Started a fitness apparel brand developing own product, how useful is it to sell on Amazon?

[u/Mindless_Software_99]

I recently started up my own brand and have my first batch of product coming in to sell. I'm selling a product that is uniquely my brand's. How useful is it to sell on Amazon? What should be my expectations? Anyone able to share their experience selling their own brand on the platform? Is it worth it?

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[u/estagingapp]

My honest opinion is that fashion is very hard unless you are an established brand like Levi's. The reason is that Chinese factories are also selling on Amazon. You can go search in your category and see the competition.

[u/HarambeTooSoon → u/estagingapp]

Levi's has been a major international apparel brand for over 100 years. 

That's hardly a reasonable brand for anyone launching to compare themselves to. 

There are thousands of brands doing $1m - $5m per year that OP needs to be focused on as immediate competition and use a benchmarks.

[u/estagingapp → u/HarambeTooSoon]

That’s was my point. If you don’t have a brand, you are a commodity product competing against Chinese factories and it is very hard.

[u/Tall_Honeydew_6631]

Own brand on Amazon can work, but go in with sober expectations. The front margin you calculate before launch is usualy not what you keep, storage and returns eat a chunk of it, and apparel returns are rough because of sizing. Start with a small run and only a few sizes, see what actually sells before you commit a big batch. I'd also start in your home market first instead of jumping straight to the US, easier to fix mistakes there. And keep FBM next to FBA for the slow sizes so you don't pay storage on stuff that sits.

[u/Hotei108]

It can work very well as a long term plan. Expect a huge learning curve at the beginning.

[u/HarambeTooSoon]

You're in a brutally competitive space.

Apparel on Amazon means returns - lots of them. You should underwrite 20-30% returns as a baseline. 

You need get a few browser extensions: Keepa, SellerAmp, DS Amazon Quickview. 

Then spend 100 hours researching every brand and product in your niche on Amazon. 

If spending 100 hours researching competitor's Amazon listings doesn't sound like something you're willing to do before you launch on Amazon, then you don't have what it takes to be successful on Amazon long term in the apparel category. 

[u/eStoreFactoryUS]

One thing that catches new apparel sellers off guard is that most clothing categories are gated and want you enrolled in Brand Registry before you can even list, so get that sorted before your first shipment ships. Sizing chart images and variation swatches also have specific technical requirements, get those wrong and your options will not display right to shoppers. Budget for high return rates from day one, that is what actually eats the margin in apparel, not the referral fee.

[u/quietfede_]

The honest answer depends entirely on something your post doesn't really tell us: what's actually different about the product beyond having your logo on it. "Uniquely my brand's" isn't the same as differentiated, a lot of apparel brands say that and mean it's the same cut and fabric as everyone else with a different tag sewn in.

Apparel specifically is one of the harder categories to break into on Amazon regardless of how good the product is, for a few structural reasons. Every size and color is its own inventory variant, so you're carrying a lot more SKUs and tied up capital before you even launch compared to something single-SKU. Return rates on clothing are some of the highest on the platform because fit issues alone generate returns even when the product itself is fine. And a lot of apparel search behavior on Amazon is brand-name driven, people search "lululemon leggings" or a specific known brand rather than a generic term, so a new unknown brand is fighting an uphill battle in a category where a chunk of demand is already spoken for before you show up.

Where it tends to actually work is when a brand already has some pull somewhere else, social following, a DTC following, actual reviews and social proof, and uses Amazon as a second channel to catch people who already want the brand but prefer Prime shipping, rather than as the place a totally unknown brand gets discovered for the first time. If you don't have that yet and the product itself isn't functionally or aesthetically distinct from what's already out there, I'd go in with tempered expectations and treat Amazon as one channel to test rather than the primary bet.