Easy Guide On How to Start a Tailor Shop of your own

Want to know how to start a tailor shop of your own? Read along with this beginner’s guide to run this business smoothly and know all the nitty-gritty. 

Are you a fashion designer or someone who is who loves to make clothes? Have you been making your own clothes or your family and friends forever? Then why not start your own business?

Every day there are thousands of people who google how to alter clothes or a good tailor in their vicinity.

You can make the most of this opportunity by opening a tailor shop of your own and here’s all the information you need to know to start this new adventure.

How To Start a Tailor Shop

Create a Business Plan

Every business idea in India first needs a plan. This plan would talk about everything. Your 6 months, 1 year and even 5-year plan.

Decide and plan what would be your goals, niche, money invested, people hiring, location, and basically anything to everything that your business would require. 

Once this is done, decide on your niche. Decide what type of boutique you would want to have. A place for Indian suits and sarees or only alteration. Depending upon the crowd that is around you, you can decide on this. 

Hone Your Skills

To run a tailoring business you need some basic skills that include:

• Knowledge of sewing machine (basic machine) and running a sewing machine
• Learn garment stitching. Whether you stitch garments yourself or hire a skilled tailor, you should learn the basics of garment stitching
• Body measurement and garment measurement
• Learn pattern drafting 
• Cutting the fabric for garment parts 
• Learn about textile designs and their properties 
• Learn about garment fit
• Take training on tailoring and garment manufacturing and pattern making. A 3-6 months course is enough to start a tailor shop. 

Note – You don’t need to know stitching necessarily to start the business. You just need to know all about fabrics and designing trendy clothes.

Get the finances

To start your own business you need to spend a lot of money on the place you would want to rent unless you are planning to run it from your home, employees, equipment, etc.

Initially, the business would require some investment, hence it would be better that you start saving up as much as you can.

If not, then you can always consider taking a loan. You can either take it from a bank or ask your parents, spouse, or any family member/friends for the same.

Pick the location

Picking up the right location is one of the most mandatory and important steps of starting a tailoring business. The location must be an area where the competition is less and people get a lot of clothes stitched or altered based on their niche.

The location must not be expensive and should fall under your budget without exceeding any limit. The best location for opening a shop would be in any residential complex where there are a lot of potential customers.

Pick a Name

Having an identity is important so that people know who you are. Choose a nice name for your business, Godaddy can help you with this. Something that is related to your business, is easy and simple to remember as well as pronounce. Maybe also something that gives away your niche.

Get the necessary equipment

Buying the right equipment is also one important task. You might want to buy a simple and basic home sewing machine but know that it would not work that well with the abundance of orders and may even affect the quality.

Study all about the sewing machines and get one accordingly. Buy a professional sewing machine along with a serger overlock machine. Other vital tools required for your own tailor shop would be:

• Fabric shears
• Self-healing cutting mat
• Clear plastic ruler
• Rotary cutter
• Small craft scissors
• Pinking shears
• Seam ripper
• Pins and pincushions
• Sewing needles (for machine and for hand)
• Tailor chalk or pen, Markers
• Seam gauge
• Measuring tape
• Ott light
• Fabric Glue, Yarn Etc
• Raw material requirement: Threads and supplies
• Some hangers, racks, and stands
• Electric iron
• You need a table for pattern making, garment measuring, and cloth cutting. A 6 ft x 4 ft tabletop is ok. If you have a small space you can manage it in a 4 x 3.5 square ft table
• Work aids like special presser foot for hemming and pico stitch. (Hemming and pico stitch can be done manually)

Get the Right Employees

Initially, when you start your garment business you do not really need any extra help but as and when the order increase, you can get someone to help you with it.

Whether it is for measurements, alteration, cutting, finding the right fabric, taking orders, or even stitching. Hiring a new person isn’t that complex in this business.

You can ask around and find women who do stitching and can get them on board with you. You can also look for tailors who will be beneficial in expanding and growing your business.

Market it

Marketing your business is also equally important for your business. There is no point in having a business that no one knows about.

One must market the business to reach potential customers. You can spread the word via pamphlets, social media, and of course word of mouth. 

Having a presence on social media is of great need as you would be able to reach a large number of people through it.

Put pictures of your business, your work, and what makes you different from others. But yes, showing your work would do a major benefit as that would attract a lot of people.

Business Diversification

So, when do you know it’s the right time to expand your business and how to do it? When your work volume has increased and you are able to deliver all orders on time, it’s time to expand your business.

Purchase more machines and get a few people on board with you. You can also start selling readymade garments, based on your liking to your customers. You can slowly move to design and grow your business.

Also Read: How to Start your Grocery Store?

How Can Lio Help

When starting a business there numerous things that one needs to take care of, keep note of, and track.

With so much to do and constant things running in your mind, it is very important to save all the data and information in one place and this is exactly where Lio can help you out.

Download the app and choose from the many templates that are available for your use. A template that is best suited for your business or meets or needs and requirements. If not, you can also make your own template.

Once done, you can start adding any kind of data and information here. Make different templates for different information. Track the money inflow and outflow, customer contact, fabric details, equipment requirements, and everything else.

You can also upload images and external files to add and collate everything in one place. Lio makes your life a lot more practical and organized.

Not downloaded the Lio App yet? Here is how you can start with Lio App.

Step 1: Select the Language you want to work on. Lio on Android

Step 2: Create your account using your Phone Number or Email Id.

Verify the OTP and you are good to go.

Step 3: Select a template in which you want to add your data.

Add your Data with our Free Cloud Storage.

Step 4: All Done? Share and Collaborate with your contacts.

Also Read: Textile Business Ideas

How Lio Automation Can Help You Business Process

Business automation is used by not just big businesses but all entrepreneurs and start-ups. It is something that has really helped companies run a smoother process and learn from their mistakes. Companies who have adopted automation have really made a mark and have from 10X faster with the best possible results. 

Automation surely does make a difference in running a business whether small or large. It can be tricky and overwhelming at first to switch all the business processes to automation but not with Lio. 

Lio Automation gives you many amazing features that make your work super simple and effective. There are very many features that will help you and your business in various aspects. From connecting and staying in touch with your customers, to working together as a team, and everything in between, Lio Automation will truly make your business run smoothly and make it reach new heights of success.

If you are using Lio Automation for your business processes consider all your data safe and secure all the time. Not only is the data saved in the cloud, but it also offers a data versioning feature in which you can actually see the many changes the document or file has gone through and who has made those changes. You can save the version of the file as required by you. 

Another great feature that Lio Automation offers is colour formatting the sheet. Colour formatting can help bring information and more clarity to the audience. Applying colours to different parts of any data will let you narrate a more effective story that easily catches one’s attention as well.

You can create dashboards for each file which would give you the clear details of your company’s operations, marketing campaigns, sales and other analytics. This is one useful feature that would truly make a difference to your business and help your see all the processes clearly so that you can make well-informed decisions.

Since customers are a big part of any business and staying in touch with them is a crucial job, Lio automation gives you the ability to automate Whatsapp communications. Automating WhatsApp communication is another popular trend that businesses can benefit from. With the help of this, you would be able to save a lot of time, boost your customer retentions and renewals, save a lot of money, have lower operating costs and much more. 

Not just this, Team management and work allocation are made super easy with Lio Automation. You can also work with teams in real-time and see all the changes happening.

You can share invoices and receipts with your customers while also sharing the payment links with them to make the whole transaction process smoother and absolutely hassle-free for everyone. 

Lio also makes collecting valuable reviews from customers very easy with its automation process. Along with this, you can also manage leads very easily with the help of automation. Now no lead would be missed and can be responded to the minute you receive them. 

There are several other amazing Lio automation features that are made so that you and your business can benefit from them. Excited to know more about it? Start with your Lio automation process for your brand and start your journey to success. 

Conclusion

Follow these simple yet important steps listed by me and you would be able to open and run a successful tailor shop of your own.

Make sure you plan all the things well in advance and have all the crucial aspects clear. Starting a tailoring business can be really profitable if done smartly. So wait not and start planning your new venture.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)