Specific – The “who,” “what,” “where,” “when” and “why”
Measurable – Can be measured in numbers
Attainable – Realistic; Possible to be reached with effort
Relevant – Resonates with you and inspires you
Time-bound – Has a deadline or time limit
One of the most important aspects of the S.M.A.R.T. goals acronym is the ‘R’ for Relevant. You have to set goals that are attainable, but which are also relevant or inspirational. For example, a goal of selling two t-shirts in your first month may be easily attainable, but it's completely uninspiring and the payoff is really weak, so you may not be motivated to achieve that. On the other end, setting a goal of 300 t-shirt sales in your first month may be inspiring, but it is most likely an unrealistic target (assuming you’re not running a million-dollar promotion campaign or you’re not a celebrity).
We can't tell you exactly what your sales goal should be, but if you're just starting out, a sales goal of at least ten t-shirts sold in a month should be both reasonable and inspiring enough. Of course, selling ten t-shirts isn’t anything to brag about, but achieving that simple goal should give you the momentum and confidence to sell at least 15 t-shirts the following month, and then 30 t-shirts the month after that. And then after several months of building your brand exposure and reaching previous sales goals, the goal of selling 300 t-shirts in a month will be pretty realistic.
It’s good to set product sales goals for your brand, but you also need to consider other goals that may help increase your sales. Here are some questions to consider when setting goals for your business:
1) How many t-shirts do you want to sell this month?
2) How many retail stores do you want your t-shirts to be sold in, and by when?
3) Which trade show or event do you plan on exhibiting at 6 months from now?
4) What magazines do you want your brand featured in 6 months from now?
These four goals should be sufficient to get you started and working in the right direction. Make sure to actually write or type your goals so that they’re easier to remember and work toward.
Setting Objectives
So now you’re looking at a sheet of paper with a list of your goals. Each of your goals have solid deadlines. You made sure that your goals are S.M.A.R.T.
But wait! How exactly are you going to reach these goals? Setting goals is nice, but it’s even nicer to actually reach them. To make sure you reach your goals, you need to map out a plan of action. Take each goal that you set and define the objectives, or “mini-goals,” that will help you reach your main goals.
For example, let’s say it’s currently early June and you’ve set the goal of selling ten t-shirts in the month of July. Let’s also suppose that you haven’t ordered any t-shirts yet, but you have already decided on your brand idea, created your designs, and saved up enough money to get your brand started. In this case, your objectives may look something like this:
1) Launch seven products for sale in online shop.
2) Have brand featured on five blogs.
3) Get 100+ daily visitors to website.
Your objectives should be the “meat” of your goal. The objectives you establish should be designed in such a way that completing them will equal reaching your goal. In the beginning, it can be hard to know for sure that completing your objectives will lead to the completion of your goal, but by establishing them, you’ll have a clear sense of how to go about reaching that goal.
Setting Daily Tasks
A great way to make sure you stay focused when you’re running your brand is to set daily tasks and objectives to complete. Without having clear tasks for the day, you’ll end up sitting at your computer for 12 hours, bouncing back and forth between dabbling on some t-shirt design in Photoshop, checking your e-mail, posting links on your friends’ Facebook walls, and browsing clothing brand sites. You’ll be really busy all day, but at the end of the day you’ll realize that you really didn’t accomplish much. I’ve been there and it sucks when that happens.
It’s really difficult to concentrate on tasks that you haven’t defined beforehand. It’s a bad idea to just wake up in the morning, hop on your computer, and “get to work” without having a written checklist of what work you’ll actually be doing throughout the day. It’s best to define what tasks need to be done each day in order to achieve the goals you set.
After you’ve set goals and objectives, you need to divide up the objectives into tasks. To make things a bit less complicated, define the first three tasks that need to be done for each of the objectives. So if your objectives were to launch seven products for sale in your shop, get 100+ daily visitors to your site, and have your brand featured on five blogs, your tasks may look like this:
Launch seven products for sale in my shop
- Prepare t-shirt designs into print-ready files
- Request a quote from three screenprinters
- Place an order with one of the screenprinters
- Take photos of products once received
- Upload product shots and info to online shop
- Announce new products to mailing list subscribers
Get 100+ daily visitors to my site
- Search for potential SEO keywords
- Implement SEO on website
- Post an update to Twitter and Facebook daily
Have my brand featured on five blogs
- Create a write-up about my new products
- List 15 blogs that might be interested in my brand
- Contact the 15 blogs to announce my brand
After establishing the tasks for reaching the objectives that will help reach your goal, you should then assign days on which you’ll complete each task. Something we do to keep on track with all of our tasks is write them in a daily planner. This makes it easy to break down your tasks into manageable amounts of work each day.
Chaz Matses’ Planning Process
Planning ahead is an absolute necessity for creating a t-shirt brand. Jumping into the industry without a plan is a surefire way to ensure that your brand will not be successful. The first step is to make sure that you aren’t starting a clothing business for the wrong reasons. Many people think that starting an independent clothing company is an easy way to make quick money. However, this mindset is an incredibly inaccurate representation of the independent fashion industry.
Running a brand requires extremely hard work that won’t reveal payoffs until months, sometimes years, down the line. This market has become so polluted and saturated with brands that it takes passion, dedication and time to create a unique identity that sets itself apart from all of its competitors.
In the end, you’ll notice that the success of your brand all comes down to one word: passion. Everyone is passionate about something, whether it is baseball or computer programming. Your brand will absolutely not succeed if being a clothing brand owner isn’t your passion. So, how do you know if this is really your passion before you’ve even jotted down notes and ideas? Well, what got you to this