envisioning so you haven't done a couple different options to choose for your fabrics so if you want to use like a camo setup you could see how they can integrate some of the camo fabrics a bunch of different options to use real fabric on the design and then you also have the embroidery option which is limited to colors as well and it's also limited to size dimension so just keep that in mind but for this example we'll go with a digital print and you can actually see how that's going to look on your garment now it's important that you guys note here that this is essentially just for reference so this is going to be for you guys to just kind of mock it up and see it on a t-shirt alright so you can mock it up on the back you can mock it up on the front and then what you can do here is that this does limit you to five megabyte artwork limit so what you could do here is actually upload up to 20 megabyte file by clicking here alright this will allow you to upload your ai PDF EPS PNG and all those high quality artwork setups that you created with Adobe Photoshop or illustrator right onto here once you upload that you can leave any notes here so for instance if you wanted this to be six inches from the collar because you know that that's where you want the placement you could put you know six inches or what standard is more of like maybe three inches three inches from collar centered or if it's a logo that goes on on the patent I could either on the left or the right you could say you know two inches from the seam or whatever it may be you can note down those notes right here and that way when they're going to print it they can actually see your notes right in here and you know exactly where to place it where they're not just like trying to do it however they feel may be right which may not be sitting right with you alright so once you do that you can just simply save it and once you do that you have the option to buy in bulk buy a sample which is something that's shipped to you so you can see the quality of it before you start selling it or even you can start marketing it with your sample and once you do that you can drop ship this product once you drop ship this product you're adding it to your store and you could set a price right here which will which will set it up on your store all right so if this cost you $10 to produce the profit margins or a 58% and we'll do wake up yellow just for the sake of this example from here you can go directly back to Shopify which will allow you to edit this product on the Shopify back-end and this is where you can add your description of your product and this is where you can make it available onto different product channels whether it be Facebook or Pinterest once you integrate with those once you complete that product you can go back to applique selection and start customizing other items that you may see it works well with your line once you add all the products that you're envisioning and that you'd like to create you essentially can go back to your Shopify store and see everything that you have all right so these are some of the products that we've been creating over the last few hours we designed a couple things to add it to the store what you're going to do here is you're going to click on the products that you want to add once you have that you could go ahead and add to a collection the collection is going to be the home page collection and it is now available on your site so what you can do is you click on the online store and you can actually see it and customize it to your liking as you guys can see applique offers a way to preview those imagery so if a customer comes in they could see some of the apparel that you have but I do recommend that you guys take photos of your own product or use a better generator in order to create or more importantly get some lifestyle imagery in here in order to create your guys its brand alright so if a customer order sign in that literally click that they'd add it to their cart they check out an applique with fulfill the orders that are coming in from your store what's important to note about Shopify is that you are able to quickly customize your design so let's select on that image you can customize what it says here so let's just say ground up Academy store and it is now ready to be featured if you guys want to check out the completed store this is obviously a mock and a test run we're gonna actually add all the different products that we've been printing with applique onto the official revive site which you guys will be linked in the description down below if you guys want to check that out if you guys want to show your support or purchase a product to see the quality of it that way you know exactly what you're getting from applique before you connect your brand to it or perhaps before you spend time designing some products once you guys have your pages set up and you know that your products are gonna be ready to be fulfilled the next step that you should really be considering is in already launching your social media pages all right you don't want to wait until the products are actually available or ready to sell until you launch your Instagram or your Facebook or your Twitter or your YouTube or your MySpace page you want to be able to have every one of those already reserved as you're building the collection and as you're building your line it's gonna be important for you guys to do that as you need to start sharing the development of this line you need to tell all your friends and family that you're working on this and what better way to start corralling people than to creating the pages of where they're hanging out and more importantly make sure that you link to a website or a landing page that allows you to collect emails all right and you may be watching and saying emails so old-school it's really not guys email is not dead people are still opening their email INBOX chances are you watch this video by an email or through an email that somebody sent over to you so you need to consider that for your brand as well in order to launch a landing page it's as simple as creating a site on Shopify with like a simple landing page or if you're not using Shopify you can create a Google Docs form a great way to start collecting leads is to offer something so whether you guys want to give away a free sticker or a wristband or maybe even enter in for a giveaway for a free product these are all great ways that you can start building out your email list and start building out your followers on social media okay and some great posting tips and advice that you guys should definitely consider to do also is in sharing the imagery or perhaps the products the samples that you order from applique or whoever's printing your products you want to start sharing those on the behind-the-scenes basis to let people know that the drop is about to come alright so you want to have a good social media strategy that's gonna be an important tip in order for you guys to continue growing your social media following but more importantly start making sales which leads us into the process of actually collecting sales all right so some of you guys may be wondering how do I actually collect payment for the products that I make well if you signed up for a Shopify site you're able to automatically start collecting sales as you're building out that website if you're using a different platform or perhaps you're gonna do more of a direct-to-consumer approach like selling it at your schools or out of a trunk of a car you're going to want to consider using a mobile payment provider whether it be PayPal Square up or any of those types of services especially if you're gonna be hitting a lot of events with the products that you make Shopify has a great tool that allows you to easily sell from your phone and integrate to the to the actual cloud so if you're selling online and you're selling in person and the product is sold they allow you to track your inventory which is a great way for you guys to stay on point and on track and of course if you're using a fulfillment company then you're also gonna need to make sure that you communicate with them so I'm not trying to say that you need to use Shopify but I am trying to say that you should definitely use Shopify and there's gonna be a link noted right down below to get started with a free 14-day trial all right guys so you guys can literally start for free so this no money out of pocket we're keeping this thing legit on how to start our clothing line with no money down a legit way 14-day free trial link down below as well as additional resources that you guys can use to actually make your brands launch and additional tools that you can use to start selling on there now a question I frequently get is when should you legitimate your business meaning when should you get your business license when should you spoil your sales tax and use license and I would highly recommend that you do that once you prove that your business is something that's going to be sustainable alright so the approach that we just shared with you guys throughout this video allows you to see if it's gonna be a business that's worth pursuing in the direction and in the way that you originally planned okay so by doing this approach you don't have to legitimize your business just yet but I highly consider that you put that on your radar and start thinking about that as you're creating and generating those sales if you're somebody that has a lot of assets perhaps you have a lot of cars houses homes then you should consider doing an LLC or a corporation as soon as you get this business up and running to reduce those liabilities but just keep in mind guys you're selling t-shirts you're not selling baby products or something that may strangle somebody don't try to think too far into it but definitely have it in your radar just don't put too much emphasis on it until you know that this is a business that's gonna be creating sales because you need to make sales in order to invest into your business and this is a great way to do that is by doing a drop shipping and fulfillment model and fulfilling those orders through an online site and then being able to say hey this is something that my customers want so now you'll be able to invest into that company and legitimize it knowing that you've got a pretty good investment and at the same time it's saving you money because you're no longer putting the couple hundred two thousand dollars in structuring a business that's making no dollars okay so kind of consider that as you guys are thinking about legitimizing it because I get that question a lot when should I do it that's when I think you should do it when you know that it's gonna be a product that's gonna be selling okay so you guys have a lot of liabilities or potential liabilities and definitely talk to your accountant and figure out the right financial strategy in order for you guys to set that thing up so there you have it guys I hope you enjoyed this video as you guys are building and developing your brand don't forget to plan and set a strategy in order for you guys to grow now look this was only a portion of what's included in the entire ground-up community starting a clothing line master course well we have over 35 videos and 15 hours of content to help you build your brand in business on a step-by-step basis we include worksheets in there as well as a private group community page but we can continue building and communicating on a daily basis and more importantly we have a monthly training call every single month which ties into multiple topics and we answer the personal questions that you may have about your specific brand in business alright and if you're not ready for that process or if you're not ready to commit to something like that just hit that subscribe button down below and check out the resources in the notes that I mentioned down below where you guys can continue building your brands and businesses and more importantly leave a comment with the question that you may have that we can answer in a future video and I'm just pumped to see what you guys create and what you guys build keep me updated with everything that you do and I'll see you guys on the next video bye
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