How To Launch A Clothing Brand In 2026 With Zero Inventory — Paul Yu | How To Build A Clothing Brand Without Minimum Order Quantity, Why MOQs Kill Brands, How To Source Without Risk, Why Niche Selection Matters, Why Starting Small Wins (#456)

In this episode, we explore how to launch a fashion brand without the risk of buying huge amounts of inventory upfront.

Paul Yu, Founder and CEO of eProlo, explains how modern supply chains allow sellers to start small and test products before committing to large orders. 

He shares how his platform helps over 1.6 million sellers use custom branding and automated shipping to grow their businesses. Paul also discusses why focusing on a tiny niche is the best way for new brands to survive and scale in today’s market.

Topics discussed in this episode:  

• How Minimum Order Quantity (MOQ) kill new fashion brands.
• Why buying inventory upfront is risky.
• How eProlo automates global fulfillment. 
• What custom branding adds to packaging. 
• Why a small niche ensures better focus. 
• How to transition from zero to millions. 
• What role automated shop syncing plays. 
• Why stable suppliers reduce business risk. 
  
  

Links & Resources 

Website: https://eprolo.com/
Shopify App Store: https://apps.shopify.com/eprolo
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/eprolo/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Eprolo/

Get access to more free resources by visiting the show notes at https://tinyurl.com/3yanmjsf

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Transcript

00:00:00 Speaker 1: MOQ'S was founders to gamble before they have proof. Cash gets locked in, inventory trends move on, boxes sit unsold, and a lot of strong closing ideas never make it to launch. But that old model has changed. Hello and welcome to another episode of the E-commerce Coffee Break podcast. Today we're talking about one of the quiet killers of fashion brands minimum order quantities, also known as MOQ'S MOQ'S force founders to gamble before they have proof. Cash gets locked into inventory, inventory trends move on, boxes sit unsold, and a lot of strong closing ideas never make it to launch. But that old model has changed. New tools and new supply models now let founders sell clothing without betting upfront and without waiting months to get started. To break this down, I'm joined by Paul Lu, founder and CEO of EPROLO Paul launched April in twenty fifteen with a simple mission to make e-commerce accessible to everyone. Since then, the platform has helped more than one point six million sellers launch and scale their businesses with flexible sourcing, fulfillment and branding tools. So let's dive in. Paul, welcome to the show.

00:01:06 Speaker 2: Hi. Hi. Thanks, Claus. Thanks for having me here.

00:01:09 Speaker 1: Paul. Why do minimum order quantity stop most clothing brands before they start?

00:01:13 Speaker 2: Actually, you know, when people want to, like, start to sell fashion online, they have to find the product first of all. And, you know, in the old ways, people always have to buy inventory upfront before you start selling, right? But dropshipping, you know, you know AliExpress, right? That's what what everything begins. And people can, you know, use the dropshipping model to import product from AliExpress. And you know, because AliExpress is kind of like a B2C website. It's for retail. So there's no Moq for everyone. Yeah. So I think basically at the beginning people are using AliExpress a lot to, to start it like fashion dropshipping business.

00:01:57 Speaker 1: That makes sense. Now, what usually goes wrong when founders just guess the demand and order too much stock? What's the risk there?

00:02:04 Speaker 2: Actually, we have a merchant who are also facing the same issue, like the inventory issues. It's a set from Italia, Italy. They also have shops in Italy. And also they have like online like shops. Before Covid they mostly focused on like, you know, local selling like the shops, the business which they you have to buy a lot of inventory upfront from China. Yeah. And you know, shipped to Italy and so that they can put on the shop for sale and you know, and actually they don't sell quite a lot online because, you know, they're still doing it the old way. But, you know, after Covid, you know, it's quite a huge impact for the traditional business, which, you know, they cost a huge cash flow issues for their business. And they, you know, they come to us, they find us and talk to us and no No. What's going on there? And we provide a like a, let's say, a solution for them. Like, maybe you can try to figure it out, you know, not to buy inventory upfront to test something online. And it works out. And so they can use our service to, um, to test product first because the old way is you have, you know, maybe the designer thinks they do some analyzing anyway and they think this product is going to sell. So they buy inventory upfront, but it's not, you know, working well every time. So there's always that inventory for the old traditional business and also for some brand owners, like a few years ago, many brand owners on Shopify, they would like to fulfill the orders by themselves. So they buy in bulk, like from, let's say from China, so they can fulfill the orders from like locally, let's say in the US. And, you know, not every product is like your planning. You think it is going to sell well? It's not going to happen. Yeah. So this is the case for, um, you know, the old way, the traditional business, like, no matter what, like you're selling on the shops or online shops, it's always you will have inventory issues.

00:04:10 Speaker 1: Now makes perfect sense. And I think a lot of merchants and a lot of our listeners are in the apparel and fashion industry, as I know, had the sort of bad experience that they sold stock and then it didn't sell. And then they have to sell it under price just to clear their inventory. Now, you mentioned there's a better way. And with Epro, you came up with an idea, um, to optimize this. Talk me through the different steps to work with Epro and how it looks for a merchant.

00:04:36 Speaker 3: Okay, cool.

00:04:37 Speaker 2: I think we start this, like, branding program like five years ago because there are so many sellers, they are placing their orders like they're buying from AliExpress. That's the dropshipping. And you know, there are so many shops on AliExpress, so many random brands and all the fashion sellers have their own brand. And you know when they place an order on AliExpress, well, the AliExpress seller will ship their orders to the customers. But the bad thing is the clothes the item is sold on like some random logos, not the one with the sellers. Right? So you know many ladies they would like to buy like a few items, let's say maybe one to three. And when they receive the parcel, they order from the like, let's say the website. It comes with many different logos and many different parcels. It looks all so different and which like the consumer will curious about like, wow, I'm buying from you only. But I receive like, you know, three different parcels from different places and with different logos. What's going on. Right. So that's the key problem. Like what they are all facing. They have to because AliExpress has no Moq. Right. but for fashion sellers, they need a lot of new items to, you know, to keep following the trends. They need to keep uploading new items. But when it comes with the problem is the customers is not happy. I'm buying from you. Let's say your brand is ABC, but when I receive the items it's not come with the logo like ABC, right? That's the main issue. So people will say, oh, this is probably like dropshipping or probably like some scam or something, right. So that's the problem. So what we're doing is, you know, we have like a huge supply chain, like a lot of suppliers behind us. We take care of the sourcing and we find the product. It will be shipped to our warehouse first. And your brand, your logo, all the material is customized, made in our warehouse. So we receive, let's say receive the jazz. We will remove the original tags of the jazz like with some other random logos. First of all, we remove the original tag and we see you on your brand, the tech with your brand. And also we have like some custom bags, you know, boxes all printed with their logos. And we repack it and then we ship it out. So when a customer received the parcels from you, let's say of everything is like matched. You know, I buy from ABC brand and will receive item with the ABC brand tag. But you know that's like a we take care of like the, you know, the chain let's say the name changing job in our warehouse. So that's, you know, the solution. What we've been providing for the fashion sellers. Like actually this is a fantastic everyone loves it.

00:07:27 Speaker 1: I think it's a it's a very smart solution to a problem, as you said, that many buyers had in the problem. And you as a merchant, as an online seller, can finally build up a brand because everything is labeled with your brand name, everything is packed with your brand name and so on and so forth. And with that, obviously people will recognize you that it is coming from you and probably will buy more from you. When we're talking about apparel and fashion, there is a lot of seasons involved there. So and a lot of planning for the next season. I want to talk a little bit about the timelines that are involved when ordering from Ipro to make sure that you get the right products ready for the right season. How does that work?

00:08:08 Speaker 2: You know, that's actually we are not like quite involved of the like the final training product for our customers. Like let's say the sellers mostly they find the item like the training item themselves and we take care of the sourcing. Right. That's that's mainly how it works. So actually also we have a sourcing team like we will like look let's say let's go to Amazon. Let's go to Shopify. She was you know the best seller is was the style. Right now we will also pick some, uh, new items from our supplier and list it on our website for our clients to choose from.

00:08:44 Speaker 1: Okay, no, that makes perfect sense now. When I was closing, you said it gets shipped out from your address and then directly to customer. Or does it go first to the online seller and then to the customer?

00:08:57 Speaker 2: The parcel is shipped from our warehouse like we have several warehouses in China. Because China is big, we have to make sure the shipping is efficient, right? Because, you know, if let's say the supply chain is from the north or the or the goods will go to the nearest warehouse. So that's why we have several warehouses in China. Also, we have warehouses, let's say in the US, Europe, to make sure, like, you know, we can ship it as fast as possible. So yeah, but in general, the the product is shipped from our warehouse directly from our warehouse to the consumer.

00:09:30 Speaker 1: Perfect. Now, when it comes to different platforms and you mentioned Shopify, you mentioned Amazon. How does the ordering process work?

00:09:37 Speaker 2: Um, it's pretty simple though. So our platform is um, integrated with, let's say, Shopify, eBay, Amazon, WooCommerce, many other like, uh, platforms. So if you have installed our app, let's say, and you can integrate our platform to your shops, there's any like Amazon, eBay. Once it's integrated, you know, everything is automatic. Like product orders, they're automatically sync to like between the shop and our platform. You just need to log in and you know, if you have an order, you pay for it and it's on process. We'll ship it out like as ASAP okay okay.

00:10:14 Speaker 1: That's that's very good. Now what's the first step that immersion needs to do when they look into branding and they want to work with you. What's the onboarding process. What steps are involved. How long does it take.

00:10:24 Speaker 2: Actually you just need to provide the logo right of your brand. Yeah. Once it's confirmed, you start like the production. Like we have machines in our warehouse. We can customize it. Your logo tag, hand tag, the bags, everything and it's pretty cheap. You pay like nineteen point nine, let's say twenty dollars. And we custom made all the things for you. And really, they're in our warehouse. And once you have an order, we will show the brand tag on the items before it can be shipped out.

00:10:55 Speaker 1: Okay. Let's talk a little bit about the products itself. What kind of products do you work with? What kind of verticals or niches?

00:11:02 Speaker 2: Um, at your at the beginning, um, we basically like no limit once it's made in China and the merchants want it, we want us to source. We'll do the sourcing if it's made in China and we're able to locate it. Right. Like from twenty fifteen, I say, to twenty twenty, we basically like everything. But, you know, after that we realized, you know, um, you can't like, want everything, right? Yeah. We must have something like you are mainly focused on and you are kind of like the pro in this let's say area or industry. So we, we, we chose the most difficult one faction because they are so many like let's say SKUs, sizes, colors, suppliers. And it changes all the time because, you know, different seasons, different styles, different trends. So that's quite like, you know, the most difficult part you have to deal with. Yeah. So now we still like, you know, do the third thing if the merchants want. But we mainly focus on faction because we I think if you want to focus on let's pick the hard part, not the easy part. Otherwise you know anyone can do it.

00:12:16 Speaker 1: No, that's very true. And again, fashion and apparel is probably the biggest industry out there when it comes to online commerce. Now, you have worked in the last couple of years with many, many different brands. Can you give some examples or case studies of brands you have worked with? And you don't need to name the brand and show what kind of results they had.

00:12:33 Speaker 2: I think it's better to share a story like about a merchants from zero like let's say and to now they do multi-million per year. But this is something like a beginner who started like dropshipping until successfully business. So, um, there's a team like from New York, right. And they, they chose fashion and they want to start dropshipping because it's kind of like you don't have to invest too much money at the beginning. And the key for everyone I think have to do first is to do the homework of like, what kind of product you really, really want to focus on. And let's say fashion is a big category. There's like for men, for ladies, for kids, you know, for many, many others. But you know, you can't run them all. You need to find a really, really small niche because you are a beginner and you don't have that much funds to invest, and you know, you don't have that much chance to make a mistake, maybe probably like one or two times. Your business will be done. So you have to do like, let's say we do the Google analyze it using the tools to see what's the chance and better not the big category. Let's say say you are doing like socks, right? But there's many type of socks. And the story is they don't pick like general socks for everyone. They pick the socks for like the ladies who love yoga. Yeah. And so they find this small niche and focus on, on this small niche. So this is pretty good. Why? Because you are really easy to find your audience. And even though those audience are small. So but you have a bigger chance to like let's say to run a business running. So at the beginning they chose like let's say the socks for yoga and yeah, after like let's say I think after two months they having like ten to twenty orders. Right. So they actually do quite a good job. I don't want to mention the number, because I don't want the beginners to like to think this is really easy, because they do have a talent team. And do they did something like not everyone can do right? But the key is you don't. You don't. You want everything? You need to find something small to focus on at the beginning? Actually, when they like doing a great job on the socks business, actually, you know their audience, they are all ladies, right? And they have like a pretty, like, targeted audience. And they, they want to expand. And how? Because this audience, they are like like sports, like yoga and go to the gym, you know, these are like young and, you know, so you have to find a another product like also it's small and fit those audience. That's the next step. And what they do is they do the yoga shoots. And yeah, because you already have those followers on Instagram. You have like already have those customers there. You have the emails list. You have their contact. You just let them know we have a new launch brand like only focus on yoga shoots. It's much more easier because you already have some customer like your brand because they are happy about the product. Yeah, that's that's the step two how to expand. And I have to say right now they have four brands and they're all four ladies. Yeah. But they go through it step by step with like a pretty small niche. Yeah. Because I do believe that if you are a newbie, you are a beginner to doing e-commerce. It's really, really important to find a really, really small niche to practice, right? To make small mistakes like running ads, like designing your shops, finding the supplier, a lot of things you have to learn and get your experience right. You can't like, think I want to go like a million within a year. Now that's is not going to happen. So it's better to do it slow and small, because nowadays it's e-commerce. And unlike let's say, you know, I was doing e-commerce like back into twenty ten, fifteen years ago, I was selling on AliExpress on eBay. It was pretty easy because there's not that much competition, but now it's fifteen years later. People know about e-commerce. So yeah, it's not easy like that before. So yeah, it's pretty important you have to start small and focus on small things that, you know, those big competitors, they don't even want it. So you got a chance to survive and you don't feel that, you know, difficult to start everything. Yeah.

00:17:09 Speaker 1: I like the story that you shared, Paul, because it makes absolutely sense. And a lot of listeners probably have been in this situation or when they're starting now will be in this situation. There's a lot of learning involved. And when you start with a very small niche, as you mentioned, it's so much easier to get into it and don't try to be everything to everyone. That probably is a recipe for failure. So I read a good example there. Now obviously April helps with that and you get to the start very, very quickly. Who's your perfect customer?

00:17:40 Speaker 2: You know, actually this is one of the reasons we launched this like branding program because what we've seen like in, in like from twenty fifteen until now, what we are seeing, who is the biggest clients we have and who is the survivor like from the beginning until now, what we're seeing is the brand owners who focus on a small niche at the beginning, right? And trying to build a brand and a brand is not just a logo or it's some letters, right? It's about the product, the service, everything. A lot of things around it. So they build quite a high standard of everything. Like they want the best quality of their product. They want the best like shipping speed for the clients. They want the best of the service for them. So, um, actually they have all this high standard, which is all like, I believe this is what the consumer likes, right? I don't like it. I can return it. I receive a different product. I can like I can get a refund, I can get a new one. You know, I feel safe to buy from you. And I'm happy about, you know, the product I receive from you. So I'm happy about the money I spent. So maybe I'll keep buying. So they keep like doing this from like the beginning until now. I believe this is our favorite, uh, um, clients. Because, you know, we choose to focus on fashion because we don't have the ability to manage all the supply chain in China because it's a huge one. Right? And for our warehouse management, you can't have everything, right? So your team has to separate into different small teams to manage each part. That's that's not going to happen. Right. Because we have to focus. So that's much more easier for us to manage the supply chain, because we only have to deal with the fraction suppliers. We keep learning and we keep finding good suppliers. You know, we have the foundation. Yeah. And you know we have have experienced team you know only dealing with let's say faction. So basically we don't have that much product have to deal with. And it's stable because you know if you're a brand owner you are selling let's say Jess's you want change to like selling some clothes for men or for kids maybe. Basically we'll focus on Lady Part for several years. So our supply chain is stable. We don't have to deal with new suppliers. Right. Because there's a risk there because you don't know the supplier. It's always the first time to deal with them. You have no idea what they are. And it's risky to to do so. But if you only focus on and with and work with those stable brand because they quite, you know, making the customer happy, which I, I believe they are building a like let's say a long lasting business, which is benefit to both because you only focus on this category and we have only have to focus on one category. It's quite simple. And, you know, we can put in our main energy into this area. And so and now what I'm seeing is you know who is always there placing orders, generating sales. Ah this brand owners. That's why we, you know, launched this like branding program. We try to help Dropshippers and help them to understand you can't do dropshipping like let's say twenty fifteen or seventeen. Yeah, it's it's pretty popular and you can easily make money out of it. But now it's a different day. So we have to, you know, have that perspective of what e-commerce is going to be in the future or what it is right now. Yeah. Now we luckily we have more than two thousand. Two thousand seven hundred brand owners with us because this number like five years ago is just a few. But now with the branding program, we have more than nearly three thousand. I think next year will reach three thousand, which is perfect because I believe this is fantastic because we don't have to deal with a lot of things. One thing to do is fashion. Yeah, we only have to deal with the fashion suppliers in China. Everything is about fashion. So our team is happy because we do the thing we at least say. We can't say the thing we like. I think it's the thing we were good at, right? We feel confident when we like providing the service.

00:22:07 Speaker 3: You.

00:22:07 Speaker 1: Use one of my favorite words in business and that is focus. Focus on the things that you're good in and focus on people to work with that are good in the specific field that you're not good in, and working with someone like April, who is a specialist with a focus on fashion. That's a good start to build a brand. Now, obviously you want to make money as well. How is your pricing structure working?

00:22:28 Speaker 2: Actually, the app is free to use, right? It's completely free. There's no upfront cost, and you only have to pay when you have an order to fulfill, right? You just need to pay for the orders and the shipping and that's it. So there's no any other cost. You just feel free to find new product here. Upload product to your shops, you know? Yeah, it's just free. You only have to pay when you have an order.

00:22:52 Speaker 1: Well, that's a no brainer. Obviously, that makes it very easy to start a business and to grow a business.