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Written by : Sebrina Gillin |
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what's up bud it's Rob this is apparel success and what we're gonna talk about right now is trademarking your clothing brand if you're just getting started should you invest the money in trade marking your brand to protect it or should you wait a bit save that money and invest it in other things that will help fuel your clothing brand that's what we're gonna talk about in this video let's get into it this video here is sponsored by my buds over at design crowd and if you need designs made for your clothing brand I highly recommend you check out design crowd design crowds a website that helps entrepreneurs crowdsource amazing designs from designers all around the world for a special $100 VIP offer for apparel success peers only head over to www.onproperty.com.au/plus is that you do not start out by getting your clothing brand trademarked okay the reason for this is because when you're just starting out your clothing brand you probably only have a thousand or two thousand dollars to invest into your clothing brand to start and that's pretty much how much it costs to trademark your clothing brand okay so when you're just starting out it's just so unnecessary to get your clothing brand trademarked if you're not making any sales if you're not getting any orders nobody's gonna want to copy you anyways if you're not getting any orders and it's just not really important okay once you move up and you start getting 50 to 100 orders a month coming in on your website and you're selling that much you know every single month then you might think about actually taking some of them you're making some of the profits that you're making and investing it into a trademark so what I want to say here is that although I'm suggesting not getting a trademark from the very beginning when you're just starting up to save money so that you can actually invest into other things I do think that at a minimum you should at least be researching and checking out to see if other brands have already been created that have a similar idea to yours or using similar words to yours okay because you definitely don't want to invest all your time and invest all your money building a brand if there's already a brand out there who's trademarked already okay so I think what's most important off the bat is to actually do your research and see what else is out there in terms of what's already been trademarked with what are other people already doing so I said that at an absolute minimum if you have an idea for a clothing brand you have to be doing research first to make sure that no other clothing brands have done this idea before okay and have already taken your idea that's an absolute minimum is researching online and researching other clothing brands to see if your ideas already been taken if you want to take this to a whole other level without actually having to spend the money invest it into a full-blown trademark for your clothing brand you can do a trademark search okay you can either get a lawyer to do this or you can do it online and it's way less expensive than actually going forward with full-blown trademarking your clothing brand and this will just ease your mind and allow you to know that you know nobody else out there has already trademarked the name of your clothing brand in your region and you're good to actually invest the time and energy into your clothing brand now if your clothing brand is at the point where you're making say 50 to 100 sales a month whether it's in person or online and you do want to trademark because you feel like you're actually getting that momentum and you're like okay now I definitely want to protect this the beauty of it is if you do decide to trademark you usually don't have to pay it all upfront okay so most most law firms that you end up working with won't charge you all upfront for the trademark they'll usually charge you half up front half at the end and that's what we did I think it was like six or seven hundred dollars when we started and then now that her trademark just went through we owe another you know a thousand dollars or whatever it is at the tail end of it okay but that's just my really simple advice on trade marketing I think that if you're just starting up you're just getting started the idea to trademark from the very beginning is almost just as much of a mistake as investing in a crazy amount of inventory when you just don't even know how the markets going to respond to your clothing brand yet okay and that is a mistake that we made not with the trademark but with the inventory we were just way too excited we had you know we were just way too fired up about our clothing brand and we invested way too much money in the inventory and it's like even if we'd sold through all of our inventory you know we could have just reinvested in more then and gotten it it's just way too much risk that's unnecessary okay so if you're just starting up don't freak out and think that you need to trademark and do all this stuff just keep growing your brand and then when it gets to the point where you know you should trademark and you're gaining some momentum then and then you'll usually have the money and that's when you go through with it okay I hope you like this video let me know what you think in the comments below and if you haven't already check out my free clothing brand marketing masterclass video so 100 percent free to watch all you have to do to get access is go to WWL success.com slash masterclass can watch the whole thing for free and if you're a clothing brand that's currently struggling right now you want me to go over everything give you my feedback and suggestions for how you can bring your clothing brand to the next level you can sign up for a clothing brand review at wwl success com otherwise if you've made it to this point the video I want to tell you about the closed Facebook group that we have going on for apparel success there's a link in the description below follow that link join us in the group or a bunch of clothing brand owners all in there to support each other and answer each other's questions thanks for watching this video see you in the next one peace
Thanks for your comment Misha Auyer, have a nice day.
- Sebrina Gillin, Staff Member
everybody trademark attorney Josh gurbin I'm here to talk about how you can register a trademark for your clothing brand so there are three major steps you have to complete to get a trademark registered for your clothing brand the first is you need to conduct a full and detailed clearance search on the trademark itself the second is you have to file a trademark application with the United States Patent and Trademark Office and the third is you have to provide proof that you're actually selling your clothing items across state lines so let's start with the first point which is that you need to conduct a very good trademark search this is a highly overlooked item by most folks that are trying to register a clothing brand because selling clothing is a relatively easy business to get into there are more trademark applications filed for clothing brands than just about any other type of product or service with the USPTO every year this means it's an incredibly crowded space and can be difficult to get a trademark approved because there's so many other trademarks already filed somebody may have something similar to you so it's very important to know that if you go online into a trademark search yourself you're probably only going to be looking for identical matches in the software it's available online if you hire an attorney to do the search they're going to be able to look for phonetically similar marks marks that have a similar meaning marks that are even just somewhat spelled a little differently there's a lot of software tools that attorneys have that are just not out there and available for public use so while it seems extremely self-serving for me as an attorney to stand up here and say you should hire an attorney for your trademark search you should really hire a trademark attorney to help you with your trademark search they're going to be able to do a lot more than you can do yourself and hopefully save you time and money by identifying problems before you ever file a trademark application now once your search is complete the second step is to file your trademark application with the United States Patent and Trademark Office when filing an application for a clothing brand we're typically looking at filing the application in two different classes of goods or services the first is class 25 class 25 is the category for clothing with the United States Patent and Trademark Office now very important to know here if you're drafting the application you can't just put in clothing or sports apparel you have to list the individual items that you intend to sell meaning shirts pants hats jackets that type of list the government will refuse your application initially and require further clarification if you just make a very broad claim so you have to put those individual items in there it's very important not to put too many individual items in there however because you have to prove that you're selling all of them before your trademark can actually register now the other class that many clothing brands will consider filing in is class 35 class 35 is for an online retail store that would sell clothing so if you have your XYZ brand of clothing and you're selling it from xyz.com and xyz.com is an online retail site you can also qualify protect for protection in this additional class so by filing your clothing brand application in both class 25 and class 35 you're getting about as broad of protection as you can from the United States Patent and Trademark Office now the final point here is that before your trademark registers you must have actual use in commerce of your trademark this typically means selling your clothing across state lines now sales to just your local community or local town are typically not enough because trademark rules require that you're doing business in more than one state to have a federal registration so very important that you're selling clothing in at least two different states and that your brand name or your trademark appears on the labeling or tagging for your clothing you cannot just put a trademark on the front of the shirt or the front of a hat and call that a trademark use the government will see that type of specimen when you have to submit it and tell you that's not a trademark use and you can't have your trademark they want to see it on a tag so think of a neck tag a hang tag even a label that are sticker that goes on the clothing itself something that's a branded use of your trademark to show folks that when they're buying your goods they're buying that particular brand of goods so if you have any questions on that requirement just go buy a Nike shirt off the rack Sports Authority you're gonna see all the Hang tags and labels that say Nike on it in addition to maybe Nike across the front but it's going to have Nike and all those branded locations as well so I hope you found this video helpful as a quick recap if you're trying to register a clothing brand there's three critical things you're gonna have to do one is a really good trademark search - you got to file a trademark application in class 25 with the USPTO and potentially class 35 as well if you have an online retail store and final you're gonna have to prove that you're selling goods across state lines using your trademark on tags or labels for your clothing I hope this video was helpful to you if you have any further questions and would like assistance with your trademark feel free to get in touch with us
Thanks Marianela your participation is very much appreciated
- Sebrina Gillin
About the author
I've studied chemical engineering at Trine University in Angola and I am an expert in economic anthropology. I usually feel nerdy. My previous job was set designer I held this position for 4 years, I love talking about stone skipping and shopping. Huge fan of Tyler Hoechlin I practice waterskiing and collect match-related items.
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