Starting a Business!

Hi, Every since I was a young child, I have always dreamed of creating my own Business. I want to create a shop that sells Designer clothing for Prices a little cheaper than the main retailers like JD and Cartel Mens Ware. I'm thinking - Less Profit per sale, More sales, More Money. Would this work? Plus any Idea's on how much money I would need to start this off and any Opinions?
Thanks
PS - I'm only in Y10 now and I'm still thinking of my choices...

Whilst it certainly is true that more sales can lead to more money, it can be a very difficult game to play. Competing solely on price rather than quality can become a bit of a nuisance, as bigger companies will typically always find it easier to lower prices than you can, unless you charge insanely lower prices, in which case it would porbably be very difficult to make money. Arguably, it would maybe make more sense to go for some sort of niche that is being provided so well for atm, and then once you have satisfied that niche really well, you can begin to expand into other things. For example, maybe you could offer services to youtubers, snapchatters, instagrammers etc.. to start up their own designer lines, or something along those lines. Or, if you just wanted to have your own design line, what I would do is make a youtube channel (and of course have a snapchat and instagram as well) and post videos and tips on something related to design that you think you can help with (e.g. how to make your own clothes at home, how to deal through problems being a creative person, or maybe something that is slanted a bit more away from clothing, but is somewhat relevant enough that you could still mention it occasionally).

As far as the amount of money you would need to start this goes, it would depend on your ability to do most of the stuff yourself. If you are capable of making most of the designs yourself, then that will cut down more of the financial cost, as more of it will just be translated into effort and time you put in. If you are simply going to purchase 'designer' clothes from other brands and resell them, my advice would be to look for very small niche brands (some very small ones, and I mean very small, off of google searches and maybe some youtubers, instagrammers etc...). How much this would cost, would depend on how much inventory / stock you are planning to hold. Ideally, you would want to minimise this as much as you could, or only ensure that you actually order stock (from the small designer) once you have gotten and order from a customer (this way it reduces the financial risk potentially).

In this day and age, to would be ideal to start the business as a website, of course, as that will massively cut down costs, and reduce the risk massively.

If you have any more questions, I will try to answer them to the best of my ability (I am still new to exploring business related stuff myself haha). It's very nice to see someone else who is considering going down the route of business, as I feel there isn't many of us lol. Hope that helps anyway.

Thanks Kevin Longe! This information Is So Useful! I Understand everything you said and its cool your going down the same road!
Just wondering... Do have an estimate of how much it would cost to set up an Online Buisiness? I feel in this day and age shopping is all moving to the Online Industry.
Thanks

Setting up a nice website (with shopping abilities) would probably cost between £100 - £200 for a whole year (it would be x amount monthly, technically speaking, but you get my point). The rest will really depend on how you decide to actually go about doing the business / what's your unique selling point (USP). Would it be that you are really good at finding small designers who are making great looking clothes, thus attracting people to your website as you are essentially making it easier for them to find these people, or would it be something else?

I would mentally try and get the business model down first (i.e. how you are actually going to go about making money realistically, without being in direct competition with all of the bigger companies), and so once you have one that you genuinely and practically feel can actually work, then maybe you could start looking at the costs. Ideally, you want to transfer most of the financial cost (at this stage) in the person cost in terms of time and effort. This way, you give yourself the freedom to fail without anything disastrous happening (e.g. maybe you would just be a few £100s poorer or something, rather than being completely devastated by it). For this reason, it would also be ideal to try and think of a business model that completely reduces the inventory costs. For example, for me I am doing books, but I am using print on demand (POD) which means that a book is only printed when someone orders it, which effectively means I have 0 inventory costs. If you can try to get a model close to that, it will be much less risky, and allow you to move on in the event that things don't turn out as planned. Hope that helps (once again, feel free to ask more questions).