financial management
Financial planning for growth workshop
MyCake is giving advice at Cockpit Arts’ financial planning for growth workshop on Wednesday 11th August 2010. We invite you to come and explore how to use your own financial information to make more informed decisions about your business.
You’ll look at the pros and cons of different record- keeping systems and which approach is best suited to you and your business. Through practical group exercises, you’ll cover budgeting, financial planning and how to improve your cash flow on a day-to-day basis.
You will also look at improving profitability and using designer-maker case studies, you’ll be taken through a profit and loss forecast and show you how to interpret your own figures to make better decisions about your business.
What you’ll get:
- Guidance on setting up a record system that works for you
- Improved financial literacy and confidence in financial planning
- A clearer understanding of your own business model and how to develop this to improve cash flow and profitability
Wednesday, 11th August 2010 from 10:00am to 12:00 noon.
The cost is £10 and open to studio and non-studio members. Book here
Are your figures under-dressed?
High fashion businesses are often a money pit in the early years. Those first few seasons might only result in £3-5,000 of orders per season and yet the cost of sampling and PR let alone catwalk shows and salons will certainly exceed this income.
So how does anyone get going? There are several answers to this depending on which bit of the fashion sector you are in. If you are aiming to be the next Alexander McQueen then many would say that you need passion, commitment and to get noticed. Many would infer from this that your finance skills are less important. Indeed if you find a financial backer who will cushion you from the ups and downs in seasonal cashflow then indeed this can be the true. Camilla Staerke is one example of a name backed by an investor.
If however you want to build your own label independently or indeed if you want to maintain easy communications with your investors it pays to understand your numbers. There are a couple of key angles to this. You need to understand garment costing so that you know precisely what the unit cost is of each design you create. We rate F2IT as the best solution for independent labels … just looking at their customer list shows you that the likes of Christopher Kane, Eley Kishimoto and Erdem agree.
But production costing is not enough. You need to be able to make forecasts as to where your sales will come from next season and target the retailers who you feel would be a good fit for your brand. You probably need to hang out in some of those retail spaces to to get a real idea of how sales happen and why.
You also need to get a handle on the mix between online and offline sales. With such a huge growth in online fashion retailing you need to work out pretty early on whether you’re going to run your own store or whether you’re aiming to get stocked by one of the existing online retailers.
Sounds like a lot to handle, well yeah, kinda but honestly … you gotta be business savvy as well as creatively brilliant. Don’t just take our word for that, here’s Wendy Malem of the Centre for Fashion Enterprise explaining why business development matters as much as creative development … in particular check out her views on the finance needs of companies growing from creatively applauded but financially fragile to more robust global brands.
Wendy Malem speaking at Investment Matters in 2008 courtesy of CIDA and the ECCE project
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Look out for our fashion related giveaway later today…
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