Atlanta Apparel Market

This week I had the opportunity to check out the Atlanta Apparel Market. It's a 3 day event that occurs several times a year, and it's where all your local boutiques go to buy inventory for their stores. It is massive. 14 floors of both permanent and temporary stores/booths. Brands and buyers from across the country attend. This where I intend to showcase my collection.

The ultimate goal for Remarkable Red is to get women to wear my clothes. So, working backwards from that goal, I need to get my designs in front of people, ideally where they can be tried on. Which means I need to get my designs in stores. Which ultimately means, I need to gain exposure to get retail buyers to want to put my clothes in their stores. And I need to have the clothing quantity and quality to make sure buyers keep wanting more.

It's going to take a lot of work to get to market. I was well on my way, having created my branding and my collection, but I knew by touring it, I'd learn a lot more about what I would need to make it work. From signs and banners, to hangers, to mannequins and decorations, to order forms and line sheets, I have a lot more work to do and many more supplies to get.

I had thought I would try to get there by the next show, which is the end of March. But after seeing everything involved and the caliber of work I'd be surrounded by and need to meet, I'm a bit worried that won't happen now. Task-wise, I would be able to get everything completed, but financially... There are a lot more supplies I need to get, and those supplies are really adding up. I've done well in finding economical resources, but a clothing business just requires a great deal of stuff, and that stuff is taking up a lot of my space and all of my budget.

So really, I need to spend my time working on acquiring funds. Whether that means applying to grants or loans, looking for an investor, or finding a "real job" in the meantime, each of those things are going to take time. Time that would otherwise be spent completing all the other tasks I need to complete before heading to market.

Basically, there's so much to do, and I might need to delay my goals a bit and figure some other things out in the meantime. The Atlanta Market was both encouraging, because I could see myself there, among the vendors killing it with sales and merchandising, and discouraging, because it feels like it'll take longer than I had hoped. But I'm going to keep working toward this goal, and it's totally okay if it takes some time to get there.