How to Scale Up Your Small Fashion Business in Different Geographies

While doing business in fashion is not tricky, scaling it up in different geographies and markets may be a bit of a task. As a fashion business, you are expected to know all about the latest designs, the changing trends, the fashion cycle, and how the trends may move in different markets. This does not mean that you have to be an expert in all these things. You may have someone working on these aspects. 

With the current trend of globalization, it becomes important to understand the culture, customs, and norms of other places. It helps to mold your products and services as per their demands. But how do you manage to do that? You need to understand them and also learn from their cultures. If you are thinking of scaling up your small fashion business, then you might find this blog useful.

How to Scale Up Your Small Fashion Business in Different Geographies? 

The easiest and most efficient way to scale up your business is to find similar brands, enter their markets, and learn as much as you can from them. Compete on different parameters and do not compete on price. Price differentiation works very well before the market saturates. The key is to develop your fashion brand and business model continuously. 

Since you are already in the business, you already understand the market. Develop your products, learn about the market, and try to get your business to a certain level of success. Once you have a few working products, re-launch them in other markets. In addition, try to open your business in other countries. Most fashion brands start in one country and then expand to other markets. Research your industry and also some of your competitors.

Does it sound confusing?

Don’t worry, here is a simple 7 step process to help you scale your small fashion business:

7 Steps To Scale Up Small Fashion Business In Different Geographies:

1. Explore your new target market

The best way to serve your customers is to know who they are. It helps you streamline your offerings and give a personalized experience to your customers. But how do you do that?

How to identify your target market as a fashion business?

• Analyze your offerings: Ask yourself how your product will help your customers satisfy their fashion needs. The next question is, who are you going to serve? Is it kids, adults, teenagers, or elderly people?

• Conduct market research: Effective market research is about two things – understanding the marketplace and identifying your competitors. You can take surveys, ask related fashion groups, and take a look at CRM insights to understand your target market.

• Create customer profiles: You can create profiles using demographics, such as age, gender, professional background, and marital status. On the other hand, psychographic data will help you understand your customer better. For example, their personalities, lifestyles, behavior, and values.

• Conduct competitive analysis: Some of the questions that will help you understand your competitors – Who are selling the same fashion products? How much are they charging? What is their marketing strategy?

You will get a good view of your target market after going through all these points.

2. Understand your financial management

Capital is a key player in the expansion of your fashion business. 

Here are some points to help you do better with your financial management:

• Hire an accountant who understands the global market, someone who is good with international transactions and the legalities around it.
• Evaluate the initial capital requirement. Where will it come from?
• Create a long-term financial plan. 
• What are the initial investments? For example, hiring new staff, purchasing new equipment, and investing in technology.
• Do not expect to earn profits in the beginning. Scaling your small business is a long-term game.

3. Localise your marketing approach

The best way to reach people of different geographies is through local channels of communication. You need to understand their culture, lifestyle, where they hang out, and things related to their daily life. It will help you target the audience in the local area.

So, localise your brand experience and optimise it to fit the needs of your target audience.

You can localise your marketing approach through these strategies:

• Create content for local people. You can create blog posts or social media posts that revolve around topics of the region.
• Create a local SEO strategy. The target keywords vary for different regions of the world.
• Hire an experienced person from the target region who understands local marketing.

4. Build personal connections

Getting to know your customers personally will help you understand their needs better. Interact with your customers through social media channels, emails, and newsletters. 

Visit these places personally if you can. Interact with local people, click good pictures, and share your experiences on social media channels. It will help your customers connect with you and trust you.

Create local groups or communities for your customers, so that you can interact with them. It will also help them know about you and your business. Interact with your target customers as often as possible.

5. Leverage influencer relationship in target markets

One of the best ways to reach your customers is through local influencers. Influencer marketing has created a boom in the fashion industry. So, make the best use of it to scale your fashion business.

You can hire a local marketing team that will help you collaborate with the influencers. Build a network of like-minded influencers. Share your content ideas with them, help them understand your brand values, and source marketing ideas with them. Influencer marketing is a less expensive yet high-on-return strategy.

6. Invest in effective technology

Invest in effective techniques to save your time and money, so that you can scale your small business faster. Gone are the days when you had to rely on many employees to perform different tasks. Technology has created creative destruction in a good way.

A lot of tools are available in the market that will help you track your marketing efforts, understand your customer behaviour, save time on accounting, manage sales, and a lot more.

Some of the tools that will help you scale small fashion business include:

• Customer relationship management
• Accounting
• Marketing automation
• Sales management
• Shipping tracking
• Inventory check

Most of the tools are affordable and often come in packages. Investing in these tools will help save a lot of time.

7. Scale your efforts

Scaling your efforts means knowing what attracts your customers. And using that knowledge to grow your business.

Your marketing efforts will become zero if you don’t measure them. Track your performances, analyse your sales, and marketing campaigns. It will help you optimize your fashion brand for your customers.

One of the best ways to scale your efforts is to ask your customers. Take short surveys or ask them for feedback on the website.

Your lead generation methods also need to be revised from time to time. 

Some tips to successfully scale your small fashion business:

1. Don’t rush things, as moving too fast will only drain you financially.
2. Hire a local team whenever you can. It will help with local marketing.
3. Opt for efficient tech partners. They can be your delivery partners or your marketing team.
4. Optimize your fashion brand and marketing techniques for local experiences.
5. Be wise while selecting a city for your e-commerce fashion business.
6. Start with your best selling products. Think of the demographics and figure out what they are buying. Is it cheaper fake products or the real thing? If this pays off, then expand to other regions that have similar markets. Find out what the people there liked. If you can sell the product there, you can sell it anywhere.
7. You can create your website for online marketing. You can use various channels to market your products – both online and offline.

The bottom line is that when you start with a fashion business, you can’t be sure if you’re going to be successful or not. However, you can certainly give yourself a better chance of success if you think about your target market carefully. 

This blog post will give you some ideas on how to scale up your small fashion business in different geographies. If you have any other questions or concerns about scaling up your fashion business, contact Fashinza. 

Fashinza helps fashion brands connect with efficient suppliers and manufacturers. Contact here with your requirements related to sourcing clothes.