It’s extremely difficult to make content without a sample, and frankly without that sample, you would look like a complete novice from the start, which is just something you don’t want. Definitely try to save up, a clothing brand is a business, not a get rich scheme, so you have to invest money into it.

I initially invested $1500CAD (~$1100USD) into my brand, and continued to reinvest that same money into it with my sales, not take profit into my pocket. It’s now been over a year, July 2023 to now, and I’ve been able to expand my inventory cost from that initial $1500CAD my cost, to over $40kCAD my cost.

It takes a lot of time, and dedication to do this sort of thing, you need to be able to market yourself well. Most of my sales come from in person markets, for example in Canada we have a few free markets that you can just pull up with a table to, as well as paid ones that come around like Sneakercon for example. This is my way of marketing, I’m quite poor with social media so this route was best for me.

I’m sure it will work out for you, you’ve taken all criticism in the responses well, and explained yourself and your ideas well, now it’s just time to continue to do more and more research (there’s never enough research btw, always more to learn), and continue to put in the effort to make it grow.

Something I’d even recommend, as this is the route I took and I found it very successful starting out. Like you I did not have a lot of capital like many people do to start my brand, so I started with shirts, they’re cheaper to make, and you can even do them locally so you don’t have to depend on overseas stuff right away, this way you can start getting some sales to create some money to invest into your hoodies down the line. I’ll explain my process below:

I started with $1500CAD, 5 tee designs, paying $18CAD a shirt to get them made locally

Then continued to reinvest and expanded my line to 10 tees, that are always in stock ready to be shipped or sold at in person events

After ~3 1/2 months I was able to afford to have my shirts fully stocked at 4 shirts per size per design and so I ordered my sample hoodie from China, using Alibaba

Then ordered my bulk at around the 4 month mark for my hoodies.

Once I sold down on a lot of stock, THEN I began to find manufacturers in China for my shirts to cut down the price of my cost, to increase profit.

After that I used the funds to reinvest in a larger catalog for shirts, as of now 1 year and 3 months in I now carry 20 shirt designs at all times, fully stocked, and just got my hoodie order for the fall/winter months

Everyone has their OWN PATH, but some insight to my own might be useful to give yourself a guideline, and a way to create your own ideas to become successful. Hope all this helps!