Launching a gymwear business requires attention and consideration of a few factors to eliminate all the worrisome elements. The discussion in this blog is merely about how to start a fitness clothing line with minimum effort and get maximum outcomes in terms of revenue and brand functionality.
Global Market Forecast: The Significance of Fitness Clothing
The trend of fitness routines, gyming, and other workouts has made activewear and athleisure clothing a part of many people’s wardrobes. This also resulted in a boom in the gym and activewear clothing markets in terms of sales and revenue.
As per the latest market research, the global fitness and sports apparel market is expected to reach $221.3 billion by 2026. The US market is predicted to have the highest sales share. And about athleisure, it was predicted to do even better: $793.4 billion by 2028.
Since sports clothing is also relevant and related to workout apparel or exercise attire types, a recent survey of the global sports apparel market revealed that the sports clothing industry was anticipated to generate revenue of around $213 billion in 2023. It is forecast to experience a jump of around $294 billion in 2030.
Why is Fitness Clothing Popular?
Fitness clothing is popular due to the rise of athleisure clothing, increased fashion sense among people, concerns about health and wellbeing, and clothing brands promoting clothes that are perfect for casual days out or workouts.
Considering you are interested in launching your own fitness clothing brand, you should know about its popularity and the reasons behind it. You can’t blindly start an activewear clothing brand without knowing if it’s going to grow and become successful.
The enormous popularity of fitness clothing is a fact that we just agreed on by looking at the global market forecast in the above section. Therefore, let’s discuss the possible reasons why people are into activewear and sports clothing.
A Shift Towards Athleisure
Athleisure includes clothing products that are designed for both fitness and everyday clothing. This definition is the exact reason why people prefer fitness apparel. The athleisure clothing products are fit, stylish, and rich in quality. They compliment your physique so that you look good.
Moreover, many fitness clothes have certain properties, like temperature regulation to keep the body cool or warm in different weather conditions, durability to last a long time, and complete control over body movement for better exercising experiences.
Health and Wellbeing
The most important things that fitness clothing has given people are motivation to exercise, stylish appearance, comfort, and confidence. Fitness lovers shifted towards activewear, athleisure, or other fitness apparel to maintain their healthy lifestyle because no one wants to be in bad shape in terms of physical and mental health.
Since regular clothing like jeans is not suitable to wear while exercising, fitness clothing like leggings or joggers boosts the motivation of people to start getting into shape. They can look fantastic and feel amazing during workouts.
Changes in Cultural and Fashion Trends
We all know that cultures and fashion trends change over time. They add and adapt new styles of clothing. People have witnessed that athleisure is suitable for their daily wear, gym routines, and casual meetups. Society has embraced all the new ways of fashion, which includes fitness apparel as a prime fashion clothing style.
Effective Steps to Start a Fitness Apparel Business
Starting a fitness apparel startup can be easy if you follow simple steps. These guidelines will boost your understanding of what is necessary to start a workout clothing line without confusion.
1. Form A Proper Business Plan
Business planning is necessary to list down all the things you want to do and manage your finances. Build a business plan based on your research findings. In order to build a business model, you need to define the specifics of your brand, market research, products, revenue strategies, finance management, regulatory and legal factors, and potential risks.
It is a valuable tool for starting, managing your brand’s operations, and making decisions. I can help you with your business plan, including the most important aspects. You must add these to your plan:
- Executive Summary
- Market Analysis
- Products
- Investment and financial strategy
- The role of investors
- Costing
- Management and Organization
2. Decide on Your Budget
Starting a business requires capital investment and a well-formed budget plan to minimize the risk of wasting money. You should decide how much money to spend on important business aspects.
You can hire a financial advisor to guide you regarding your investments and running costs. Decide how much you want to spend on labor, products, manufacturers, amenities, bills, and anything else you find essential to being a part of your business.
3. Research The Target Market
Understanding the market and knowing the customers are important ingredients for your success. Activewear clothing is as much about comfort and functionality as it is about looking better. So, you need to do research on what customers want these days.
Your target audience is your business’s biggest asset since the whole framework of the brand will depend on it. The important question here is how you can decide your target audience. Here are some ways to determine the potential customer base:
Clothing Trends: Find out which fitness clothing trends are attracting people.
Competitor Analysis: Discover the products your competitors are dealing in. Find out the tactics and hot-selling products of big brands like Lululemon or Nike.
Market Size: Make sure the products you are trying to pick as your prime niche have a good market value. This means that these products are gaining more popularity among customers.
Customers’ Online Behavior and Demographics: Conducting surveys on focus groups can tell you about their interest in different types of clothing products. Find out about their online shopping patterns and behaviors to discover their needs, wants, shopping time gaps, and favorite types of products.
Customers’ Price Preferences: A very crucial thing to understand is that not all customers can afford expensive products, and not all customers want low-quality products. You need to observe the price preferences of customers. You should learn about the price sensitivity of clients who require good-quality products at affordable costs.
4. Define Your Niche
While setting up a fitness wear brand, finding the perfect niche to present is the best option for your success. Use the research to define your target market. With the information you have gathered, put your good ideas to work and design clothing that fits the description of your target customer.
Having a decided niche is as important as investment. Thus, a startup must consider the most promising niche to avoid unwanted hurdles.
For example, if someone is willing to step into gym clothing, consulting the finest gym clothing manufacturers will help them choose the right fabric and types of apparel. Also, the manufacturer may help in deciding on suitable clothes to run the business.
5. Choose Accurate And Trendy Products
Building a fitness clothing brand will be incomplete if you are unaware of which products are the best to offer. If you are specifically moving on with a gym apparel line, you need to have all the relevant products.
For example, yoga wear, shirts, leggings, hoodies, shorts, sports bras, and all the apparel items that fit right into the gym category. If you are unsure of any particular product, let’s say leggings, take the opinion of a renowned leggings manufacturer regarding the best types of workout leggings, their fabrics, sizes, and color schemes.
6. Create A Valuable And Trusted Team
Your team is another asset to your business. Hire trusted individuals to manage your brand’s functionalities. You can get social media managers to handle the online platforms.
Hire a sales executive to deal with manufacturers and customers. Get an in-house team of website developers to keep your website in check. You can add more to the list of employees as per the needs of your brand.
7. Register Your Business
Registration of your brand is very important for legal reasons. By registering your business under names including LLC, org, or any other domain, you will be reviewed as the liable owner of the brand, and no unauthorized entity could steal your idea. Also, registration will protect you from legal setbacks.
8. Relationships With Fitness Manufacturers
The role of fitness manufacturers is very crucial in the clothing industry. In other words, running a fitness clothing brand without a supplier is extremely tough.
Forming a relationship with a manufacturer is beneficial for brands. If you are willing to get customized activewear clothing, finding a custom clothing manufacturer to create custom apparel will help you build your brand efficiently.
Engage a reliable sports apparel manufacturer like Mega Sports Apparel that specializes in manufacturing all sorts of fitness, sports, gym, and fashion apparel to establish a relationship. You should inquire about factors such as discounts, product variety, production capacity, and delivery deadlines that may affect your business’s operations. This way, you will be sure of what needs to be done while getting customized gym clothes.
9. Build And Increase Your Online Appearance
Having a website for your business is important since customers want easy access to the products they want to buy. Moreover, buyers want to see the products before they make a decision to purchase them.
E-commerce brands showcase their products and prices to let customers know about fabrics, colors, product types, and every property that the clothing items have.
Furthermore, create a website for your brand so that your customers can easily approach you. Place your address, phone number, email IDs, and social media profiles on your site for the convenience of your clients. Display the products on your e-commerce platform and make the choices visible and hassle-free for the website visitors.
Create social media profiles on Facebook, Instagram, or other online portals. The rise of social media has driven people to shop at brands more often. Clothing brands have leveraged this platform to create an online presence and increase their visibility. Use social media platforms to engage with customers, form relationships, and create content that resonates with your audience.
10. Expand Your Brand
Expansion is essential in order to stay innovative and updated on constantly changing trends. So, when the time comes, try to innovate your business by adapting new strategies, trends, and different ways to boost your sales.
How Much Does It Cost to Start a Fitness Clothing Line?
The cost of starting a fitness line covers all the important business elements. You can expect the average cost of a fitness startup to be around $13,936. These costs and expenses depend on various factors, including:
- Office space costs
- Software Cost
- Product inventory expenses
- Website Expenses
- Marketing Costs
The costs can go up and down based on the market value of products, manufacturing costs, labor costs, and many other factors.
