The video succeeds by leveraging extreme transparency and vulnerability, which builds trust and authority with an audience interested in entrepreneurship.
Summary
The creator shares a transparent cost breakdown of her clothing brand's first manufacturing invoice to educate her audience on the realities of starting a business. She explains the pricing strategy and hidden costs involved in the process, inviting viewers to follow her journey toward the upcoming launch.
Structure
1Introduction to the clothing brand's first manufacturing invoice
2Detailed breakdown of item quantities and costs
3Explanation of the 50% deposit and production timeline
4Discussion on pricing strategy and profit margins
5Disclosure of additional hidden costs like sampling and design
6
Original caption
can’t believe we’re at this part of the journey - receiving this invoice before going into production! one thing about my mindset within all of this: i refuse to believe there is a profit or pricing equation that is perfect for all businesses. we’re all different and there are plenty of unique factors that contribute to all of this pricing philosophy. watching videos on this stuff by experts may see overwhelming. however, it’s good to educate yourself on the business for sure :) as mentioned in the video, this is my first time and I feel good about this for the time being. there are plenty of costs associated with each piece and each sale that are not all attributed on this individual invoice that we still have to keep in mind. i am doing my best to try to find that middle ground between the price point i want your customers to stay within and the price point that will bring me enough profit to grow and scale. we will fine tune as go, and if you’re starting out like me, don’t get discouraged and don’t be overwhelmed. we’re all just learning as we go! #startingaclothingbrand #pricing #costbreakdown #clothingstartup #buildingabusiness
More from @byjunesix
Their other posts in the index, biggest breakout first.
Closing with a call to follow the brand's launch journey
Product placement
The video is a transparent behind-the-scenes look at the creator's clothing brand, June Six, which is the subject of the video.
Call to action
follow along for the journey
On-screen text
starting a clothing brand: cost breakdown from our first invoice from our manufacturer
Transcript
I'm starting a clothing brand and our manufacturer just sent us our very first invoice to place our full bulk order to go into production for our very first launch. So let's go through how much it's costing us, let's go through how much we're going to price everything at and let's just do a quick little breakdown here. First things first, some context, we're going to launch with three items: a baby tee, a button down in two colors and some trousers. The minimum order quantity of our manufacturer was 100 pieces, so we we stuck to the minimum, 100 of each with the exception of the button down since we're doing two colors, we're doing 75 of each. The baby tee is costing us $9.50 each, the button downs are costing us $20.50 cents and the trousers are costing us $22.80 cents. That brings our grand total to $6,305 and upfront 50% deposit that we have to pay at this moment is $3,152. So by paying 50%, the manufacturer will go into production and they're going to go ahead and develop one of each with the labels and the tags and get everything ready. They're going to ship that my way and once we approve it, we pay the other 50% and then we go into full full full production. It's obviously my first time walking through any of this, so I've been learning as I go and also kind of realizing these timelines are pretty long. Like it takes about 20 to 25 business days for the full bulk production to be completed and then it takes about a week for shipping. So we've just kind of been flexible with the timelines, that's just how it is when you're manufacturing overseas. When it comes to how much we're going to press everything at, we are going to start off with I feel comfortable with this at this moment, I'm not sure. By the way, like I've said a couple times like this is my first time, I'm being raw, real, vulnerable, all of the things. Like this is what I feel like works for us. I'm not sure if we're going to have to go up in pricing later or go down, like I'm not sure. But based off of just what I feel like makes sense and the research that I've done and just everything, I feel good with pricing everything 3x cost. So that basically means the baby tee is going to, we're going to sell at $30, the button downs we're going to sell those at $60, the trousers we're going to do more towards like 3.5x the cost. I'm I'm in between selling them anywhere between $70 and $80. Now there's a million ways in which we could do a deep dive into this and if anybody has any specific questions like please let me know and I'll try to to answer them. But you may think like, okay, when you're starting a business, it's really easy to fall into the like, if something costs me $10, I'm going to sell it at $20 and you feel like that is enough, that that profit margin is enough. Well for us specifically in this industry, specifically related to selling clothing products, that is not enough of a profit margin, especially when we're starting out because we're doing such low quantities and everything is just costing us way more. Now another thing to keep in mind is that these costs right here are not the only costs that are associated with developing each piece of clothing because we also had to pay for sampling, we had to sample everything twice and and ship everything twice to us per item. We also hired a technical designer to help us with design development, um because we don't currently have the skill set required to fully, you know, design clothing at the moment. There's also more costs that are going to pile up once we get orders, like shipping, packaging. We also had to place a specific order for the labels and the tags and everything that that are going to come with these items. So this cost does not include, you know, the labels, like the tags right here, the care labels, all of that is a whole other order that we had to place. Another order that we had to place were the buttons. The buttons on the button downs are a whole other cost associated. So there's a lot and like I said I could do a deep dive so I just want to just be general with that, but there are more costs associated with each piece of clothing than just this one right here. And I'm just being raw and honest and vulnerable, like we are figuring things out as we go. And I may, I may even go a little bit higher on these two. I want to start with 3x, I may just launch with 3.5x, I'm not sure. But like I said, I am live processing here some of what I'm thinking. Yeah, so that's pretty much the breakdown. I have a lot more that I could be talking about this topic like I said, but follow along for the journey. I'm going to continue to be sharing everything as we go. We're hoping to launch probably in around two months now. Um and yeah, follow along.
