Fashion in Italy: incentives for doing business
Many times the question is "how can I make a fashion brand?" but if we talk about brands, we include them as a small part of what to all intents and purposes you have to turn from an idea, a passion into a real business!
In our daily lives, more and more people are trying to enter the world of theentrepreneurship or to become self-employed workers. One of the areas of Italian excellence in which people most seek their freedom (both economic and expressive) is that of the fashion.
Our country is full of emerging talents and of young willing to make their way in the world of clothing design and haute couture; however, many are forced to abandon their dreams because they do not have the right means or because they do not know enough about the market in question to decide to start a real careeror to invest in the creation of aspecialised company.
In order to address all these issues and to help new designers, a large number of generalist marketing agencies but we of Be A Designer we can boast of being the first to specialise in emerging designers. We combine creativity with doing business with the aim of facilitating growth in a sector that is so underdeveloped.
Many are frightened at first by this drastic change of perspective:
?It is not enough to make a collection, to make clothes to have a brand in fashion, you have to lay the foundations for what will be in effect a business?
For those starting out, it is right to begin planning a medium-term effort involving an investment.
First of all, you need to know exploiting opportunitiessuch as that made available by the Italian government over the past year through thetax relief.
National incentives to favour fashion enterprises
Over the past year, many bonus and incentives, including in the field of fashion. The latter was affirmed in a decree law, i.e. the Relaunch Decree in Article 36-bis; the text of the decree states that all textile, design or fashion companies in general can benefit from tax concessions through: the purchase of machinery, the training of workforce, the prescription of patents on their own projects, the purchase of raw materials, the payment of third parties involved in the company's work, and much more. All this should cover about 50% of expenses.
To be eligible for the incentive, you must have had a company active in the fashion industry for not more than 5 years and have every bureaucratic act in order, from legal documents to the payment of taxes.
Any work sector that focuses on art, as well as haute couture, has some difficulties for those who want to try to approach it as professionals. Most of them stem not so much from objective bureaucratic and fiscal difficulties (common, unfortunately, to all businesses in Italy) but from what we might call the correct ?Mindset? view of things.
In order to deal with these kinds of problems, it is important to know what they consist of and, subsequently, what approach may be the most effective to overcome them. First of all, it is important to know what the most frequent difficulties can be when starting to work in the fashion industry: the very first among them concerns the how to become a designer.
A good fashion designer must certainly have special characteristics, such as the propensity to creativity and the passion for fashion. However, these simple predispositions are not sufficient to work in this field, but it is necessary to deepen how a product is built for a specific target market. We cannot afford to create something and simply hope that it will be appreciated by someone, we must be able to interpret the needs and tastes of specific types of people and propose something relevant to them otherwise it will be all uphill!
Obviously, the idea alone is not enough, you also have to put it into practice! Let us remember
. From this point on, the help of a professional team such as Be A Designer can greatly facilitate the start of one's career, offering the new designer a whole range of opportunities and of practical advicesuch as the one concerning the use of the economic incentive through the Relaunch Decree.
Starting and maintaining a fashion business on their ownor even the work from freelancercan be particularly complicated for those who do not have a great financial training or who do not have work experience in the sector.
That is why it is important to recognise the main problems that can plague a new designer who wants to start his own company, in order to prevent or solve them.
The initial investment.
Like any entrepreneurial activity, in order to sustain the birth of a business, economic investments are needed, which may be more or less large. Consequently, it is necessary to understand from the outset what their objectives areso that you can also decide how much you are willing to spend to boost (especially in the beginning) your business.
As can easily be guessed from these speeches, setting up one's own fashion business also requires a good background in financial sectorthe lack of which can only be solved by the help of others who are competent in this respect. The use of the above-mentioned bonus can be a real opportunities for all those with limited funds: consequently, it is important to know how to exploiting opportunitieswhich can easily be illustrated by those who have been working in fashion marketing for a long time.
Similarly, especially in Italy, we cannot rely too much on calls for tenders and funding, so if our project is serious, we must also be ready to self-finance ourselves in case they are unsuccessful or the funds run out!
When thinking about investments in order to start a company, it is often believed (wrongly) that the initial costs should really be greatto be ready and functional right from the start. However, few know the potential of the Start-upespecially in the field of fashion.
Such a project is in fact a type of investment plan with an initial cost very lowbut whose project can aspire to grow a lot, mainly by leveraging the development ideas initials. But to succeed in starting such a business, it is important to have the clear ideas and rely on a group of qualified professionalsthat can facilitate the hard work of running a fashion company.
At this point, it becomes crucial to understand how managing one's collaborators.
Knowing how to rely on other people
Whether you want to start a career as a freelancer or start a fashion business in a company, it is essential to know how to managing a work teamor be part of it. Whatever the case may be, there will always be practical difficulties that cannot be solved aloneespecially if you hope to go far with your work.
Very often one is faced with problems of an economic, organisational, advertising or logistical nature, which can only be solved by including new people in the initial project. Consequently, it is really important to know how to managing relationships e having a close-knit staffespecially with regard to large companies.
Knowing the legal rights and obligations concerning the project
Of all the aspects that need to be addressed in order to start a fashion company, the one legal is often one of the most neglected and less considered. This is obviously a huge mistake, whether it concerns the fiscal context (such as the management of VAT numbers for private workers) or the intellectual rights on the products; this last aspect is very important, especially since we are talking about an activity of a nature artistic and therefore bases its revenues precisely on the art value of the products.
A marketing agency such as ours can significantly facilitate this as well, offering legal support whenever necessary thanks to the support of professionals who work every day with both structured companies and start-ups.
But in addition to the bureaucratic aspects of the company itself, one must be able to manage all the factors practical and the market manoeuvresin order to succeed in a considerable way. Speaking of this need, it is important to focus one's attention on the public and the company's objectives.
Market analysis
Market analysis
The fashion industry is really vast and with a number of target and different buyers potentially unlimited. To hope for a loyal audience it is important to know analysing its needs and knowing how to satisfy them.
You can develop your company so that it focuses primarily on one group of people, such as women, men or children, or you can choose to create products only of a certain type and in a certain style; the important thing is to always know who will buy their productsalso trying to reaching the public through advertising campaigns, sponsoring and more.
In the case of market analysis, Be A Designer helps its clients by offering a complete overview on what the competitors in one's sector are and how to choose new alternatives in order to capture the attention of the public. As far as advertising is concerned, it is important to know the various methods with which to advertise.
Advertising is one of the most important aspects of any brand: if the public does not know the manufacturer, they will not be able to choose it to buy its products either. That is why it is so important knowing how to sell within the fashion industry, as it is often the industry itself that setting trends through publicity manoeuvres.
It must be remembered that this historic moment is particularly favourable for the sponsorship campaigns in question: thanks to the incentive of the Relaunch Decree, in fact, it is possible to cover also expenditure on advertising on one's own company, making such an important aspect also more economically viable.
In the event of a successful advertising campaign, the likelihood that the public would be interested in your products would become highest. Of course, although it has become easier and more accessible to access digital advertising campaign tools, it is just as easy to risk throwing away a large amount of money without the right strategy.
In order to sell online, we have to be willing to 'buy' our potential customer's attention, so we will pay not only for each actual purchase but also for each potential purchase. We should therefore devise ways of keeping in touch with our potential customers (whom we have already paid) until they are ready to buy from us. Let us always remember a very important truth;
The customer only buys when he wants to buy not when we want him to buy
This is why we must always monitor our ROI, as we might spend money to acquire potential customers but find that they will only buy after a long time!
It is also true that without any advertising strategy to support our first launch, our first release, it is impossible to propose and sell our products only in an ? (not paying for traffic on our site).
Our team also offers advice on this topic, as it is difficult to know all the advertising activity most influential and know how to manage them. To give a practical example, today almost all advertising campaigns are dealt with mainly on internetat the expense of other mass-media used more in past years, such as TV.
If you liked this article please leave a comment below! If you would like to discuss any of these topics further, you can write to us or book a free consultation!
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It was truly a great help and inspiration thank you