Most business plans are structured very similarly to one another, regardless of industry. At first, writing a plan can seem daunting due to the many sections and subsections it contains, but the backbone of your presentation should focus on a few fundamentals.
Now that you understand the basics of crafting a fashion brand business plan, you’re ready to begin bringing everything together into a cohesive format. Luckily, this process is fairly straightforward. Follow these 10 simple steps to write a plan that encapsulates your vision for the company.
1. Review business plan templates and examples for inspiration
Start generating ideas by exploring examples of completed business plans or browse among the many free business plan templates available online. Consider details like color schemes and fonts to make your presentation stand out from the crowd. You should also pay careful attention to the arrangement of each section.
For instance, it’s usually best to list your financial information toward the end of the document to encourage investors and banks to review the entire document before making a decision. You will also want to ensure your business plan has a well-organized table of contents so readers can easily navigate from one section to another.
2. Write an executive summary
As previously mentioned, the executive summary is potentially the most important section of any business plan. If you’re having trouble with this part, work on writing a short paragraph summarizing the history of your fashion brand and where you expect to see the company in three to five years. From there, you can extract the main takeaways from each of your plan’s additional sections and save the finer details for later.
3. Include company information
This portion should introduce your clothing line to readers, touching upon the values and goals that make your brand unique. Sub-topics may include a detailed timeline of your company’s story, who owns the business, and whether your fashion brand will operate primarily online or from a brick-and-mortar location. If you’re seeking financial support to open a new location, discuss how the expansion could facilitate increased sales and faster growth.
4. Describe your products and services
Introduce this section by discussing in detail the types of products your clothing line will focus on selling. Try to be as specific as possible here, highlighting merchandise that exemplifies your brand and separates your business from competing clothing lines.
You may also want to add a subsection that defines any noteworthy benefits to your products, such as offering only ethically sourced fabrics or recycled products or providing significant discounts on bulk purchases.
5. Explain the market overview
When writing the part of your business plan that analyzes the clothing market, devote a section to examining the buyer personas that make up your target audience. Explain the predominant age, sex, values, attitudes, and shopping styles of your prospective customers. Next, discuss current trends in the market and how innovations are shaping the future of fashion brands.
If possible, use statistical information, charts, and relevant data points to pinpoint the exact niche your clothing line hopes to target. This section is also an excellent place to mention specific challenges clothing companies face today from competitors or recent changes in customer buying habits that your business will need to overcome.
6. Discuss sales and marketing
The sales and marketing analysis section should detail specific information about your company’s operations. For fashion brands, the sales portion of this section may include discussing your store’s hours of operation, the type of payments accepted at the point of sale, and how you may plan to start an online clothing store.
As for the marketing portion, explain your preliminary approach to acquiring either local or global customers. If you expect to rely heavily on foot traffic to your physical clothing outlet, you may want to talk about how you plan to distribute flyers to households in nearby neighborhoods. Fashion brands focused on ecommerce may have more success with digital marketing strategies that engage customers through their home computers or mobile devices.
Finally, create a subsection defining the goals your clothing line hopes to achieve in terms of total sales, net profit, and/or customers served.
7. Introduce leadership, management, and staff
In this part of your business plan, write about the core personnel who will be responsible for running daily operations. Create brief biographical statements for each owner and manager, taking the time to expand upon their relevant industry experience, education, or training that makes them an asset to the company.
You’ll also want to explain whether you and other owners intend to oversee the business directly or delegate the task to someone else. If you know you’ll need to hire entry-level employees to fill key roles, be sure to include this information as well, being as specific as possible about their wages, hours, and benefits.
8. Present your financial outlook
You’ll need to write a section devoted to your clothing line’s financial situation. This should include any historical sales, your present finances, and projections for the company’s future. Start by explaining how much funding your clothing line needs to get off the ground and exactly where that money will go as your business begins to grow.
Next, create some spreadsheets that reflect your company’s expenditures, profit, and cash flow to give readers a good idea of how your business manages money. It’s critical to be accurate with any estimates or projections, so it may be best to defer to the expertise of a financial advisor to ensure you haven’t missed anything.
9. Carefully examine the business plan for typos and other errors
With everything drafted and ready to go, it’s advisable to thoroughly review your clothing line business plan for any omissions or typographical errors. Even the smallest discrepancies can make an otherwise perfect plan look a little less than professional.
Pay special attention to punctuation and word choice to make your presentation easy for any potential investor to understand. Besides running your business plan through a spell-check program, it may also help to utilize programs like the Hemingway App or Grammarly to improve readability.
10. Add informative graphics or engaging photos to break up walls of text
Once everything is written out, you may notice that your business plan is missing a special something to make it stand out. Whenever possible, look for opportunities to insert relevant photos or informational graphs in between all of that text.