I am starting a clothing brand without any experience!

This week, instead of sharing new knowledge or discussing the news I've come across, I want to talk about what I've implemented.

It’s been a dream of mine to start a clothing brand or at least wear my own brand. The problem is, I have zero knowledge of the clothing industry or not acquire any knowledge till now. However, I do know about the print-on-demand concept, which I discovered while scrolling through Instagram about a year ago.

So before some days I started looking into this more. I began exploring Indian platforms in the print-on-demand category. There are very few options, such as Qikink, Printrove, and BlinkStore. I researched these platforms not to finalize any decisions but to gain knowledge.

I started thinking about what makes a good brand. It begins with the small things: the brand name, logo, website, and so on. People have different perspectives on this. Some focus on functionality first and don’t care much about branding, some take a middle approach, and some prioritize "art". I fall into the third category—I’m a design-first person. I want to build something beautiful before anything else.

Before I continue, I should mention that I'm still not sure if I will complete this successfully, but I want to try! With these thoughts in mind, I started looking into various fashion and clothing websites for logo and design inspiration. Here are the websites I referred.

I gathered all my design inspiration in a tool called Milanote, which I use for mood boarding. I had already decided on the brand name "essential" some time ago, so I started designing the logo around it. I created both a short, one-letter logo and a full version. After exploring various logo inspirations and experimenting with different ideas, I came up with the following logo.

Once the logo was developed, I began working on the website. As a software engineer, I usually work with React and have also done projects in Next.js, which is what my portfolio is built with. This time, I wanted to try something new. I chose Astro to learn and build with. I went through the documentation and set up the project.

I started building the landing page and am currently working on it. Stay tuned for updates in the upcoming weeks.

To be continued...