If you are considering crowdfunding to launch your fashion product, there are a number of legal issues that should be considered before trying to raise money through such a platform.

Tahir Basheer of Sheridans law firm shares his advice to keep you ahead of the game (note: most of the points are relevant to Equity Crowdfunding).

There are three main types of crowdfunding:

Debt Crowdfunding

Investors loan money directly to an individual and hopefully receive their money back with interest. Also called peer-to-peer (P2P) lending, it allows for the lending of money while bypassing traditional banks. Returns are financial, but investors also have the benefit of having contributed to the success of an idea they believe in. An example of a Debt Crowdfunding platform is the Lending Club.

Equity Crowdfunding

Investors buy shares in a company and become part owners. They make a return on their investment either by being paid a dividend or by selling their shares at a later date, when the ...

Your brand is the part of your business that communicates to the outside world who you are, the quality of your goods and services, and your company’s image. Therefore, it is an important and valuable asset. One way of protecting your brand is through registering it as a trademark.

The rise of brands converging across various industries has meant that trademark lawyers have to monitor changes in the law more than ever.

At Sheridans, our trademark specialists advise a number of individuals, brands and agencies in innovative projects across all leisure, media, and entertainment.

We provide a one-stop-shop from brand genesis through to brand development, exploitation and protection and provide cost-effective advice on trademarks, filing strategy and brand development.

Our clients receive relevant, focused advice for reaching their business goals.

In this article, we provide some “top tips” for the use of trademarks to protect your business.

1. Why register?

Trademarks are a valuabl...

Rarely does a new business start with enough money to last until a profit is turned. It might happen in the movies, but what happens in real life, more often than not, is that, very quickly, you start spending some or all of the capital you have raised. That, or you know from the outset that you don’t have enough to last until you make a profit because you have only raised a partial amount of capital.

Allocate your budget

Either way, you need to make a plan for how best to spend your money and make funds last as long as possible. It is often said in the fashion industry that it takes a minimum of three seasons before buyers start buying your collections. It’s also believed that it takes three years for a business to establish itself and perhaps start making money – not to be confused with making profit.

Read Equity vs Debt here

So, if you were to take these two scenarios as a benchmark, you are looking at a minimum of 18 months with no money of any real help, coming into your busin...

Pop-up shops are taking over the retail world but what exactly is a shop that pops up? Pop-up shops are temporary stores at a designated venue, the purpose of which is to attract the consumer with something exclusive and exciting. Layla Webster delves to find out more.

Pop-up shops are rapidly becoming the newest way to promote a new brand or to re-vamp one that is existing. The concept of 'Pop-up' shops or spaces is simple – they are temporary spaces that help promote or expose a brand, an artist or simply an idea. Such spaces are temporary – the idea involves a shop ‘popping’ up one day that could be gone tomorrow. These shops while they may be small and short-lived make a genuine difference. A pop-up is about creating exposure, maybe even a statement.

Pop-up shops have been around since the early 1990s. They first appeared in well-established cities around the globe - Tokyo, Paris, and New York were a few to catch on to this stimulating and unique trend. Although these Pop-ups app...

A fashion Lookbook is a catalogue of well-styled images that convey the essence of your brand through creative storytelling.

Creating your fashion Lookbook should be a natural occurrence for a creative. Wanting to tell your story and market your products to the public is all part of building your brand.

Brand building is all about weaving stories to engage your audience.

In the highly visual world of fashion, how you communicate your design ideas is extremely important.

Once you have perfected the design process, product development and sample making, your marketing should begin in earnest. There are many eye-catching ways to entice buyers, press and customers but the most effective is a Lookbook.

With this fashion catalogue of well-styled images, you will be in a better position to sell yourself in a professional manner. The lookbook conveys the essence of your brand through creative storytelling and works in a multi-functional way. It shows your products on models, in a stylised...

Kickstarter is the most popular choice of platform, and for good reason – it is simple, easy to use and can be very effective. There is somewhat of a formula for why some Kickstarter campaigns succeed and why some don’t, and here we’ve rounded up some of the top tips.

In recent years crowdfunding has become one of the key ways in which small businesses can raise essential funds to either start up or launch a new area of business or product. While in most cases you may not raise as much as money as you would by using an investor, crowdfunding means not parting with any equity

While for more developed business it might be a case of spending money to make money, from a Kickstarter campaign you can just as easily create a successful campaign with very little start-up cash – and this is what we’re focusing on here.

PLANNING AND PREPARATION IS KEY

You would be mistaken to think that the hard work starts when your campaign goes live. In fact, the opposite is true – the time leading up to ...

QUESTION:

I am most interested to know how to connect to brand buyers in boutiques and keep them interested in intro emails when pitching my products. I make and design handcrafted women's outerwear in the slow fashion sector.

Arianna, Paris

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Xm8r00ERx8&feature=youtu.be[/embed]

Hi Arianna,

The best way to connect with retail buyers and fashion boutique owners is to send them an initial intro email and introduce yourself and your brand. As buyers get so many of these daily (they can get up to 10 speculative pitches a week and sometimes more; via phone, email, and post and sometimes in person), it is important to keep in mind the following points:

• Give them a reason to want to read your email. Think about the subject line of your email and how it will be relevant to them, their speciality, interest...etc
• Keep the introduction letter or  Press Release brief - the maximum ideally is one page long. Break the text into relevant paragraphs to ma
...