How Much Does It Cost to Start a Women’s Clothing Business

Product development costs: Designing one style runs 500–3,000 yuan — you get what you pay for. Product mockups cost 100–300 per style, and prototyping another 100–500. Don’t overlook these small expenses; they add up to thousands quickly.

Launching even a single style easily costs around 1,000 yuan. Do you really plan to sell just one style? Are you going to clear that volume in a year? Do the math — that’s your cost right there.

So buy someone else’s stuff wholesale instead? At 30–50 yuan per style, how many pieces are you stocking? How many styles? If you order small, am I even going to bother working with you as a tiny retailer? And if everyone’s selling the same inventory, where’s your margin?

Do you hire a model or do it yourself? Models run 200–5,000 yuan per hour — pricier than anything else. You’ll still need a venue, costing 200–2,000 yuan an hour.

Are you doing high-end travel editorial shoots for your branding? That’s thousands to over a hundred thousand per session — and how often do you actually produce one?

Do you edit the photos after shooting? Each retouch runs 15–100 yuan, and how many photos do you need done?

Once that’s all sorted, what about advertising? Without ads, who’s buying?

What happens when inventory doesn’t move? Is your warehouse paying you to sit empty?

Staff salaries and taxes — you can skip those?

Venue rent and utilities — do you pay nothing? Electricity and water alone start at 2,000 yuan a month.

Shipping costs 2–4 yuan per order.

Those are basically the main ones.

Exactly What It Costs to Run a Women’s Clothing E-commerce Business — From Personal Experience