Starting a clothing brand means learning a lot of things you didn’t know you needed to learn.
Print quality. Size charts. Shipping costs. Website links. Why something you fixed yesterday has apparently developed a new problem overnight.
Then there’s social media.
You make something you’re proud of. Photograph it. Write a caption. Rewrite the caption because the first one sounds like a supermarket trying to be your mate. Finally, you press publish.
And then you check.
And check again.
Apparently, refreshing the screen does not count as a marketing strategy. Disappointing.
When the numbers get personal
The awkward thing about selling your own designs is that you’ve put a bit of yourself into them.
You chose the joke. Built the artwork. Changed the lettering. Argued with the background removal tool. Decided it was good enough to put your name on.
So when a post lands quietly, it’s easy to take that personally.
“People haven’t seen this” becomes “People don’t like this.”
Then, somehow, “People don’t like this” becomes “What the hell am I doing?”
That’s quite a journey to make from a handful of numbers on a phone.
I’ve had a bit of that this week. A crisis of confidence, helped along by tiredness and the sheer amount of work involved in getting a small business moving.
You can be proud of what you’ve made and still wonder whether anyone else is going to care enough to buy it.
Everyone else appears to have cracked it
Spend enough time scrolling and you’ll find someone explaining how they built a successful business before breakfast.
Their branding is immaculate. Their orders are pouring in. Their content appears effortless.
Meanwhile, you’re trying to work out why a sweatshirt link says “hoodie” and whether your latest caption sounds like you.
You rarely know what sits behind somebody else’s post: their budget, their experience, the help they have, or how long it took them to get there.
But you can still find yourself comparing their best-looking moment with your entire messy working day.
It’s exhausting. And it doesn’t get the size charts fixed.
A click is a clue
One thing I’m trying to get better at is asking useful questions.
Which video made someone stop? Which design earned a click? Did the link take them to the right place? Could they see the price, the sizes and the delivery information without having to hunt for them?
Those are questions I can do something with.
“Am I rubbish at this?” is considerably less useful.
A click doesn’t guarantee a sale. A quiet post doesn’t tell me why it was quiet. And a good-looking video still needs a working shop behind it.
There’s plenty to learn without turning every result into a judgement on myself.
Finding our voice
Social media also makes it very easy to start sounding like everyone else.
“Stand out from the crowd.”
“Elevate your wardrobe.”
I sell a Christmas sweatshirt with dinosaurs in a nativity scene. I think we can be a bit more specific.
The Wandering Manc works best when the humour does the talking. A cooked Goose. Reps For Jesus. A Highland cow carrying a deeply questionable Christmas pun.
I want the posts to sound like the person who made those designs. Keeping that voice takes a bit of confidence too, especially when generic copy is sitting there ready to use.
This week, we keep going
The Christmas range is getting its moment. We’ve been checking the shop, tightening up the wording and making videos that actually show the designs in a setting where you might wear them.
There’s still work to do. There probably always will be.
For now, I’m trying to give the posts time to breathe, check the results with a useful question in mind, and put the phone down when I’ve finished.
The confidence wobble happened. The work carried on.
And somewhere in the middle of it all, three glamorous reindeer got ready for their close-up.
Original clothing. Questionable taste.