20 Pros & Cons Of Starting An Athletic Clothing Line (2024)

Ability to start your business from home

It's not necessary to have a physical storefront or office space to get your business started. You can do everything from the comfort of your own home, at least in the beginning!

Little startup costs required

The cost to start a athletic clothing line costs significantly less money than most businesses, ranging anywhere from 62 to 48,611.

Rewarding work

Starting a athletic clothing line can be really rewarding work. After all, you are solving an immediate issue for your customer and you're working on something you truly care about.

Scalable

With businesses and processes changing daily, there will always be demand for new features, products and services for your business. Additionally, there are several different business models and pricing tiers you can implement that will allow you to reach all types of customers.

Traffic to your website

A athletic clothing line gives people a reason to visit your website and to keep coming back to you!

Quick build time

The average time it takes to build your product is quick - typically around 10 months. This will allow you to bring your product to market faster.

Easy to encourage "impulse buy"

In the athletic clothing line, you have a much higher chance of encouraging your customers to buy on impulse - you can easily alter the price, placement, packaging, and promotional value to influence the decision of your buyer.

You are your own boss!

With starting an athletic clothing line, you are the one to make decisions for almost all of the operations. Calling the shots can be empowering and liberating!

Local Community

One of the best parts of starting an athletic clothing line is that you can develop a local following by selling your products at craft shows, farmers' markets, or even local storefront businesses! This gives you access to additional revenue streams and loyal customers.

You can sell your product in various places!

There are various different markets to sell your product, which will help you reach different audiences and revenue streams.

Simple business model

A athletic clothing line has the advantage of a simple business model, which makes launching and building the business more seamless.

Crowded Space

Competition is high when it comes to your athletic clothing line, so it's important that you spend a good amount of time analyzing the market and understanding where the demand lies.

Finding The Right Supplier

Most businesses in this space go the supplier/manufacturer route, which isn't a bad thing! However, finding the right supplier can take a lot of time, energy and trial/error. If done properly, this process can save you months (if not years) of time and energy. More on this below in the "finding a supplier" section.

Motivation of employees

If you plan to have a sales/content team on board, finding creative ways to motivate them can be a challenge. It's important that you're able to offer great incentives and a good work environment for your employees.

High employee turnover

In the athletic clothing line, employee turnover is often high, which can be quite costly and time consuming for your business. It's important to try and avoid this as much as possible by offering competitive pay, benefits, and a positive work environment.

High overhead expenses

With starting an athletic clothing line, there are overhead expenses that come with selling a physical product. You will want to make sure you strategically budget for these overhead costs. We discuss this more in the startup costs section below.

You may need to charge sales tax

If you are selling your products in various states, you may be required to charge sales tax. Although this may not impact your financials specifically, it can be a headache to create a process and procedure for this. To learn more about sales tax, check out this article

Work can be repetitive

You may find creating the same product over and over repetitive and tiresome. One way of avoiding this is to diversify product lines and revenue streams - this will keep things interesting!

Time commitment

With starting an athletic clothing line, all responsibilities and decisions are in your hands. Although this is not necessarily a negative thing, work life can take over at times. This can place a strain on friends and family and add to the pressure of launching a new business.

Difficult to build trust with your customer

With starting an athletic clothing line, there can be minimal face-to-face interaction, which means it can be a lot more difficult to establish trust with your customers. You'll need to go the extra mile with your customer to grab their attention and business.