Wearing shoes may have started as a way to protect the feet from injuries, infections, and chronic foot illness. But, as civilization continues to innovate, footwear has come to mean so much more than a source of protection. Today, it’s a vital part of our comfort, style, and class.
Popular footwear brands like Nike, Adidas, Zappos, and other popular Italian brands have created iconic names for shoe brands that communicate their business’s unique virtues and identity while making them easily recognizable. Moreover, you can also find out the list of the Top 10 shoe Brands in the World & Top 10 Women’s Shoe Brands in the World.
So, if you’re looking to start a footwear business, it’s vital to get a handle on the following tips because they’ll help ensure you achieve your goal in the easiest way possible. You will find out the Best Tips for Starting a Quality Footwear Business.
Three Smart Tips for Starting a Successful Footwear Business
Build-Up Your Shoe Brand
Here is a hard fact. They’re several shoe brands already in the market, and the difficulty isn’t in making or selling shoes but in standing out from countless other footwear brands in your niche.
Building an iconic shoe brand takes more than releasing great footwear, it involves cultivating a solid brand image that carries a powerful emotional link to your target customers.
Crafting a strong brand identity will heavily influence your success in our current market since memorable businesses are more easily remembered, while bland and generic ones are quickly forgotten.
Now, to easily create this emotional bond with your customer, you need to evaluate your brand identity, your products, and the needs of your audience. Consider Nike’s incredible image as a symbol of “victory and success” and how everything from their name, logo, and motto communicates this image.
You, too, must have a total understanding of the kind of footwear brand you want to build and develop a robust strategy for communicating your footwear business.
And the first step to getting it right is to ensure you leverage modern naming technologies like a strong startup name generator to get names that perfectly align with the image you want your footwear business to communicate.
Pick Your Target Customers
Shoes are a universal product that everyone uses; however, the type of shoes worn differs between people based on function, culture, and other factors.
So if you’re looking to break into your local market, considering the target customers’ needs and setting your business to meet those goals is a smart way to launch your business.
Your target customers could fall under one or more of the groups below:
- Women footwear
- Men footwear
- Kids Footwear
- Casual footwear
- Formal footwear
- Athlete footwear
Carefully choosing your brand’s target customers and building a brand that offers the products they require will make it easier for your business to earn a reputation in that particular niche.
Having a specific target customer will also help your footwear business sort out the most effective marketing plan and work out your digital strategy and business methods.
- Choose a Creative Business Model
The internet has been a game-changing tool for businesses, and leveraging it opens your brand to massive opportunities in the market.
You could choose to apply your talents in production by making shoes and supplying them to affiliate brands to sell online or offer your products directly-to-consumer (D2C), or go into marketing, selling, and reselling popular shoe brands on the internet.
Zappos, the online shoe store, is a fine example of a solid brand that leverages a creative business model. The company started as Shoesite.com in 1999 before rebranding to Zappos, and due to its incredible success, Amazon purchased it in 2009 for $1.2 billion.
The company so far boasts of having over 75% of sales from repeat customers, a compelling testament to their business model that’s based on a strong brand relationship with their customers.
- Start Analyzing Your Competition
Competition brings the best and worst in any business or individual, even shoe brands. Avoid the temptation to hate your competition outrightly. Instead, be curious and critically—but constructively—evaluate their process and result.
Find out what, how, and why your competition identifies, manages, meets, and satisfies your target market’s pressing needs. This way, you’d be better positioned to meet those needs in a modern, refined, and streamlined way.
Don’t be in a rush to jump into the market with reckless abandon. Instead, ensure you match—or even outperform—the services your competitors are offering. This will make it quicker for customers to see your brand in the same light as your competitors and not as an inferior brand.
Then once you’ve found your feet and solidified your place in your customer’s minds, it’s important you start expanding your reach within your industry.
Don’t Be Afraid of The Process
Building a successful footwear business can be a slow burner, sometimes. However, if you want to see good success, you must be willing to stay the course, watch the market, innovate, and put in the effort.
Grant Polachek is the head of branding for Squadhelp.com, 3X Inc 5000 startup and disruptive naming agency. Squadhelp has reviewed more than 1 million names and curated a collection of the best available names on the web today. We are also the world’s leading crowdsource naming platform, supporting clients from early-stage startups to Fortune 500 companies.
Disscussed above are the factors for starting a new footwear business. The quality of shoes and type of Raw Materials are very essential things for this.