Talking about money & manufacturing costs in lingerie design
Money, money, money.
It’s not something that gets discussed often I find with women. I have noticed a difference between when I support men and women clients, men will discuss money more openly about how much they have to invest, what profit they want to make by designing lingerie or mens underwear, where as women tend to not bring that up unless I approach the subject with them. And yes I know I’m making a general sweeping statement as there are some of you women who are readily open to discuss how much you are making, but it’s still not a broad subject that is spoken about.
I’m going to cover what I did to launch my brand and how much money I invested, where I got money from and what it costs to look at manufacturing.
So I launched my brand in 2005, so obviously starting out costs will be different to what it is today, but i hope it’ll give you an idea or inspiration where to get some coins from.
When I started working on my brand I had not long arrived in Belfast, and previous to that I had done a season out in Ibiza where I had managed to save £2000 (I worked in a bar a night and only had two nights a month off), so that was my starting point, I also took a part job to pay the bills and spent every spare time I had working on my brand (which meant I wasn’t going out spending money).
The money didn’t last too long and my the time I got my first order (it took a year longer than I had hoped for) I needed more money. I applied for to go on the Invest NI business course, and received £750 grant for completing the course, along side this I applied for a Princes Trust loan and received £3,500, and the great thing about this, was that for the first six months the re-payments were only £20 a month and then interest on the loan was super low afterwards (I paid the loan off over three years), and I got a mentor, who taught me not to compete on price as I would never win with high streets, and to look at what value I was adding to someone who bought my lingerie. She also every time we met she kept drumming into me, without cashflow I had no business.
There were a few big mistakes I made along the way, at the start I was offering mens underwear, women’s t-shirts, men’s t-shirts and even jewellery, which I made, it took me two seasons to realise I couldn’t do it all and that anything other than lingerie was wasting my time and money.
Back to money… I paid the Belfast city council to go on a course where by you met other people in business and then at the end the Belfast City Council was able to give contacts they had in Southern Ireland to expand your business.
Another area that helped was my first show, I took a stand and showed in Harrogate, I applied for another grant (I can’t remember who this was with) which covered half the stand costs and promotion work, I got the grant as I was covered by ‘showing across the water’ which basically meant the place providing grants helped those living in Ireland or Northern Ireland get shown in England.
My main tip from this is research what is out there, grants, loans, competitions, business courses, crowd funding, start-up schemes, there are still some out there you just need to research and keep looking for one that you can apply for.
There were ones I didn’t get, but I basically tried and applied for as many as I could.
Designing and producing your lingerie label is going to be different for everyone, some may produce it themselves, others go down the manufacturing route or a mixture of both. I started off producing it all myself then moved to half and half, I would outsource most of the briefs and then sew the bras as I had a far greater size range in bras than briefs.
Manufacturing costs are going to differ depending on whether you manufacturing locally or abroad, and the amount you choose to manufacturer. Then the cost will increase if you are wanting the manufacturer to support you with patterns, range development or simply sampling and manufacturing and you sort out everything else such as fabrics, patterns, grading, tech-packs etc.
It all depends where you are at, some manufacturers will source all your fabrics, help you fits , develop your range and whilst you think it may be cheaper just to do manufacturing it all depends on your time scale and how much you need guidance.
A brief (UK) can start from £7 (basic brief) right the way up to £20 depending on how much work is involved, a soft bra can go from £15 to £25 and an underwire bra £25 to £40, now these are all to give you a rough idea, you would need to contact a manufacturer to get actual prices, and it can cost into the £1000s to get the support and development from manufactures, if you were looking for them to do everything.
If you have any questions about the money side of running a lingerie brand, or have any tips for otheres starting please leave a comment.
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