Global Selling: Three Categories Beginners Should Avoid (Clothing) + Product Selection Tips. Brand Marketing Diary (3)
Last episode discussed jewelry, a坑王 category. This episode focuses on clothing—huge market volume, but extremely high barriers.
Last episode discussed jewelry, a坑王 category that discourages beginners at entry: Global Selling: Three Categories Beginners Should Avoid (Jewelry)
This episode focuses on clothing—huge market volume, but extremely high barriers.
Personally, for beginner solopreneurs, there are only 4 ways to survive:
- Supply chain advantage: Factory second generation, no need to explain. Any category where you have supply chain advantage, you have to do it.
- Supply chain advantage: Can find细分细分再细分的 subcategories within clothing with unique features and product advantages.
- Operational advantage: Aesthetic product selection without self-indulgence, data-driven, selling what sells well; and引流玩得6到飞起 with mature experience and small team support.
- Nothing: Testing违规违法 edges, various高仿, no after-sales, no shipping, using various tricks.
Four Reasons to Avoid
1. Traditional clothing has too many SKUs, difficult to operate for solopreneurs.
Various sizes, various colors. You might崩溃 from the moment you start editing products. Think about later—if you use dropshipping, it might be slightly better with no inventory pressure (but as I said before, dropshipping suppliers you can find as a beginner almost have no viable space).
If you need to self-purchase and self-ship, you'll also崩溃 in the mid-term with purchasing and shipping.
2. Exhausted by after-sales—clothing return rates are highest domestically and internationally.
Once asked clothing sellers in groups and discussed on social media. For example, group friends' sharing below—personally observed 3-8% is already extremely恐怖优秀 (not sure what subcategory); but常规服饰 feels around 20% and above (more正规 with宽松售后 conditions).
Not even talking about costs—just dealing with after-sales is心灵上的摧残 for individuals. Imagine waking up every morning, others open their email to order notifications, you open to customer complaints, return requests—you tell me if that's崩溃.
3. Besides appearance, hard to挖掘产品差异化
Similar to jewelry, traditional clothing is also a category where it's hard to find differentiation from functionality, application, and other product dimensions. Many beginners wanting to try clothing have no product selection logic beyond "oh, this looks good, sell this."
But think about it—if you could succeed just by "oh this looks good, choose this," do you believe that yourself?
4. Can't find product differentiation, let alone brand value.
Mentioned countless times before—similar to jewelry, clothing largely belongs to brand value consumer goods. Beginner solopreneurs shouldn't think about building their own brand.
Thinking so beautifully—visit Yiwu, purchase some clothes, find foreign models for beautiful photos, stick on labels, post on social media, run some ads, and you have a brand? Really too difficult.
7 Years Brand Marketing Turned Global Selling: Solopreneurs, Stop Dreaming About "Brand"!
Some Light Sharing
Correct product selection logic must follow some methodology or multi-dimensional thinking (whether self-summarized or learned)
From consumer perspective: Find crowds, find scenarios—simply put, find demand.
From product perspective: Pursue quality, pursue price advantage, pursue logistics advantage—simply put, find supply.
Finally from industry perspective: Find differentiation, look at competitors, look at data, look at industry—simply put, look at industry.
Mature product selection requires various permutations of the above logical angles to have even a tiny tiny tiny chance of finding a suitable category path.
I always suggest beginners start from the first point, and definitely start from being a certain scenario or crowd yourself, summarizing your own needs and pain points, then寻找供给端解决方案, finally trying global selling.
Whether you're a资深钓鱼爱好者, photography enthusiast,手工爱好者, mom, or pet owner—believe me, your认知 and professionalism in that field and crowd already beats 99% of potential competitors.
