How Much Have I Spent On Opinion?

by Nolan Rockers October 25, 2020

When thinking about starting Opinion, the first thing I searched was “How much does it cost to start a clothing brand”?

I found tons and tons of articles all with different answers so I thought that I would lay out the financial part of starting your own clothing line and my experience.

I want to make this clear, this is MY experience and how I do MY company, you can do it tons of different ways but this is just what I have experienced.

For my first ever hoodie, I was connected by a friend to a local screen printing store in St. Louis. Park where they knew the owner. I simply went in and talked to her about my ideas for hoodies and we made samples of each one. Let me be honest, a local print shop will not usually do samples like that, she was doing this out of the kindness of her heart. I then took pictures of the hoodies, put them up on our website, and did a pre-order. I gave people a week to put in their order then how many hoodies were ordered, I would send them to the shop and have them made. Another point, I only had 12 hoodie orders and usually, a shop MOQ (Minimum Order Quantity) is 50, but she still let me do it and for a reasonable price. In the end, I spent about $330 and that includes the shipping which they actually did for me. Now that I have done this for two years, I have realized that this small local shop went WAYYYY above and beyond for me so here is the link to their website and location!

https://educationaloutfitters.com/ 6002 Excelsior Blvd, St Louis Park, MN 55416

After our first launch, I then started to look for manufactures that could do more custom cut and sew pieces that would really align with my ideas. I did not do a good job of doing this and ended up getting scammed out of about $500. DO YOUR RESEARCH. So now I had lost a full summer due to me not putting in enough research on a credible manufacturer.

I then found a local manufacturer that could do all of my ideas but the price was pretty high but I didn’t know that until down the line. I spent around $4,500 to do my summer and my winter line with them. That line did well but with such high margins and me charging a fair price, I broke even if not lost a little money in that situation.

I then went to Alibaba and did A TON of research and ordered samples from different places until I found one I liked. Samples can go for about $100 for a hoodie, $75 for a shirt, and $50 for a beanie, depending on the design you want. These prices are so high because these manufactures produce bulk, so when you order just one it’s not making them any money. I’ve spent about $1,300 on samples alone, and when ordering bulk is anywhere from $400-$1200 per piece because the MOQ is 50 pieces, but the price per piece is a lot lower now that we use overseas manufacturing. This is always a scary thing because now I’m ordering 50 pieces and need to sell a certain amount to get my money back.

So to give you a rough estimate I’ve spent around $17,000 on orders for Opinion in the last two and a half years.

Now that we have covered the clothing part, don’t forget about your LLC, domain, supplies, shipping, and the monthly payment to your website. Supplies for me were another $1.500 and then my payment for my website is $29.00 a month.

So in the past 2.5 years, I’ve put in about $25,000 into Opinion. I didn’t cover everything and all the mistakes that I’ve made, but that’s where I’m at.

The clothing brand industry is a tough one to break into, because all the money you make if you make any, is put right back into ordering your next line! As I said, this is my experience with my brand and you can spend a lot more, and you can spend a lot less on your brand, it really comes down to the quality you want, the designs, and the manufacturer you have. I hope this helped a little and if you ever have questions you can always ask me.