Surf the internet and you will be bedazzled by the number of articles you will find on how to price your garments yet somehow when a client is standing in front of you or makes an inquiry, you say the first price that comes to your mind, only to be later battling with resentments when the money wasn’t sufficient to complete the outfit.
You will find articles from designers and bloggers alike that will advice you to charge prices that your teeth will literally quake for fear of charging it to your clients lest they run away.
Some of these articles simply don’t get how things are in Nigeria, you reason, where the average client is literally “spoiled” as there are so many tailors and competition is high. So, you fall back to your own pricing strategy, sometimes calling prices off your head, or price by how the client is dressed.
This post is dedicated especially to those who are new in the business, perherps fresh out of fashion school, your finishing still as shaky as your pricing confidence.
I’ll show you a simple strategy you can use-rinse and repeat, to price your products effectively that actually works with what your business needs to thrive, rather than otherwise
But first, let me share a story with you that happened to a friend of mine, who is also a designer, fresh from fashion school, bursting with creativity and youth, but who learned the hard way on how to price her products. We’ll name her Moyo.
Moyo has always been talented, even before she went to fashion school. And her performance has always been one that point to a promising fashion design career.
She always had great ideas for clothes but the number one skill she lacked was how to price her product effectively
Moyo didn’t have a shop yet, and still worked from home, but because her designs were trendy, she got a lot of orders even while she was still in fashion school. She will normally just calculate her cost price and then add a little profit. After doing this for a while, she realised that though she was always busy, but didn’t seem to always have money.
One day, Moyo got a lucky break – someone had introduced her to a client abroad who wanted 100 pieces of one of her best-selling skirts. She normally charged 7,500NGN for the skirt, but she reasoned that since the client was ordering a lot, she made it a 5,000NGN. Per one
She made the skirts and sent them abroad, and both parties were happy… Until one day, Moyo was surfing her Instagram search feed and saw her skirt being worn by an influencer on Instagram priced for 37,000NGN.
Her first thought was, “wow, someone has copied my design”, but on closer look, she checked the handle that the influencer was promoting, and lo and behold – it was the lady she sold her skirts to. Reselling and cashing out.
To add insult to injury, the skirt was even sold out already on the lady’s page, at least that was the response the lady she sold to was giving the clients that asked in the comments section.
Moyo was heartbroken, quivering with indignation and hurt, she wanted to cry wolf. She felt ripped off and cheated. She vented to family and friends but at the end of the day she decided she was going to turn the experience, bitter as it was, into a lesson.
She vowed from then on to never underestimate or betray her own sweat and hard work, and went on to research and take courses on how to price her products effectively. Moyo now has a shop and her teeth still quivers to date, when she has to call prices for her clients.
But the only difference now is that she knows for sure that her usiness will thrive based on theese techniques she now adopts, and happily let go of any client who isn’t a good fit for the kind of support her business needs.
Want to learn a sure-fire – rinse and repeat strategy that will automatically price your products for you? All you have to do is input your figures and viola-it produces the price for you.
It’s a plug and play companion for your business.
Agboola kofoworola is a Fashion designer, coach, and consultant and can be reached on kofoagboola@gmail.com
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