Using Fashion Industry Market Research For Business Development

Research is key to making any business successful and even more relevant to the fashion industry as the variety of products and diversity of your potential customer is vast. The information you gather from your market research will feed in to your business plan and help you identify where your products/idea will fit within the context of the following questions:-

1. What is the size of the segment of the market you want to operate in and how is it performing?
2. Who is your target customer?
3. Where and how do they shop?
4. What are the price points your target customer are willing to pay?
5. Who are your competitors?

Knowing the answers will help shape your product development and overall business direction.

Your research will encompass a variety of sources including national press, blogs,  market databases, trade magazines,  exhibitions, e-commerce platforms, and the high street.

In this post I'm focusing on the first question raised, as your starting point is to find out the size of the market, predict whether it’s an expanding or shrinking segment, and what the impact of the national and international economic climate is likely to be.

To find this out  there are on-line market prediction reports which give you information, statistics, insight, and analysis for every type of fashion and accessory product category. Large brands, marketing and advertising agencies all pay subscriptions to have this information, but the Business Library’s Business and IP Centre gives you free access to most of the main electronic research databases, and is a brilliant resource.

Below are examples of what looking at recent market reports* can tell you:-

• According to the DCMS, the current value of the clothing and footwear market in the UK is estimated at £44.8 million. This is predicted to grow between now and 2017 to £53.1 million. The following shows the levels of expenditure in the UK in 2012 for different apparel categories:
• Womenswear expenditure was £21 million, a growth rate of 13% since 2007. It is predicted to grow a further 21% from now until 2017, to reach an expenditure of £26 million.
• Menswear expenditure was £10 million, a growth rate of 10.% since 2007. It is predicted to grow a further 19% from now until 2017, to reach an expenditure of £11 million.
• Childrenswear expenditure was £5 million, a growth rate of 7% since 2007. It is predicted to grow a further 14% from now until 2017, to reach an expenditure of £6 million.
• Footwear expenditure was £5 million, a growth rate of 6% since 2007. It is predicted to grow a further 12% from now until 2017, to reach an expenditure of £6 million.
• Accessories expenditure was £2 million, a growth rate of 17% since 2007. It is predicted to grow a further 18% from now until 2017, to reach an expenditure of £3 million.

It has been forecasted that volume growth in the fashion industry will not regain pre-recession levels until after 2017 but as you can see, there are areas that are  growing. Despite the recession, luxury brands continue to increase sales and profits, particularly the brands that export to South East Asia and the BRIC markets.

I'll be covering this area in more depth at our forthcoming workshop -
Fashion Business Planning for Success on 12th June.

Let me know what  interesting industry statistics you've discovered?

By Alison Lewy
Founder of Fashion Angel and author of Design Create Sell - a guide to starting and running a successful fashion business.

*Courtesy of the British Library Business and IP Centre

Diary of a Fashion Start up - Part 1

We are pleased to host a new series of guest blogs from Meeka Harrison-Topham who's blog my fashion start up chronicles the issues faced by an aspiring fashion business entrepreneur.


Business plan 101

Putting pen to paper and churning out a 15 page document mapping out the backbone of your business can be an excruciating task, despite the wealth of resources and guides at our finger tips via the web. To help me along the way, I decided a bit of interactive focus wouldn’t go amiss, so last Thursday I found myself biking over to Tottenham Court Road to attend a workshop run by Alison Lewy of Fashion Angel, entitled “how to write a business plan”, aimed at fashion design businesses.

While these kinds of workshops inevitably put forward the same guidelines and tips contained in business guide books which you can get for a fraction of the price, the money spent was well worth it  – as the interactive style workshop ensures that you come away with better presentation skills, a clearer idea of the strengths and weaknesses of your idea, and maybe a fruitful contact or two found through networking.

Here are some key points I took away with me from the workshop:

• A business plan is essential to provide a clear structure for your business, as well as to create momentum and keep you along the right path.
• Research is key, and will form the most labour intensive part of the process, from looking at your market segment, ideal customer, competitive field, price points, to targeted boutiques.
• Financial forecasts can be brutal tasks, but are vital in order to draw all the aspects of the plan together in numerical form, and of course ensure that you make money!
• Business plans evolve – they are not static, so keep on adding to it as your business grows and changes

The workshop put a useful amount of emphasis and time on how to put together financial forecasts, and to monitor cash flows – no doubt both the dreaded nemesis of any designer! So all in all a productive morning, and very useful to meet Alison, who has just written a book called “Design, Create, Sell”, offering advice on cracking the hard nut of the fashion industry, which I’m sure is vital reading…