Greetings! Today I will talk about a simple white scheme for making money on clothes, shoes and accessories using affiliate programs of such popular online stores as Asos, Lamoda, Aliexpress and many others. One day, while scrolling through the VKontakte news feed, I came across an advertising post from a public page called "Discounts on sneakers and shoes":
Since this topic is very interesting to me, I went to the public page and subscribed to it. After analyzing several posts, I realized that the main income of the group administrator is to attract customers to online stores (through an affiliate program) that sell branded shoes, namely sneakers. The main feature of the public is to search and publish only those sneakers that are currently on discount. In my opinion, this is simply a brilliant idea that brings not only a decent income to the owner of the group, but also great benefit to the community’s subscribers, because everyone can grab a cool model of sneakers at a big discount. Soon a large number of public pages on similar topics appeared. Some also advertised only sneakers, some only advertised clothing, and some combined all of these. The main target audience of such communities are young people under 30 years of age. Having searched VK for similar groups, but aimed at girls and women, I found only 1 public with 37k subscribers:
Perhaps I didn’t search well and there are several more similar ones, but this does not change the fact that the competition here is minimal.
Selecting a traffic source
In my opinion, the most convenient source of traffic for such a model is VKontakte, but you can also use Telegram or YouTube channels. In the case of YouTube, you can even get free traffic by making reviews of discounted products. But this is a much more labor-intensive method, so I will focus on the VKontakte community. The site already has articles about creating and designing a VKontakte public page, so I won’t repeat it.
What to do if not all the goods fit
Let’s take a situation where the goods were shipped for more than three working days, information about disposal was submitted to the MT GIS and there was no generated final receipt with marking codes.
If not all of the paid shoes are suitable, the online store must generate an electronic or printed receipt for the return of the prepayment or advance payment. Marking codes are not indicated on advance and prepayment refund checks.
When making returns to re-enter marking codes into circulation, you must submit information through your GIS MT personal account within three working days following the return. Even if the return is made on the same day.
So, if the buyer returns an item with an intact marking code, the item does not need to be re-marked. The following must be transferred to the GIS MT:
- Store INN,
- marking code.
If a customer returns an item whose label code is damaged or missing, the store must re-label the item. The following must be transferred to the GIS MT:
- Store INN,
- new marking code.
Advertising purchase
Great, we have a group and content. But the most important thing is missing - a live audience. And the most effective way to attract it is advertising. The easiest option is to search for communities on related topics and buy advertising from the administrator of this community. I set up targeted advertising on VK, because the topic is white and there are no problems with moderation. I invest all the money I earn from the affiliate program into reinvestment, that is, into the purchase of advertising. Now the group works for itself, I only generate content.
A brand new business: how it works and how a men’s suit atelier makes money
St. Petersburg resident Alina Zimakina founded her business while on maternity leave. Knowing nothing about the men's suit tailoring industry, she decided to open her own studio. Alina literally brought her first clients into the salon by the hand. Today, her clothes are made not only by St. Petersburg residents, but also by Swedes, Germans, and Australians. Alina Zimakina told the Biz.360.ru portal how to organize tailoring of suits in another country and why there is a real hunt for tailors today.
Dossier
Alina Zimakina
, 34 years old, entrepreneur from St. Petersburg, founder of a men's suit atelier. Graduated from St. Petersburg University of Finance and Economics (specialty - commerce). She opened a men's suit atelier in 2009. Married, family with two children.
From maternity leave to business
I started working in my second year. She worked in an insurance company - just at the time when the country adopted the law on compulsory motor liability insurance, and it was a profitable area. And then I wanted to work with foreigners and improve my spoken English.
Then I couldn’t think of anything better than going to the five-star Astoria Hotel. I wanted to get a job as a waitress, but they told me that I was not suitable because my English was too good for a waitress. That's why they hired me as a hostess. And then I went to New York for six months. Subsequently, the ability to communicate with foreigners was very useful to me in my current business.
Then, a year after marriage, I gave birth to a child, and after another 8 months, I began to suffer from routine and wanted to do something. Probably, if there were so many mothers around then baking cakes to order, as there are now, I would have done it too. But at that time there was nothing like this.
But next to my husband’s office, an atelier that specialized in men’s clothing took orders. And one day Dmitry said that it makes sense to pay attention to this project: the guys, they say, have a solid audience, and the load is full. And he advised us to study the question of which companies abroad we could collaborate with to open something similar.
But why look for someone abroad, why not make your own production here? I asked my husband this question. But he had experience working with Russian production and explained to me how difficult this is and how much you will depend on the performers in this case. Later I will remember his words more than once.
But first, we decided to find a partner factory abroad and still open an atelier.
Partnership with nerds
I quickly found a 70 square meter space on Nevsky Prospekt in the Grand Palace gallery of boutiques - and immediately decided that our salon could only be located there. To start, we took out a loan of about 2 million rubles (from friends at interest, we paid it back over 2 years) and sold the car.
Today in RuNet you can find the answer to any question. But then the information I needed was only in English. Plus, I went to the library, took Soviet textbooks on designing a men's suit and sat down to study. Thanks to my husband Dmitry, who helped me a lot in those moments when it seemed that I simply could not pull off such a complex case from scratch. Although I do most of the work here, I couldn’t do it without his help.
I also found factories on the English-language Internet and simply wrote letters to them. I told about myself as it is: we are such and such, while we are nobody on the market, but we would really like to represent you here.
We wanted to try inexpensive tailoring, so we ordered a couple of suits from an Indian manufacturer as a test. As a result, this company sewed our order for six months. Then we tried a company from Shanghai. But there, too, everything turned out to be chaotic and chaotic. And then we found a small family factory in England.
We had to go through a long series of extremely tedious negotiations. Because the British are boring. They needed to know everything about us: what our competencies are, what our work experience is, how we will work with fittings, etc. On the second day of such negotiations, I did not have the strength to move my tongue. And after all the discussions, they refused us.
However, a few months later the crisis of 2008-2009 helped us, because then the sales of this factory dropped significantly. Its representatives have already approached us, saying that if we immediately pay a certain amount as a deposit (about 20 thousand pounds), then we can begin cooperation.
Impenetrable jackets
At that time, the choice of factories that worked according to the MTM (made to measure) system was very small. This means a system in which you have ready-made patterns, you sew according to them, try them on the client, make the necessary adjustments and receive the finished product. That company was just one of those who worked on this system. Therefore, of course, we agreed to the British proposal.
Next, we had to order catalogs and some samples of the products that we planned to offer to clients. We ordered our new partners 6 coats, 10 suits and 10 shirts as the first batch. As mentioned above, at that time I did not understand anything about this whole matter, so I got what I got.
The problem turned out to be that the British are very fond of dense, thick fabrics, windproof and impenetrable - they sewed samples from these for us. But Russian men prefer Italian style: thin fabrics, silky and light. When we realized this about six months later, it became clear that the samples were not suitable for presenting our services.
But we were able to buy the clothing samples we needed for the salon only after 1.5 years of work, when we had almost paid off the loan. It was clear that this was necessary, but my husband and I simply could not afford it due to the high cost of the products. During the loan repayment period, I simply paid myself a salary of no more than 50 thousand rubles a month, and gave everything else to pay off the debt.
"Prince of Wales" and "seersucker"
I literally personally brought my first clients arm-in-arm from the Grand Palace trading floors.
I can say that for a person who has already outgrown the age of a student, this is not an easy task at all. But I had a loan, it had to be repaid, and I did not yet have a client base. But there were suits at a price of 2 thousand dollars apiece, and they had to be sold.
But then, in fact, I didn’t have any competitors either (now I do). Therefore, people agreed to come and see what our salon had to offer. That’s how I received my first orders.
There were many funny stories. One man, having agreed to look at our catalogs, says: “Okay, show me what kind of Prince of Wales you have.” And I don’t understand what we’re talking about. But I was lucky: the man himself took the catalog, leafed through it and said: “Oh, here it is!” It turned out that this is a type of pattern, in the form of a cage. After that, I redoubled my search for information on the Internet about what other cells there are, what a “carnation hat”, “herringbone”, “seersucker”, etc. are.
This is how my sales assistant and I attracted clients for the first seven months. And then people began to come to us themselves. When the crisis subsided, the shopping complex began to bring us customers, who then told new people about us. This is how word of mouth started working, which is still our strongest sales channel.
The social network “VKontakte” did not work for us due to the high average bill (for many of our colleagues with a lower price tag, social networks work very well). But I simply didn’t develop Instagram to the level where it started working for sales. I tried paying the agency, but I didn't like the result.
She advertised in glossy magazines a couple of times, but did not receive any response, despite the fact that the price of a spread in the magazine was considerable, 200-300 thousand rubles.
The entry threshold for such a project today is quite low, less than 1 million rubles. This inspires many people - it seems to them that in such a business everything is simple: take measurements, send it abroad and receive a ready-made suit. But of course this is not true.
Traveler costumes
The design of a man's jacket consists of six parts: two “shelves”, two “barrels” and two “backs”. But if a person is asymmetrical, or has a belly, or something else special, it is very difficult to fit into these details the geometry of such a body so that it sits perfectly. This led us to choosing individual patterns, rather than optimizing ready-made ones. Now we have completely switched to individual construction of client patterns according to his standards, without any samples. But at first, having no experience, it was difficult to fulfill orders.
The average order per customer typically includes two suits and five shirts. Sewing a suit takes 1-1.5 months. During the process there are two or three fittings. At first, it happened that the suit traveled back and forth from our country to England, from fitting to finishing. And this was also accompanied by different stories.
For example, such a parcel once got stuck at customs because it was not clear how to classify it: after all, it is neither fabric nor ready-made clothing - it is an item in the process of being sewn. It turned out that in order to clear such a thing through customs, a separate examination and certificate are required.
There was also a case when an inspection came to the customs broker, and the entire batch of our things was put on hold until the company was completely inspected. And I couldn’t receive the contents of the parcel for several months. And one day the express delivery service simply lost one delivery and never found it. There were a lot of different incidents, in general.
Unfaithful tailors
After some time working with the British, we found craftsmen who could provide us with tailoring services here in St. Petersburg. These turned out to be necessary, and we could no longer cope only with the help of a partner in another country. The craftsmen worked not far from us on outsourcing, and it seemed to me that it was easier than creating my own workshop - I didn’t have to pay rent.
However, the problem was that such specialists had their main job, and we had to wedge ourselves into the gaps between it. In fact, this turned out to be not very convenient, because the client expects to bring you something for repair or alteration on occasion. Therefore, in the end, we decided to open our own workshop. We needed about 80 thousand rubles for this.
We tailor for clients with different figures, including complex and non-standard ones. But each case is individual. There is a customer with a classic figure who needs, for example, to sew such a vest that it is more economically profitable to sew it here; and the jacket for the same suit is abroad.
It is very difficult to find a good tailor. That's why they are often taken away from me. This is my great pain. I take guys from scratch, teach them everything, and then they just leave. During my work, three foremen and three managers were lured away from me. The last time was especially unpleasant. Representatives of a Moscow company came to my salon under the guise of clients. We worked with one employee, then specially came during the other’s shift to compare. They made a choice and took the specialist away.
Anything could happen to the craftsmen; my husband was right when he said that production is not easy. For example, there was a period when two of my masters could not get along in the same space - and I equipped a second workshop next door. So they worked for a year in their individual workshops. But then it turned out that the second master had such a complex character, and he was not worth maintaining a separate area for him.
And just recently, all three of our masters suddenly stopped working at the same time. One was taken away by competitors. The second foreman - a woman - when I hired a man, she said that she would not work with a man. And the third master was on vacation. And I realized that I was left without a single employee who could complete the current technical tasks.
So today I have one master left on my staff. I think I’ll look for others after the summer, because now is the off-season, many are on vacation.
Pistachio jacket plus blue trousers
We sew different numbers of different items of clothing per month. There is no need to do it once in a while. For example, we can sew seven suits and 80 shirts in a month, or we can sew 25-30 suits and four shirts. And there are months when everyone comes and asks only for trousers, only for shirts or only for coats.
St. Petersburg is a fairly European city; local men have already learned to love checkered patterns and unusual colors in clothes - a pistachio jacket plus blue trousers, for example. Combinations of jeans, jacket and shirts have become popular. Lately we haven't been making a lot of suits.
A casual suit in our studio costs from 120 to 140 thousand rubles, a ceremonial suit - from 150 to 210 thousand rubles, a separate jacket - from 80 thousand rubles, separate trousers - from 45 thousand rubles, a shirt - from 15 thousand rubles.
In St. Petersburg, the average monthly turnover of such a salon is from 1 million to 3 million rubles. There are companies that do more, but they buy expensive special customer databases of various luxury brands and may maintain a separate call center to work on these databases. These can make a turnover of 5 million per month.
The main thing for me is to provide the highest quality services. While still an assistant manager at Astoria, I realized that I was interested in working when you don’t just sell something, but do and give something better. And I am very pleased to know that today in my field this is what I am doing. After all, I get a lot of feedback from clients who make their own suits all over the world - including famous people.
I have clients in Sweden, Germany, Australia, Spain and other countries. They all came to St. Petersburg on business, came in and placed an order. Among my customers there is even one of the largest clothing manufacturers in the world, a very famous person. He made two jackets for me, and his assistant, when he flies to St. Petersburg on business, every time he runs to see me and conveys his manager’s thanks for these things.
Economy segment is trending
I don’t know how long the luxury segment will remain on the market.
Recently I was at the world's largest men's fashion exhibition. There was a company there that produces fabrics for Kiton (this Italian brand is the “Rolls-Royce” in the world of men’s suit fashion; you won’t find higher quality products than theirs). We met the owner of this factory and learned that they were forced to sell the business to a larger English holding. And now, for the first time in their history, they will have to introduce economy-segment fabrics with synthetics into production. Because these are global trends.
Now, in fact, I am faced with the same question. Whether to move down to a more budget segment or not. I haven't made a decision yet.
The average age of my client is 50+. These people know how to value quality and are willing to pay for it. Will this rub off on millennials? I don't know. So far I have few young customers. I follow Instagram accounts of men aged 30+, they wear suits. But these are suits made of viscose and polyester or wool and polyester.
