How to make the most out of your wholesale clothing purchases

 

Image Credit: Pexels

{This is a collaborative post}

Buying clothing wholesale can be an excellent idea in a wide range of situations. Whether you’re celebrating a big life event with your community or you’re a business trying to get your brand out there, it can provide you with wonderful aesthetic opportunities. 

With so many different options to choose between, it can be pretty tricky working out how to make the most of your purchase. From understanding your target audience to being creative with your branding, these are some basic factors to consider.

Try to understand your target audience

When you start your journey of buying wholesale clothing, you’ll need to think about who will actually be wearing that clothing. This requires developing an understanding of your target audience, from their age to their general sense of style and place within the broader cultural context.

While pretty much any demographic will wear a t-shirt, the fit of that t-shirt and even more importantly, the branding that you put on it won’t be universally suitable. It’s important to take some time during this stage of the process - it will have a significant influence on many of the following steps. 

Find a good wholesale supplier

Once you know who you’re buying for, you can start to look for a wholesale clothing supplier. In most cases, it will be best to go with a bigger supplier such as Screen Textiles that doesn’t just handle a single niche. With these kinds of suppliers, you’ll be able to look over a wide range of styles, qualities and price ranges until you identify a few options that could be suitable for your brand. 

If you’re still unsure of what to go with, it’s worth reaching out to the supplier for advice - they’ll likely have some tips that you won’t have thought of, and it could save you a lot of hassle further down the line.

Don’t overbuy

While the whole point of buying wholesale is to benefit from an economy of scale, there are limits to this. It can be tempting to put a huge order in to benefit from the lower per-unit costs, but you need to make sure that you’ll actually be able to use that whole order.

For example, if you regularly make small updates to your branding, or if the items are a one-off for an event you’re holding, you’ll need to make sure you’re able to shift the majority of the order. You don’t want clothing sitting in a store cupboard somewhere for years, just to be thrown away. 

Be creative with your branding

Lastly, the benefits of wholesale clothing purchases aren’t just automatic - you also need to be creative in your branding approach. Even if your use case is non-commercial, to commemorate a special event, it’s still important that you make something unique and special - take your time, and have some fun with the design process. 

As you can see, making the most of your wholesale clothing purchases requires some thoughtful planning. Use other services such as graphic designers to help you out, and try to step outside the conceptual box for a second - it’ll be worth it.

Enjoying Lockdown in Femme Luxe Loungewear

{This is a paid collaboration with Femme Luxe}

As we're all spending so much time at home right now, loungewear is definitely the order of the day. My teenage girls have been spending their days in fluffy pyjamas and tracksuits, so when Femme Luxe got in touch and asked if I'd like to collaborate again, the girls were over the moon. Last year they had some great T-shirts from them and they are wearing and washing really well. 

I have to admit that as a larger lady it's not a site I've ever had a look at, their clothes are definitely for the smaller and more trendy lady. Some items go up to a 16 but many just seem to go up to a size 14 and it is one of my pet peeves when clothing manufacturers call a size 12/14 an XL. You can't possibly call a size woman extra-large, but I'll save my rant for another day as this post is about the clothes the girls have received and they do actually really like those.  

Trendy Loungewear

Starting Secondary School with Blacks #BacktoSchool

If you have school aged children and I say to you 'back to school', I bet you start thinking about shopping and getting the kids kitted out with all their new uniform and essential supplies. The obvious places to shop are the supermarkets (for cheap and cheerful tops and socks) or the high street department stores for the slightly more expensive pieces that you want to last a while, but have you thought about shopping at an outdoor retailer like Blacks?

As well as the actual uniform I expect you need a waterproof or winter coat, trainers, school bag, gym bag and water bottle. Blacks have all these things and because they are a retailer of items for outdoor activities, we are talking really high quality items. They cater for both children at primary school and also bigger kids like mine that have moved into adult sizes and are heading to secondary school, or even college.

My 11 year old twin girls move up to secondary school this year and that means I have a massive task ahead getting them kitted out. Their uniform will include a blazer and therefore any coat I get needs to be a bit larger to go over it and as they have about a mile walk to the bus and back each day they will need a good waterproof to keep them looking smart and feeling comfortable.

Miss E already has a waterproof jacket, as being a size smaller than her twin she gets the hand-me-downs but Miss M was definitely in need. So we had a browse of the women’s waterproof jackets on the Blacks site and I kept pointing her to nice jackets that were perhaps plain black or navy to go with her uniform, but no I totally forgot who I was dealing with. This is my vivacious and vibrant daughter, who likes to be colourful and to express herself, so here is what she choose, a beautiful coat by Joules. How can it be that my 11 year old has a piece of Joules clothing before I do?