How To Sell New Clothes Online

11 min read

Selling clothes online is a great way to make some extra cash or start a full-time business, but actually starting an ecommerce clothing store might sound daunting. Thankfully, the process is pretty simple.

In this guide, we’ll show you how to sell clothes online — from creating a business plan to posting your products, connecting with shoppers, and more.

First, let’s look at some stats from the ecommerce clothing market. This quick analysis will help you understand the market you’re entering so you can maximize your profit.

The Ecommerce Clothing Market: An Overview

Ecommerce clothing sales in the U.S. are set to reach $300 billion by 2025. With all that money, the online fashion market accounts for nearly 38% of all retail clothing sales in the U.S. — which means selling clothes online is the best way to make money in the apparel market.

As you start an online clothing store, keep these three important points in mind.

1. Social Media Matters

Social media plays a big role in successful ecommerce clothing businesses. According to one report, over 50% of clothing purchases made by Gen Z and Millenials are inspired by social media posts. That means it’s important to understand effective social media marketing as you learn how to sell clothes online (we’ll talk more about marketing later).

2. Don’t Forget About Adults

You might think teenagers are the biggest online shoppers — they do spend about nine hours on screens per day. But in reality, adults between 35 and 44 are some of the highest-spending internet consumers in the U.S. Only 18 to 34-year-olds beat that demographic with an average yearly expenditure of about $2,000. Ultimately, adult shoppers will be an important part of your clothing business.

3. Amazon Is Leading the Pack

Online clothing sales across the globe are set to grow by over 9% yearly as we head for 2025. Amazon has played a big part in the growing market: According to one study, over 50% of people surveyed say they purchased apparel or footwear from Amazon in 2019. That means learning how to sell clothes on Amazon is a good idea (we’ll show you how).

How To Start an Online Clothing Store: Making a Business Plan

Opening an online clothing store is not that difficult. Decide whether you will sell clothes for men, women, or children, whether you will buy them or sew them yourself. When your business roadmap is ready, you need to choose an online platform where you will start selling new clothes.

The most important part of learning how to sell new clothes online is creating a roadmap for your business. This plan will keep you on track toward profit whether you just want some extra cash or substantial income. Here’s how to make a business plan.

Think About Sourcing

You need products before you can start an online clothing store. Will you produce your own clothes? What about reselling new items? In the end, make sure you know where your new clothing will come from.

Get Registered

Business licensing requirements vary depending on where you live. If you already operate a registered brick-and-mortar business, you typically don’t need an additional license to start an online clothing store. However, if you’re only selling online, you need to make sure you’re properly registered with the U.S. tax system.

Pick a Marketplace

Once you have your products and registration squared away, it’s time to pick a marketplace. This is where you’ll sell your clothes and build your business. So where should you sell clothes online? Amazon is a great place to start.

How To Sell Clothes on Amazon

Let’s go over how to sell clothes on Amazon.

Get your accounts ready

The first step to starting an online clothing store is making two accounts: one for Ecwid, one for Amazon.

First, your Ecwid account will serve as the headquarters for your Amazon store. Ecwid Control Panel lets you post products, manage orders, and more — making store management easy. Second, Amazon’s marketplace lets you connect with over 180 million shoppers.

You can sign up for Ecwid here. After that, you’ll need to install the Codisto app from the Ecwid App Market to sync your Ecwid store with your Amazon account.

To sell on Amazon, you’ll need a Professional Seller account. You can sign up here.

Take pictures

Product photos are probably the most important part of selling clothes online.

Shoot your pictures on a white sheet or another minimal background. Going with plain, simple backdrops keeps the focus on your product and helps buyers understand exactly what they’re getting.

Post your clothes

After connecting your Ecwid and Amazon accounts, you can start listing products on Amazon’s marketplace.

You’ll need to select a category, price, shipping options, and a few other details. The description is one of the most important aspects of any product listing, so be sure to write engaging descriptions that accurately represent the product.

After posting your first product, you can manage your listing from your Ecwid dashboard. Once someone buys the product, you can get the shipment ready — we’ll go over that next.

How to sell clothes on Amazon: What you should know

Now that you know how to sell clothes on Amazon, let’s go over a few important aspects of the platform.

Shipping your orders

When a product sells on Amazon, it can be fulfilled by Amazon’s fulfillment system or by yourself. As you start an online clothing store, you’ll probably ship your own orders at first. Here’s how that works.

A customer makes a purchase
You receive a prepaid shipping label
You secure the printable label to the package and send it off

It’s that easy — and the whole process can be navigated from Ecwid’s simple dashboard.

Seller fees

There are some fees associated with selling on Amazon. You can learn more about Amazon seller fees here, but here’s a quick breakdown of what you can expect:

Referral Fee: Usually between 8% and 15% of a product’s sale price.
Selling Plans: Individual plan for $0.99 per unit sold or Professional plan for $39.99 per month.
Amazon Fulfilment Fees: If you have Amazon ship your orders, there will be some additional fees, but you can ship your own orders to avoid these fees.

Selling used clothes

If you want to sell used clothes online, eBay might be a better marketplace. You can learn more with our complete guide to selling used clothes online.

Marketing Your Online Clothing Store

The final step in learning how to sell clothes online is getting a marketing plan ready. The good news is selling on Amazon automatically gives your products the potential to reach millions of shoppers — so marketing doesn’t have to be complicated.

However, since social media can be such a big sales generator, it’s smart to promote your store on platforms like Facebook and Instagram.

How to sell clothes on social media

Learning how to sell clothes on social media doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be processing orders through Facebook. Instead, selling clothes on social media means you’re using the power of online communities to grow your brand.

Paid ads: Facebook ad campaigns. The vast majority of adults between age 18 and 49 use Facebook — and that broad demographic accounts for a lot of ecommerce fashion sales. With Ecwid, you can target those active shoppers by using Facebook Ad campaigns. These ads will show up across Facebook and connect users with your store — giving you access to over 1 billion users each month.

Free ads: hashtags. You can get free online exposure by making free social media posts on platforms like Instagram. These free posts aren’t automatically shown to interested shoppers, so you’ll have to use relevant hashtags. These words and phrases are the bridge between you and people who care about what you’re posting, so focus on including tags that actually relate to what you’re selling. (We put together a guide to hashtags here.)

How to get repeat buyers

Once you have a good marketing strategy and the orders are rolling in, it’s time to think about getting repeat buyers. These customers make multiple purchases from your store and might tell their friends about your business. Here’s how to get more repeat buyers.

Make your customers happy. Customers probably won’t buy from you again if they didn’t have a good initial shopping experience. Make sure your shoppers are happy by quickly addressing any issues, shipping your orders fast, and answering any questions.

Follow up with buyers. After giving your customers a good shopping experience, follow up with a short message. You can easily send these follow-ups from the Ecwid dashboard to make sure the customer is happy with their order or even offer a discount on their next purchase. These messages will help the shopper remember your store the next time they’re looking for clothes online.

Time to Get Started!

Learning how to sell clothes online is a great way to make some extra cash and join a growing market. With Ecwid and Amazon, you can easily list products and connect with millions of shoppers, so don’t wait! Now’s the best time to get started.

Do you want to learn more about selling clothes online?

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With Ecwid Ecommerce, you can easily sell anywhere, to anyone — across the internet and around the world.

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Sep 29, 2021

About the author

Max has been working in the ecommerce industry for the last six years helping brands to establish and level-up content marketing and SEO. Despite that, he has experience with entrepreneurship. He is a fiction writer in his free time.