Why my clothing brand failed...

Why my clothing brand failed...

(sort of)

It’s a tale as old as the internet just about. Some broke kid thought he’d strike gold by making a cool hip clothing brand and he thought everyone would magically be into it and he’d be selling out on the daily. Now this kid wasn’t exactly me but I did start a clothing brand in my recent time in the unemployed.

I wasn’t exactly this optimistic as a lot of other people when starting an online side hustle but I did think I’d be doing this a lot longer than this. I knew starting a clothing brand is a lot of work that all those online gurus don’t tell you about. Growing something real takes time, hard work, and passion (amongst a lot of other things).

I thought I had all those things on my side and another leg up with my expertise in how to do paid marketing. I for sure had the time while I was unemployed and to me, I thought I was putting in the work, so that means when it got down to it, it was my passion that didn’t get me where I needed to go.

I think passion is what’s stopped me from ever fully committing to a lot of side ventures I’ve had over the years. I’ve tried multiple niche blogs but I never felt the urge to keep going on them or I just felt like that niche wasn’t for me to keep being in. I attempted drop shopping a few times but never felt like those products were actual items I felt comfortable selling with my name behind. I thought this time designing and printing my own shirts in a niche I really loved would be different.

Let me explain what my plan was with my shirt designs. I was noticing that KPop vintage style shirts were becoming all the rage these last few years and me being a recent obsessive into the genre figured that would be the perfect springboard into my clothing brand. However, I didn’t want that to be my entire brand forever. Especially with how fast trends can change. There’s also being beholden to other groups’ status and popularity and the general risk of copyright laws copying to get me. I would say a lot of these vintage-style music brands fall into some sort of grey zone with copyright laws and one letter from a lawyer could end it all for them. So I thought my foundation could be built off the popularity of K-pop but eventually, I could pivot into a similar style of thing I’m doing on this blog. Pop culture, business, and mental health. I thought this plan was rock solid until I started hitting the streets with it.

Before going fully into building an online presence I thought it would be a good idea to try some pop-ups and night markets to move some product. It went probably not as expected. I knew I wouldn’t have shirts flying off shelves but it was more than trying to explain my vision to people who would stop by didn’t seem to click for many folk. If someone stopped by for kpop merch they weren’t interested in hearing anything about the mental health side and just trying to get people on the mental health side was an even bigger challenge. People that did resonate with the mental health side, saw my booth as sort of mixed messaging and people seemed more interested in possible future events and not the booth as it was today.

Being at these pop-ups made me realize too that if I was going to dedicate my weekends to a venture like this. I would rather do it in an audience or setting where the value I’m giving for that time is much greater than trying to sell someone a shirt that’s just walking by.

Those few experiences made me realize that even though I started off creating this brand as a way to maybe generate some cash. What I wanted to do was create something bigger than that.

So I’m not giving up on Anxious Dog as a brand in any way yet. However, I think Anxious Dog isn’t meant to just be a clothing line. I want to make it something for the community and that’s something I’m still trying to figure out. So yeah my clothing brand failed but doesn’t mean we’ve failed yet.

We’re only just getting started.