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sponsors
How do I go about getting a sponsor for fashion design? And could someone also name a few who would sponsor me?
Thanks!
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Maybe give some free advice about: Fashion and Styles?
There are basically three reasons for someone to sponsor a fashion designer, or really, any one creating an artistic product.
ONE. Sponsoring a charity is a tax deduction. So many people and organizations donate to charities they believe in to reduce the amount of tax they pay.
TWO. Sponsors give money to people or events that have an audience they want to talk too. Like a dog food company might sponsor a pet show, or even a charity ball for an animal rescue, because they want the people at the event to know about their dog food and think well of them.
THREE. They really, really love what you are doing and want to support what you are doing even though it doesn’t make them any money or earn them any good will.
Most sponsors are going to fall into ONE or TWO. When you are first starting out, it’s really only your family, and maybe some goverment programs to support young artists, who falls into number THREE. You probably aren’t a non-for-profit or charity, so you can’t go after people who want to sponsor for reason number ONE, and you don’t already have a captive audience that people want to access, so number TWO isn’t going to work well either.
Finding a big sponsor at this point in your career is not likely. Sponsorships aren’t just people who pay all your bills for you. Sponsors give you a set amount of money (rarely ALL the money you need, just a chunk of it) and in return they expect you promote their brand and let everyone know they supported you. Sponsors don’t like taking risks very much, they want people and organizations that have already proven they can access large numbers of people, they generally avoid artistic start-ups.
In order to be attractive to sponsors, you want to start building up your audience. That could be things like starting a webpage or a blog, or anything else online where you can get attention and followers. Once you have something like that, you could do something like, tell the store you buy most often from that if they give you 10% off all your purchases, you’ll put their logo on your site and let everyone know how great they are… That is a kind of sponsorship, or business relationship that you can start to build right away…. Maybe they even keep little cards with your website by their cash, or display some of your creations…
Those are the kinds of ways you can begin to build an audience and get support for other companies.
You can also go after other money… A good place to start is with the alternative fashion journals and magazines in your area. They often have contests or grants available for young designers… Basically enter every contest you can for design and construction. Also, look for organizations around you that are interested in helping young artists: Craft Councils are good; Maybe the One-of-a-Kind show in your area has a contest or a grant to help you get started.
You really have to invest in yourself big time before you are going to be able to entice other people to invest in you even a bit. So start to lay the ground work now of the sort of things that make you a successful business woman and brand. Those will be the things that make you successful right now in the short term, and attractive to a sponsor in the long term.
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