Why aren't there any bespoke clothing websites dedicated to daily, basic wear?

I want to begin by assuring you I don't want to rain on your parade. Now... Ideas are a dime a dozen. Execution is what is critical, and hardly anyone does execution well. NDAs are nice but they won't protect your idea from being ripped off in the medium term at the latest, if it's a winner. Your best protection is that execution thing...people sure like to talk, but they don't like to Do. Do NOT have your prototype made in China. It will take months in shipping back and forth, misunderstandings, finding the right manufacturer, and other difficulties. Do not embroil yourself in that mess. Absolutely you should get a prototype made first. Will it cost you 10-100X what the final version will cost? Of course. Do you need something to show investors, suppliers, channel partners, retail outlets? Yes. All a patent does is protect your idea for awhile from being duplicated in the exact way you are executing it. I can't go make a sticky-note that uses a strip of lightweight glue to hold the paper onto something. 3M has that patent. But I could find another method for holding the paper on, and that would be fine. Worrying about protecting your idea is kind of a waste of time. You should do what you can afford and what makes sense in terms of your time invested to accomplish a level of protection, but don't let this be all-consuming. It's just not worth it. Get out there and make your product and find paths to market. That's what will really pay off. Someone WILL copy your product sooner or later if it's a money-maker. That's why developing great branding is so important: keep the knock-offs in the knock-off category in your buyer's brain, and you as the top quality original.

First things first - you have 2 ways to monetise. 1 - build an audience 2 - get paid to write (not necessarily on your site). 1 - How to get readers and build an audience If you have an audience then advertisers will pay to promote to your audience. It's important that you ensure your audience find the adverts relevant and appropriate or they will unsubscribe. As a fashion blogger you can often get free product (clothes) from retailers in exchange for your writing about them. I recommend you then sell the clothing to raise funds. When you're a very good popular blogger you can charge money, till then, ask for product. The easiest way to get paid is to install Google AdSense on your site and in your email newsletters. I use FeedBlitz.com as my newsletter distribution service and they also insert adverts (from a different service) into the newsletters. 2 - Get paid to write - go research the online freelance marketplaces like Upwork.com, guru.com, freelance.com and find paid writing gigs. You can often re-purpose writing for your own site at the same time. I often re-use Answers from Clarity.fm for my own blog. Here's a good list of places to learn more http://www.bloggersclub.com/ is an agency representing bloggers to brands. http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/sites-to-get-paid-blogging/ Read anything by Neil Patel on how to grow your audience http://neilpatel.com/2016/01/17/six-figure-consultant-4-proven-services-every-blogger-can-offer-to-make-money-online/

If you have your CAD design done, you can get it printed in plastic first using inexpensive printers at 3DHubs for example. Do tweaks to the design and reprint. This can't cost more than $5 or so per print. Once you're happy you can then send your design to shapeways or i.materialise to be printed in metal. These services will likely charge a fee $100 for a metal print.

Facebook ads are not effective and actually far too costly for independent businesses. Unless you have a huge advertising budget, I don't advise it. To break into the hipster market You need 3 things. Great (concise) story, Great branding, and social engagement. Luckily, you have "provenance"----the place of origin or earliest known history of something. Provenance is an important quality to convey in your brand's story especially when targeting the hipster demographic who are preoccupied by the origin of all things----they're generally well educated and like to know where everything that they consume comes from. Great branding: Branding is a combination of visual consistency that positions you as different from competitors. I would consider coming up with a different name. Warmth of Russia, to me, seems long and vague. Maybe going back to the idea of provenance, is there a Russian word that's easy to pronounce and unique? Maybe the particular city where the scarves are made of. Maybe some Russian lore that can be woven into your product's story. I would make a list of 50 different names and then narrow it down to something that you think clicks. I would redesign your site and visuals as well with consideration to photographic styles, font type, colors etc to something a little edgier and different. To me, the colors, font type seem a bit retiring, snoozy. Happy to discuss more because this is a bit more nuanced. As for your site, Squarespace is a great option for making a great, professional looking e-commerce site, and they make it hard to design anything bad. Related to this, excellent SEO practice will bring more traffic to your site. I'm sure there are plenty here on Clarity who can advise you on best practices there. Next, Social Engagement. You need to demonstrate people using your scarves, the making of the scarves, where the scarves come from, the yarn used for the scarves, etc. You can take pictures of all of these things and tell the story visually all on instagram. If you haven't already made an Instagram account, I would do so immediately. It will take time, but you can build a loyal following of people who believe in your brand story if you do a good job of visually telling it, and engaging with followers. Obviously there's more to it than just this but happy to discuss more specifically once you've thought more about what this brand is. Hope all of this helps, best of luck!~

I've been in ecommerce for over a decade and have co-founded and helped start companies collectively driving over $10MM in ecommerce sales. I've consulted for Fortune 500 ecommerce stores. Here's my advice if you're just getting started without a big budget. Note: Some of this is copied from my answer to a similar question. #1) PROVE THE ASSUMPTION: Start with a dropshipper's existing products to figure out what sells best before you spend money on manufacturing and warehousing. Amazon is perfect for this - they will pay you 4%-10% to promote 253,000,000 products (http://bit.ly/1q2M85R) - you can sign up at https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/ Alternately, get very small amounts of the product (maybe even just buy some from a competitor) and try selling them on ebay and amazon. Nothing hurts more than having $50,000 of imported product gathering dust in your fulfillment warehouse while listening to a voicemail from a debt collector. #2) SOURCING There are several options here. Many people prefer Alibaba.com. Warning - if you use Alibaba, you are stepping into a tank of pirahnas. There are more scam "manufacturers" on Alibaba than real ones. Use Escrow or AliSecure Pay if you buy. If the supplier says they only take T/T, Western Union, Moneygram - just say no! I prefer American Made when possible. If you're like me, try Ariba's Discovery Service - http://bit.ly/1q2NFZu - which will allow you to find suppliers with a physical presence in the USA. Note: Many things can be made on demand (someone purchases, one gets made and shipped) instead of in 500+ manufacturing runs. Start there if you can - Books on CreateSpace.com, Clothes on CafePress.com, Playing Cards on MakePlayingCards.com, etc - to test out your exact product. If you decide to source by purchasing product in bulk, find a fulfillment company to store and fulfill (ship) your orders. Amazon does this - http://services.amazon.com/content/fulfillment-by-amazon.htm - but they might decide to crush you like a bug if you're successful (http://bit.ly/1q2V7DX). Other fulfillment companies for e-commerce include http://www.shipwire.com/ and http://www.webgistix.com/ #3) LAUNCH YOUR SITE This is an entire topic in itself. One of the fastest ways I know for newbies to start in e-commerce is with a SquareSpace.com store. Other options include GoDaddy.com and BigCommerce.com. If you can stand to use the templates they provide instead of trying to customize them, you'll save yourself a lot of hassle and expense - customization usually looks terrible unless a designer/coder was hired to do the work. If you do customize, find someone on odesk.com or elance.com. If you're not hard up for money, just build a custom store from the start. If you can't do that, save up some money and then go for it. Focus on increasing conversion rate - for every 100 visitors, get 1 to buy. Then 2. Then 4. Then 8 (8%). #4) MARKET Figure out where your competition is advertising. Are they getting free, "organic" SEO results on Google? Using social media to drive billions of dollars of sales? (NOTE: That was a joke - don't count on social media as the nucleus of your marketing campaign. Please!) Are they paying for Google ads ("PPC"), buying email lists, using strategic partnerships for promotion, relying on shopping portals, using banner advertising, or something else entirely? There's probably a good reason - figure out what it will take to play in those waters. At the same time, try to find a small enough niche that you can win in it. #5) BEWARE Be careful about artsy things. If someone is attracted to something artistic, it's usually because there is a story behind the art for them, or because it's cheap. If you're going to try to sell artistic things, you may want to consider doing some serious research first about who has been successful in that area. Look at etsy.com to see handmade artsy items (very cool). #6) WORTH A LOOK Worth checking out as you start your journey: Art.com, yessy.com, Artfire.com, ArtPal.com #7) DEEP FOUNDATION If you need help, reach out for a 15 minute call and we'll discuss a go-to-market strategy specific to your goals.