So back when I was in my sophomore year, I got this idea to start a small clothing brand. I was broke, drowning in assignments & honestly thought it’d be a fun way to make a little money in college

The idea was to do retro sports-wear, kinda like those 90s oversized tees with old school fonts and colors. I sketched out a few designs, made a logo on Canva (yeah I know, rookie move) & thought I was ready to build a brand overnight 😭

At first I tried finding local printers but everything was way too expensive. Minimum orders were like 50 shirts and I had no clue if anyone would even buy them. So I started small with print on demand just to test the waters. My friends ordered a few and wore them around campus which actually gave me some confidence

The hard part wasn’t design, it was figuring out how to get people to care. Marketing was way harder than I expected. I made an Insta page, got like 100 followers, then hit a wall. I didn’t have time to post daily or run ads, and I didn’t wanna beg friends to buy stuff

After a few months I basically ran out of steam. I sold maybe 20 shirts total. Nothing crazy but it was fun seeing something I made actually out there in the world

Looking back now, I realize I rushed into it without a real plan. I should’ve done more research on brand positioning and maybe tested more designs before launching

If any of you have done something similar, what would you have done differently? Like, if you were starting a clothing brand in college today, how would you go about it?