How to start fashion business?

How can my friend and I start our own fashion business?

• We're 13 and LOVE fashion! We have a huge scrapbook of our designs. And our fashions rock! (everyone at our school says that) We already have clientelle. People already want to buy our clothes. So we're serious, and want to know... how do we start a business? Are we too young? I'm not very good at sewing, so how much will it cost to pay a manufacturur to make our clothes? What are steps we need to take? Please, help us! Thank you, I'm St. Jimmy

• Answer:

  Well, look... Start out by selling some clothes here and there, in this time you can find out what you need to charge and do so accordingly, by setting your price based on cost of clothes + your labor + 10% profit (later you will have to add 30% for taxes but leave this alone until you get into serious money like thousands and thousands of dollars ok). Anyway, you have to get paid for all that you spent and your work and a little extra. So then you can do this until you earn in excess of $600 / year without much worry, but beyond this you'll need to check into your state's labor laws, I think you need to be 14 to have a job but you can do it as a hobby for now. Once you exceed $600 / year in income, you'll likely want to ask for this to be filed under your parent's taxes, also as a hobby, you can then extend yourself up to $1,000 / year, in addition to the $600 limitation, you can then earn and spend up to $1600 / year... I know it doesn't sound like much, but in the real world $1600 / year for a hobby is still a LOT of money! And, between you and a friend you can likely double this, by first using the $600 limit for each of you, you can both earn up to 1200 / year without worry, and up to around 2-3,000 / year as a hobby and it gets a bit into creative accounting, in the legal sense you really shouldn't get into creative accounting but a little bit is ok but once you get up to a few thousand dollars / year between the two of you, at that point I would recommend filing some legal paperwork such as acquiring a business license. So all this will take some time and by then you will probably be a little older, then maybe you can ask your parents to get a business license in their name and you work for them until you are 18, basically you own the business but they have to file the paperwork and all that, but this is all for a bit later. As for how much it costs to manufacture the clothes, best I can tell you is shop around and find stuff at HUGE discounts like 30% and 50% and 70% off sales, stuff like that can be found in the off-season / clearance aisles and is likely the cheapest you can get. Then, with the clearance / off-season stuff you do what you do best and by the time it is ready it will likely be almost back in season and even if it isn't it will probably still sell like hot cakes because it sounds like you're pretty good at it. As a rough guide, since you have to get paid for all of this, you will want to try and charge 3 - to - 4 times what the clothes cost you, so if you paid $10 for a shirt then you will want to try and sell it for $30 - $40, maybe $35 is good. And this is why it is important to find stuff on sale so the price stays down. Any less than 3 times and you lose money, any higher than 4 and you're likely ripping off your customers, so between 3 to 4.