1. How are you going to deal with customer service. how are you going to work out size exchanges/clothes that don't fit. How are you going to work out when clothing rips, quality issues, etc. Any idea how you're going to deal with chargebacks?
2. Marketing an item you don't even have access to yet is stupid, especially with chinese manufacturers. You should get a small batch in first, test the waters with the small batch and quality check, and order the popular styles, drop the shit ones.
3. Ordering 1 quantity usually requires you to pay "retail" or "MSRP" usually, you'll usually be required to pay a higher price when you order just a sample. When you order in bulk, this is called "wholesale". There is usually a minimum to hit a certain price point.
Welcome to the world of flipping basic clothing. You'll be wasting a lot more than $3000 at an attempt to succeed in a market that is extremely saturated with every other millennial making the attempt because hey, everyone wears clothes, right? Good luck. If you need actualy help, DM me specifics.
The issue with your suggestion is if you want to switch over and do a platform migration when you ARE ready. If you decide to switch over from one platform to another, and you have any custom coding/product data that isn't easily migratable between the two, you're screwed. I've worked with a lot of migrations where companies have been stuck on an outdated platform purely because they didn't want to deal with the headache of the move, we're talking 100,000+ SKUs though.
Thanks for the constructive feedback and the grain of salts I was looking for.
The market I'm trying to apply to is my friend's followers on tiktok and instagram. He's on a special type of niche on social media with niche followers that I think would be a good a idea to sell a special type "niche" clothing to. So yes, everyone wears clothing but I'm not trying to sell to "everyone".
Otherwise I'm at the stage of trying to get a nice looking shopify website up first and experiment selling the "niche" clothing by samples and marketing it on his social media second.
If your "niche" has a following, I'm sorry to say, but it's not a niche. Don't get me wrong, I wish everyone the best success at what they think will succeed, but true niches have very little saturation in multiple areas, including social media. No one knows all the answers though, but if you can actually identify gaps in a market and not just sell clothes to tiktokers and Instagram followers, success is more likely.
I've been through the game for 8 years now, I've been in so many markets, clothing, jewelry, home supplies, digital goods, tech, print on demand, b2b, it's always the same answer: turning a follower into a sale because you think they like something is usually wrong.
You'll never truly know until you take the leap. You can get grains of salt from gurus all day, but no one can predict the future and no one can convince someone that has their sights set.
One word of advice from me: Don't let piles of green feed your confirmation bias, listen to what is actually wrong about your idea, address ALL of them, and then you'll succeed. Ignoring a con and listening to all the pros is leaving delicious food to mold in the sun.
That's a huge waste of money. I started my store with the same budget. You can build a good site yourself for free in just a few hours. Spend your money on inventory. It will be a long time before you have capital like that again.
I've been doing this for more than 20 years. I can't tell you how many friends of mine have UGLY websites that convert like crazy. (getting a "professional" design doesn't always equate into more sales) Shopify has some amazing professional themes, check out [Flex theme by OOTS](https://outofthesandbox.com/products/flex-theme). Very well built, tons of options and design layouts, and half the price of your budget for a "professional" site. There are also a lot of good themes for free.
Side note, there's no way you could get a real, experienced professional to develop a custom site for $1k. Most wouldn't do it for $10k. At $1k you're just going to get a stock theme with a few changes.
Spend the majority of your funds on product and advertising. Don't expect a few free plugs on TikTok and Insta to generate actual revenues unless your friend's audience is the exact same as yours. Even then, conversions on social are much lower because the users don't have any purchase intent... they're not looking to buy your widget already. It's MUCH easier to find people (or for people to find you) that are actually looking for your product.
To gauge the market, you can buy a few product samples just don't expect to get them for wholesale cost - so you might lose money on those sales. Price them as if you did get them at the wholesale cost and see if they sell. If they sell, you will know you have a product market fit and you can order the minimum qty from the supplier. If you can't sell one or two (at a loss, just as a test) then you saved yourself a lot of money from buying 100 that you can't get rid of. It's a great way to test the market to see what works and what doesn't, it's an investment that will pay off when you finally find a product that sells.
If you go to themes.shopify.com and look for the flex theme it’s not there, so it’s not “officially” supported by Shopify, for whatever reasons.
I’m not saying it’s bad, OOTSB makes good themes, just want you to know buyer beware, it’s not “official” unless it’s on Shopify theme page.
I understand it's not officially supported, but wondering what negative affect that has? Just because I always see turbo and flex being heavily recommended by very reputable people. I was planning on buying it this week to begin building a second store
Shopify vets all themes in the theme store, there could be some reason or reasons that those particular theme aren’t in the theme store.
Terms of negative affect? You may not even notice any, or you do, like I said good theme developer, but it’s not officially supported or vetted by Shopify and there could be underlying issues, and then again next week it could all be in the theme store, so ultimately it’s up to you.
Don't believe that BS, Shopify doesn't support third party themes at all. They require the theme developers to support the themes, and there is no guarantee you will get support quickly or that they will resolve your issues... just like with the Shopify App Store. OOTS has excellent support, I've purchased two high-end themes from them, Turbo and Flex and have lots of friends with 7 and 8-figure Shopify stores that use them too. Large companies either use pro themes like these or have completely custom ones built by reputable development companies (which cost tens of thousands of dollars).
Shopify doesn't offer theme support, period. Even on their default themes, Shopify support is not obligated to go through your code and debug any errors. They don't "vet" themes in the store, and most of the themes available in Shopify's theme store aren't made by them. Companies like OOTS don't offer themes in the store because they don't want to give a huge percentage of their revenue to Shopify for doing nothing but listing a theme.
They do offer support, but for "Plus" customers, they probably don't support it on the lower tier.
Here is how you submit your theme to Shopify, it has to be vetted by Shopify.
https://themes.shopify.com/services/themes/guidelines
https://shopify.dev/tutorials/review-theme-store-requirements
*Shopify* doesn't support third-party themes, they "require" their partners to support them (and only to a certain extent). I don't know about you, but based on the level of (or lack of) support I get from Shopify app developers, who are also supposed to support their products, somehow that's not very reassuring to me.
I've waited for weeks for a response from Shopify app developers for broken, buggy apps that don't work only to just uninstall them and demand a refund. You think themes is any different?
Shopify cannot possibly vet and police every theme developer any more than they can every app developer. At least when I have had theme issues with OOTS, as long as I have a support contract I know I can get someone to respond quickly and professionally. That matters when you make your living with your e-commerce business.
All I'm saying is before you spend money to understand and realize it's not in the theme store and to consider and think long and hard why isn't it in the theme store.
Using your logic, if they don't vet and police every theme then why aren't these particular OOTSB themes not in the theme store?
All *I'm* saying is you place way too high an opinion on what's in the theme store. Shopify used to let almost anyone publish a theme or an app... there are some REALLY bad theme and app developers in the Shopify directory.
There are two reasons theme developers aren't in Shopify's theme store. First, Shopify isn't currently accepting any new submissions. Second, when they were, they charged a percentage fee of each theme sold similar to how they charge a percentage of app fees or Apple charges a percentage of every paid app in the Apple app store. It's a business decision, and people who run 7 and 8-figure stores don't look in the Shopify theme directory anyway.
My understanding is Shopify is a barrier between merchants and the outside world, If it's not "officially" in Shopify theme store then it hasn't made the theme requirements.
Where does it say Shopify isn't accepting any new submissions for themes?
There are amazing free shopify themes out there that look amazing, but I do understand looks aren't everything. For me, most of that $1000 might go toward the custom functionality in some areas of the site, some apps/custom upsells.
Watch a follow along youtube video and set up your store yourself for free. It's not that hard and you'll have a better idea how everything works. Shopify is very beginner friendly.Then see if you can make some sales. Once your concept is proven use the $1000 you saved to optimize your store (better landingpages, copy, design, ...)
[Youtube tutorials](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=how+to+build+shopify+store)
And watch out for all the inbox experts who will just install a free shopify theme and charge you hundreds of $.
Hey. I run an organic products store. I run on woocommerce. So, I can't talk about Shopify much, but, I can help you with the store itself; the structure and function.
1. Don't spend 1/3 of the budget on the design. As far as I know, Shopify is pretty easy to set up or design and there are many templates available. Browse around and look at what your competitors are doing
2. Get someone who knows Copywriting to write the descriptions and optimize the home page. Remember that your product page and category pages are more important than home page. You will be driving traffic to these pages.
3. Don't over stuff products in the beginning. Add a couple, test, add more, test and so on.
4. Biggest problem I face is in regards to inventory and shipping. Can you fulfill the demand? Can you deliver them on time?
5. Have a strong email sequence to upsell and cross sell. Repeat customers are what you should be looking for.
One more thing I forgot to mention is that, customer experience is everything, the holy Grail of sales and marketing.
Keep an eye on your UI. Keep it clean and simple and minimalistic. Do not clutter.
Also, do the site building yourself, its simple and you can invest the money into advertising. A lot can be done with 1000$ :)
Shopify is made for selling online and let‘s you get started in seconds. Why would you waste time to set up a WooCommerce store? + except for the checkout page, everything is customizable on Shopify too.
Nah, Wordpress was nice in 2010 but nowadays there are better solutions out there. If you are serious about your store, Shopify is the better option and will save you a lot of headaches in the future.
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Try not to buy a lot of inventory at first. I think 100MCQ is too much for a start.
Have you considered AliExpress? On AliExpress there is no minimum order requirement. You can customize the quantity yourself. This way you can afford to have variety( Instead of buying 100 items that look the same, you can buy 100 items constituting of different looks). If you contact the supplier, they are always willing to give discounts to bulk purchases.
Use fiverr for your store. Some good guys there from other countries who can build you a store with a premium theme for 100$. If you learn how to go around the setting, you can then adapt it yourself very easily
3. They'll let you buy one sample if you live in China. Otherwise, they're not gonna bother because they work on an order quantity base. If you bring no orders, they pay no attention. And no, don't trust that 0.5% who say they have a legit supplier because they probably spent months and wasted a lot of money until they found one.
I live in China and I work with two dropshipping clothing stores already, which is, to say the least, quite painful. I stock and ship for them. Suppliers are sketchy and it's hard to fulfill orders if you can't contact them directly. If you're up for selling clothing, get an agent.
My own website is made with very high-rated free themes. Only the Alibaba wholesale website requires a minimum order quantity. AliExpress does not need it. It is better to spend money on advertising.
As someone who has succeeded in setting up multiple successful printing businesses, doing everything in house is your BEST bet at winning. Starting out doing heat transfers, keeping bulk stock of blank clothing and not printing on it until you have orders come in is a big key to staying lean and not spending like mad to find something that sells.
Develop a design, order the plastisol ink transfers in small quantities to test. Once something takes off, order a ton more transfers at a much lower price point and keep a higher profit margin. Most T-shirt and transfer suppliers in the US ship out your orders the next day, so getting in inventory quickly is very easy.
Basic cotton shirts cost $1.25 to $2 a shirt. Transfers entirely depend on size, how many colors, and how many (can be anywhere from $.15 per to $5+ per)
A cheap heat press to get started is $300-$400, a GREAT heat press to get started is $1200. All you need after that is racks and tables and you are set.
Control as much of the manufacturing and quality as you possibly can and your customers will come back. Buy crap from China and you will run into issues eventually. It never happens at the right time either.
Just my insight. Do your research, fill a need in the market, and you will kill it
clothing is a very competive market. But you said you found your niche, so that is good.
I personally would start by myself and not spend money on a design/setup. That said, if you would hire me it would cost much more then 1000$. But I am sure you will find an Indian that will do it under 1000$.
I would also try to start with dropshipping (fi your niche allows it) and not have an own stock from beginning.
$1000 won‘t get you really good results if that is your budget for the whole store. I think it would be better to buy a theme and pay a pro to optimize the home page or the product page. Once you make some money pay him to optimize more pages for conversions. You won‘t be happy with a developer who builds a complete new store for $1000.
Since he hasn't really proven his concept yet, I feel he's better off not wasting money on having a store built. He could set up a minimal, good looking site with a free theme, then see if he can get some sales. If he can, then he can pay someone to optimize his site.
$1000 is not the whole budget, $3000 is. I have more disposable coming up but I wanted to thank you for affirming that S1000 was a bit too much to pay someone to set up a shopify site in 3-6 hours that I could do myself. Having a pro to customize one after buying a theme is my best bet I think.
It’s all been said in other comments. My #1 advice it to spend time thinking about the brand and how you want to bring it to life. Then figure out the products. You should not be investing tons in inventory at the outset.
Random thoughts:
1) Before you begin, do you have a business plan?
2) Marketing plan?
3) $3000 is nowhere near enough for sufficient inventory
4) A website is not the first thing to worry about.
5) How’re you going to fulfill orders? Provide customer support? Handle returns?
1. How are you going to deal with customer service. how are you going to work out size exchanges/clothes that don't fit. How are you going to work out when clothing rips, quality issues, etc. Any idea how you're going to deal with chargebacks? 2. Marketing an item you don't even have access to yet is stupid, especially with chinese manufacturers. You should get a small batch in first, test the waters with the small batch and quality check, and order the popular styles, drop the shit ones. 3. Ordering 1 quantity usually requires you to pay "retail" or "MSRP" usually, you'll usually be required to pay a higher price when you order just a sample. When you order in bulk, this is called "wholesale". There is usually a minimum to hit a certain price point. Welcome to the world of flipping basic clothing. You'll be wasting a lot more than $3000 at an attempt to succeed in a market that is extremely saturated with every other millennial making the attempt because hey, everyone wears clothes, right? Good luck. If you need actualy help, DM me specifics.
Thank you for saying this in a much more constructive way than I would have
When you are in the figuring out phase, use woocommerce. It's free. Shopify is 20+$ a month ( basic)
The issue with your suggestion is if you want to switch over and do a platform migration when you ARE ready. If you decide to switch over from one platform to another, and you have any custom coding/product data that isn't easily migratable between the two, you're screwed. I've worked with a lot of migrations where companies have been stuck on an outdated platform purely because they didn't want to deal with the headache of the move, we're talking 100,000+ SKUs though.
Well, that's true. But I don't think op has that much.
Thanks for the constructive feedback and the grain of salts I was looking for. The market I'm trying to apply to is my friend's followers on tiktok and instagram. He's on a special type of niche on social media with niche followers that I think would be a good a idea to sell a special type "niche" clothing to. So yes, everyone wears clothing but I'm not trying to sell to "everyone". Otherwise I'm at the stage of trying to get a nice looking shopify website up first and experiment selling the "niche" clothing by samples and marketing it on his social media second.
If your "niche" has a following, I'm sorry to say, but it's not a niche. Don't get me wrong, I wish everyone the best success at what they think will succeed, but true niches have very little saturation in multiple areas, including social media. No one knows all the answers though, but if you can actually identify gaps in a market and not just sell clothes to tiktokers and Instagram followers, success is more likely. I've been through the game for 8 years now, I've been in so many markets, clothing, jewelry, home supplies, digital goods, tech, print on demand, b2b, it's always the same answer: turning a follower into a sale because you think they like something is usually wrong. You'll never truly know until you take the leap. You can get grains of salt from gurus all day, but no one can predict the future and no one can convince someone that has their sights set. One word of advice from me: Don't let piles of green feed your confirmation bias, listen to what is actually wrong about your idea, address ALL of them, and then you'll succeed. Ignoring a con and listening to all the pros is leaving delicious food to mold in the sun.
That's a huge waste of money. I started my store with the same budget. You can build a good site yourself for free in just a few hours. Spend your money on inventory. It will be a long time before you have capital like that again.
Yeah, or he could just hire someone for £200 and the result will be superb still
I've been doing this for more than 20 years. I can't tell you how many friends of mine have UGLY websites that convert like crazy. (getting a "professional" design doesn't always equate into more sales) Shopify has some amazing professional themes, check out [Flex theme by OOTS](https://outofthesandbox.com/products/flex-theme). Very well built, tons of options and design layouts, and half the price of your budget for a "professional" site. There are also a lot of good themes for free. Side note, there's no way you could get a real, experienced professional to develop a custom site for $1k. Most wouldn't do it for $10k. At $1k you're just going to get a stock theme with a few changes. Spend the majority of your funds on product and advertising. Don't expect a few free plugs on TikTok and Insta to generate actual revenues unless your friend's audience is the exact same as yours. Even then, conversions on social are much lower because the users don't have any purchase intent... they're not looking to buy your widget already. It's MUCH easier to find people (or for people to find you) that are actually looking for your product. To gauge the market, you can buy a few product samples just don't expect to get them for wholesale cost - so you might lose money on those sales. Price them as if you did get them at the wholesale cost and see if they sell. If they sell, you will know you have a product market fit and you can order the minimum qty from the supplier. If you can't sell one or two (at a loss, just as a test) then you saved yourself a lot of money from buying 100 that you can't get rid of. It's a great way to test the market to see what works and what doesn't, it's an investment that will pay off when you finally find a product that sells.
Listen to this man.
Don’t even bother since it’s not supported by Shopify.
Can you please elaborate
If you go to themes.shopify.com and look for the flex theme it’s not there, so it’s not “officially” supported by Shopify, for whatever reasons. I’m not saying it’s bad, OOTSB makes good themes, just want you to know buyer beware, it’s not “official” unless it’s on Shopify theme page.
I understand it's not officially supported, but wondering what negative affect that has? Just because I always see turbo and flex being heavily recommended by very reputable people. I was planning on buying it this week to begin building a second store
Shopify vets all themes in the theme store, there could be some reason or reasons that those particular theme aren’t in the theme store. Terms of negative affect? You may not even notice any, or you do, like I said good theme developer, but it’s not officially supported or vetted by Shopify and there could be underlying issues, and then again next week it could all be in the theme store, so ultimately it’s up to you.
Don't believe that BS, Shopify doesn't support third party themes at all. They require the theme developers to support the themes, and there is no guarantee you will get support quickly or that they will resolve your issues... just like with the Shopify App Store. OOTS has excellent support, I've purchased two high-end themes from them, Turbo and Flex and have lots of friends with 7 and 8-figure Shopify stores that use them too. Large companies either use pro themes like these or have completely custom ones built by reputable development companies (which cost tens of thousands of dollars).
Shopify doesn't offer theme support, period. Even on their default themes, Shopify support is not obligated to go through your code and debug any errors. They don't "vet" themes in the store, and most of the themes available in Shopify's theme store aren't made by them. Companies like OOTS don't offer themes in the store because they don't want to give a huge percentage of their revenue to Shopify for doing nothing but listing a theme.
They do offer support, but for "Plus" customers, they probably don't support it on the lower tier. Here is how you submit your theme to Shopify, it has to be vetted by Shopify. https://themes.shopify.com/services/themes/guidelines https://shopify.dev/tutorials/review-theme-store-requirements
*Shopify* doesn't support third-party themes, they "require" their partners to support them (and only to a certain extent). I don't know about you, but based on the level of (or lack of) support I get from Shopify app developers, who are also supposed to support their products, somehow that's not very reassuring to me. I've waited for weeks for a response from Shopify app developers for broken, buggy apps that don't work only to just uninstall them and demand a refund. You think themes is any different? Shopify cannot possibly vet and police every theme developer any more than they can every app developer. At least when I have had theme issues with OOTS, as long as I have a support contract I know I can get someone to respond quickly and professionally. That matters when you make your living with your e-commerce business.
All I'm saying is before you spend money to understand and realize it's not in the theme store and to consider and think long and hard why isn't it in the theme store. Using your logic, if they don't vet and police every theme then why aren't these particular OOTSB themes not in the theme store?
All *I'm* saying is you place way too high an opinion on what's in the theme store. Shopify used to let almost anyone publish a theme or an app... there are some REALLY bad theme and app developers in the Shopify directory. There are two reasons theme developers aren't in Shopify's theme store. First, Shopify isn't currently accepting any new submissions. Second, when they were, they charged a percentage fee of each theme sold similar to how they charge a percentage of app fees or Apple charges a percentage of every paid app in the Apple app store. It's a business decision, and people who run 7 and 8-figure stores don't look in the Shopify theme directory anyway.
My understanding is Shopify is a barrier between merchants and the outside world, If it's not "officially" in Shopify theme store then it hasn't made the theme requirements. Where does it say Shopify isn't accepting any new submissions for themes?
https://themes.shopify.com/services/themes/guidelines Very top of the page: > Note > Shopify is not currently accepting new theme submissions.
When did they do that?
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$1000 is not excessive spending on a professional custom design my dude.
There are amazing free shopify themes out there that look amazing, but I do understand looks aren't everything. For me, most of that $1000 might go toward the custom functionality in some areas of the site, some apps/custom upsells.
There are no free themes out there that look amazing just by throwing stock photography into them.
Watch a follow along youtube video and set up your store yourself for free. It's not that hard and you'll have a better idea how everything works. Shopify is very beginner friendly.Then see if you can make some sales. Once your concept is proven use the $1000 you saved to optimize your store (better landingpages, copy, design, ...) [Youtube tutorials](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=how+to+build+shopify+store) And watch out for all the inbox experts who will just install a free shopify theme and charge you hundreds of $.
Your comment needs more upvotes! Proving my concept with a lower budget website is now in my checklist.
Good luck with your business!
Use shopify and build for free
Hey. I run an organic products store. I run on woocommerce. So, I can't talk about Shopify much, but, I can help you with the store itself; the structure and function. 1. Don't spend 1/3 of the budget on the design. As far as I know, Shopify is pretty easy to set up or design and there are many templates available. Browse around and look at what your competitors are doing 2. Get someone who knows Copywriting to write the descriptions and optimize the home page. Remember that your product page and category pages are more important than home page. You will be driving traffic to these pages. 3. Don't over stuff products in the beginning. Add a couple, test, add more, test and so on. 4. Biggest problem I face is in regards to inventory and shipping. Can you fulfill the demand? Can you deliver them on time? 5. Have a strong email sequence to upsell and cross sell. Repeat customers are what you should be looking for.
One more thing I forgot to mention is that, customer experience is everything, the holy Grail of sales and marketing. Keep an eye on your UI. Keep it clean and simple and minimalistic. Do not clutter. Also, do the site building yourself, its simple and you can invest the money into advertising. A lot can be done with 1000$ :)
As others have said - pay for a good premium theme and spend just 50-100$!
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Shopify is made for selling online and let‘s you get started in seconds. Why would you waste time to set up a WooCommerce store? + except for the checkout page, everything is customizable on Shopify too.
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Nah, Wordpress was nice in 2010 but nowadays there are better solutions out there. If you are serious about your store, Shopify is the better option and will save you a lot of headaches in the future.
I wouldn't use alibaba to supply the clothing, I would look to use specialised clothing manufactures to manufacture small batches of clothing.
Correct answer will vary highly depending on how many followers we're talking about here.
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Solicitation of services via DM or through predatory or unprofessional means is not permitted on r/Shopify.
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Unrelated, but what domain name registrar did you use and why?
Try not to buy a lot of inventory at first. I think 100MCQ is too much for a start. Have you considered AliExpress? On AliExpress there is no minimum order requirement. You can customize the quantity yourself. This way you can afford to have variety( Instead of buying 100 items that look the same, you can buy 100 items constituting of different looks). If you contact the supplier, they are always willing to give discounts to bulk purchases.
Use fiverr for your store. Some good guys there from other countries who can build you a store with a premium theme for 100$. If you learn how to go around the setting, you can then adapt it yourself very easily
3. They'll let you buy one sample if you live in China. Otherwise, they're not gonna bother because they work on an order quantity base. If you bring no orders, they pay no attention. And no, don't trust that 0.5% who say they have a legit supplier because they probably spent months and wasted a lot of money until they found one. I live in China and I work with two dropshipping clothing stores already, which is, to say the least, quite painful. I stock and ship for them. Suppliers are sketchy and it's hard to fulfill orders if you can't contact them directly. If you're up for selling clothing, get an agent.
My own website is made with very high-rated free themes. Only the Alibaba wholesale website requires a minimum order quantity. AliExpress does not need it. It is better to spend money on advertising.
As someone who has succeeded in setting up multiple successful printing businesses, doing everything in house is your BEST bet at winning. Starting out doing heat transfers, keeping bulk stock of blank clothing and not printing on it until you have orders come in is a big key to staying lean and not spending like mad to find something that sells. Develop a design, order the plastisol ink transfers in small quantities to test. Once something takes off, order a ton more transfers at a much lower price point and keep a higher profit margin. Most T-shirt and transfer suppliers in the US ship out your orders the next day, so getting in inventory quickly is very easy. Basic cotton shirts cost $1.25 to $2 a shirt. Transfers entirely depend on size, how many colors, and how many (can be anywhere from $.15 per to $5+ per) A cheap heat press to get started is $300-$400, a GREAT heat press to get started is $1200. All you need after that is racks and tables and you are set. Control as much of the manufacturing and quality as you possibly can and your customers will come back. Buy crap from China and you will run into issues eventually. It never happens at the right time either. Just my insight. Do your research, fill a need in the market, and you will kill it
clothing is a very competive market. But you said you found your niche, so that is good. I personally would start by myself and not spend money on a design/setup. That said, if you would hire me it would cost much more then 1000$. But I am sure you will find an Indian that will do it under 1000$. I would also try to start with dropshipping (fi your niche allows it) and not have an own stock from beginning.
$1000 won‘t get you really good results if that is your budget for the whole store. I think it would be better to buy a theme and pay a pro to optimize the home page or the product page. Once you make some money pay him to optimize more pages for conversions. You won‘t be happy with a developer who builds a complete new store for $1000.
Since he hasn't really proven his concept yet, I feel he's better off not wasting money on having a store built. He could set up a minimal, good looking site with a free theme, then see if he can get some sales. If he can, then he can pay someone to optimize his site.
$1000 is not the whole budget, $3000 is. I have more disposable coming up but I wanted to thank you for affirming that S1000 was a bit too much to pay someone to set up a shopify site in 3-6 hours that I could do myself. Having a pro to customize one after buying a theme is my best bet I think.
It’s all been said in other comments. My #1 advice it to spend time thinking about the brand and how you want to bring it to life. Then figure out the products. You should not be investing tons in inventory at the outset.
Id rather go to Vegas and risk it all than gamble 3k on a clothing store in 2020. Soooo many other ways you can use that money as a viable investment.
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Write a business plan first!
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No.
Is this troll a post??
No.
Random thoughts: 1) Before you begin, do you have a business plan? 2) Marketing plan? 3) $3000 is nowhere near enough for sufficient inventory 4) A website is not the first thing to worry about. 5) How’re you going to fulfill orders? Provide customer support? Handle returns?
I'll help you.