Getting yourself in a space where you want to start an online business is pretty exciting and then the awkwardness of what to sell online always pops up, and then we tend to search for answers. This is pretty natural and common thing to do for most of us.
Some people are lucky and know they want to sell clothes online in South Africa
It is really a super safe way to go and perfect starting place, to sell clothes in South Africa. If you look at the stats over at Payflex, the most bought items online in South Africa are, you guessed it, clothes. A whopping 53% of all online sales goes to clothing.
So, this should tell you two things –
- There is a market to sell clothes online in South Africa
- There is a lot of competition for clothes.
But this should not discourage you to start your own little clothing empire, this should encourage you to think a little outside the box.
For instance, you are going to have a very hard time competing with the bigger players like Superbalist, Zando, The Fix and then the old dinosaurs like Edgars. These are heavy hitters and trying to outrank them in Google will be a mammoth task.
A task I don’t want to touch or even try to accomplish.
My point is, don’t try and sell everything. Rather focus on a niche product like shape wear, baby boxers, tangerines or whatever. This will help you build a brand around a product and will kind of make your brand stand out more and plus help you climb the Google ladder a bit faster.
You can use Google trends to discover new trends in South Africa
Below is a chart regarding the trends around vellies in South Africa.
You can see that vellie shoes are a great choice of products to sell. There is an interest most of the year.
Use Google trends to discover trends for your products. This will help a lot when planning marketing campaign.
Moreover, another upside of choosing a niche product to sell, you can now identify your target market and ideal customer. What does this mean?
Well, you can now spend your hard-earned cash on Facebook ads and target the right buyers. This is a lot better than taking the shot gun approach.
This is off-course online marketing 101.
You see, it does not matter if you sell clothes online in South Africa or the best products known to man. If you don’t advertise to the right crowd you might as well throw your money up in the air on an August day in Cape Town.
Ok, so enough of marketing lets dive in to some options you can use to make some money by selling clothes online in South Africa.
