Hello everybody. I am looking to operate my own online clothing store and I had a couple questions on which would be the best route to go. I know someone who is selling their clothing line because it is inactive and says he has zero time for it. Its roughly 4 years old and he has LOTS of inventory in stock. About $13,000 worth of product if it was all sold. It comes with the website, social networks, domain, every single product. For $3,000. CMFACLOTHING.COM is the website with the products. Is this worth that price? The products are there. Its just the matter of marketing and getting people to buy. OR Is it wiser to start off new with other ideas such as a different name and what not? With no product. I have a good name and domain already registered because I planned on starting one from scratch. My own designs. My own ideas. But again I am starting from nothing with no product but I'm only $15 in the whole with it. Is it better if I used the money to market my own ideas and get stuff printed from scratch, or take over the CMFA clothing brand? He also doesn't know what or why he named it CMFA. Doesn't have any meaning yet. But its pretty much a dead brand right now with lots of product already made and in boxes. He also said that I can pay him $500 up front and I will have access to the website and domain ownership. I pay him weekly payments to pay off the rest of the $3K and he sends the items little at a time. Feedback is deff appreciated!
1. What is the valuation of his stocks based on? 2. It seems that you are not very sure how you should go about it. Maybe it's best you sit down and really plan it. 3. How would you go about implementing your own ideas? Are your ideas similar with his? Else selling his existing stocks and releasing your own styles may confuse your customers. 4. How about you work for him to clear the stocks and at the same time gain the experience on how to operate an e-commerce store? Just my 2 cents.
I was wondering about the same thing actually. Not being experienced in the retail field at all I am trying to think about this logically and a combination of established and new ideas is something that doesn't sound so bad. You can simply add more sections, brands etc. and then sell your clothes along with the current stock (of course should they fall in similar categories of products). What are the two possibilities here - the existing brand may not cause any interest or make good sales. If its the first you can try and sell as much as you can while you add your own stock along the way. This way you are keeping a good amount of stock while slowly establishing your own clothing lines. If things take off good with the existing brand then you can maybe contact the person and ask who their supplier is so you can continue working with them (should they have one of course). Customer confusion can only be caused if the existing and new stock are completely different and don't compliment each other. And as the current brand is not that popular (or so I understood) then you can safely start almost from scratch and build the brand you want to keep. I think that at least you have a very nice looking website already built and you can take off from there