FFI : Women Swimwear Business Plan

I created the fashion women swimwear business plan for my Future Fashion Innovators Module. Today I’m going to introduced about my project, how I come up with this project, and experiences I’ve had improve throughout creating this project. My business plan is the women fashion swimwear as purpose to hides body’s imperfection called “Wanderlush”. Wanderlush is target women 18-25 years old who are in middle to middle upper-class. They’re those who aware of Revealing, or has body concerns while wearing swimwear. They’re fashion conscious and shops online.

Based on the moodboard showcasing my brand’s aesthetic. Wanderlush can be describe as Wild, Magnificent, and Feminine. The products are mostly used earth tone and neutrals colours. My brand USP is its fabrics used that is practical for swimming (80% Polyester 20% Spandex in 300 gsm) and unique in design.

The swimwear pattern is quite cover-ups from top to bottom and it’s almost similar to rash guard swimwear type. I design into 8 different styles which each type has 2 different choice of colours. The reasons why I create swimwear business plan is because of my hobby is always swimming and I found problems that not only me who concerns about body when wearing swimsuit (belly, stretch mark on buttocks and more.). Based from research, many women in Thailand also appears to be concerns with body weight and shape. Many of them wear swimsuit as fashion garments instead for practical purposes. Thus, I came up with Wanderlush that helps to fixed those women’s problems.

Let’s get into the process behind creating this business plan. After all my first term of doing the secondary research for my Wanderlush business plan on PEST, Industry, and Consumer Ananlysis. I have chance to go back to Thailand on holidays for 2 weeks break in Bangkok. During holidays, I doing my primary research, which I visited the swimwear manufacturer and sales associate nearby my house.

First place I visited called Two-Sports, they’re swimwear manufacturer where they produce low-medium grade of swimwear. I visited them to ask how much do they cost produce swimwear, and where they get the fabric suppliers from. I’ve learnt so many things by just talking with the owners for half an hours. She said that the quality of swimsuits are mostly based on fabrics they divided into three grades which is A (best), B(medium), and C(low). Grade A or premium fabrics are mostly imported from Italy, Thailand, and Japan. While medium grade to low grade could be from Korea, Malaysia, and China. The cost for making swimwear would cost $8 per pieces for minimum order of 50 pcs for 2 designs in different colours. This is not included in fabrics costs but still considered in very cheap prices. The advantage of doing swimwear business in Thailand is that we have complete domestic supply chain from resources (fabrics specially yarn in Thailand) to manufactures. We don’t need to import anything from other countries, which is good thing for start ups in Thailand.

Moreover, I visited the Super Sports or the swimwear departments in the department store under “Central Group”. This is where I make a quick interview with sales associate and ask them a few questions on the swimwear key leaders in Thailand. Most of the answered said “Speedo & Roxy are the most sellable swimwear brand in Thailand” They’re competing each other in terms of sells. However, Speedo still ranked in No.1 for Swimwear in Thailand and has the highest market share.

After all for my research I found out that doing swimwear business in Thailand is not easy and might not get Return on in Investment as fast as doing apparel / accessories business. Due to high in production cost and swimwear is not considered as necessity things in everyday life. However, I believe that with good quality of product, make service as top-notch, and do a good marketing that target the right people would make this business become successful.