STITCHES FASHION PROGRAM
Discover the CEC's Stitches Fashion Program
The Chicagoland Entrepreneurial Center (CEC) understands the unique situation that fashion entrepreneurs face in business. Because of this, the CEC provides individualized assistance to fashion entrepreneurs in the Chicagoland region with the Stitches Fashion Program. Through advisory services, such as raising capital and business plan counseling, the CEC helps emerging fashion professionals make the right early-business decisions and growth preparations. The CEC provides a crucial component for fashion entrepreneurs to attain industry success and prepare for future development.
Fashion entrepreneurs challenges
Fashion entrepreneurs face unusual difficulties, including:
- The entrepreneurs themselves – Many are first-time entrepreneurs that have the design skills but not the basic business skills necessary to succeed.
- Seasonality – Fashion cycles and seasonality create immense cash gaps that aren’t attractive to investors. There is high perception of risk.
- Barriers to entering the industry - There are essentially no barriers to entering the industry, making it hard to distinguish one business from another.
- Investors/ lenders are skeptical of any industry that fluctuates based off trends and taste.
The CEC works with designers and boutiques that specialize in apparel, accessories and jewelry to overcome these obstacles. Past clients have gained substantial retail and market success.
Services for fashion entrepreneurs
The CEC provides services tailored to entrepreneurs:
- Preparing for and raising capital
- Counsel and review of financial statements
- Financial modeling
- Assistance in identifying appropriate outside resources
- Loan packaging and syndication
- Company position and messaging
- Channel and market analysis
- Marketing and PR assistance
- Retail and wholesale strategies
Program Structure
There are four main components of the Stitches Fashion Program. They are mentoring, the Fashion First Steps packet, educational seminars, and consumer outreach.
1. Mentoring
For high-growth entrepreneurs, we focus on mentoring, including one-on-one consulting, impactful mentoring workshops, and special interest groups.
One-on-One Consulting: The CEC meets one-on-one with emerging fashion designers and boutique owners to assist them in areas such as financing/raising capital, business strategies, and PR/marketing. Over the past few years, the CEC has provided counsel to over 150 fashion entrepreneurs.
Mentoring Workshops: The CEC hosts issue-oriented sessions for our clients who face particular issues. For these invitation-only sessions, we pick clients whom we think would benefit from a one-time, face-to-face, mentoring session. We match them up with experts based on a particular need. An example is our designer-buyer match up session. Here, emerging designers are paired with local retailers to offer general business guidance. The designers can also practice and develop a solid sales pitch to the buyers.
Special Interest Groups: The CEC hosts special interest groups (SIGs) to provide some of our top clients year-long professional development and peer-to-peer mentoring. Each SIG is a series of four sessions, with each session focusing on a specific business issue. The SIG group consists of three entrepreneurs facing similar issues (such as stage of business, type of business, etc). In each session these entrepreneurs are matched with two to three experts (chosen based on the topic of that particular session). The SIGs are invitation-only. The participating entrepreneurs are chosen by CEC employees.
2. Fashion First Steps Packet
The CEC benchmarked itself off of fashion programs in other cities, such as Toronto, Los Angeles, and Dallas, finding that a valuable resource for early-stage entrepreneurs was a "Starting a Fashion Business" guide. Therefore, the Stitches Fashion Program created its own guide and put it online free of charge. The Fashion First Steps packet is housed on our program's website www.stitchesfashionprogram.com. It covers a variety of topics including financing, sales, branding, and online development.
The Fashion First Steps packet is a great way to be introduced to not only our program, but to the fashion industry in general. Visit www.stitchesfashionprogram.com and click on "Sign Up For the Fashion First Steps Packet" to access this information.
3. Educational Seminars
For start-up entrepreneurs, the Stitches Fashion Program hosts educational seminars throughout the year. These and the Fashion First Steps packet are the main services we provide to entrepreneurs who are just beginning their businesses. For these seminars we bring in experts (typically three per seminar) to speak on a variety of subjects including legal advice for fashion entrepreneurs, sales representatives and showrooms, financing a fashion business and more.
4. Consumer Outreach
Another component of the Stitches Fashion Program is consumer outreach. We frequently bring together consumers interested in fashion with our clients and other industry professionals.
One way we do this is through the Stitches Fashion Program's Chicago fashion blog, www.styleexpose.com. The blog offers consumers and industry professionals a daily dose of what's going on in the industry, with a focus on Chicagoland.
Another half-consumer, half-industry component of the program is our runway shows and fashion events which we host and co-host throughout the year. Check the news section of www.stitchesfashionprogram.com and archived posts on www.styleexpose.com to see photos and read stories about our past events.
Resources
Our Websites
Other Fashion Business Assistance Programs
Contact Information:
Elise Moran
Program Coordinator
(312) 494-6772
elise@chicagolandec.org
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