How to Start a School Supplies Brand

If you’re on TikTok, you’ve been seeing a ton of back-to-school posts. School supplies spending will hit $37 BILLION this year! Get in on the ground floor and start a school supplies brand of your own.

Pro tip:

• Mechanical pencils cost .30 & sell for $3+
• Quality notebooks & planners cost $1.50 & sell for $10+

How to start a school supplies brand of your own

That $37 billion I mentioned? The brands that sell these products are nameless. Most parents and buyers don’t care who they buy it from. That’s a huge opportunity. This years’ school season might be close, but the opportunity is there to build a brand parents care about.

I love niches like this!

• It costs hundreds or low thousands to launch
• There are few, if any, established brands
• You can compete on price with global supply chains

If these are just faceless transactions, it’s easy to convince someone to root for you.

Here’s the five-step playbook you need:

Step 1: Find your angle

These ideas will help you start a school supplies brand:

• Nostalgia: The 90s are back, use those visual themes
• Mission driven: Make sustainable products or give back to educators
• Niche down to local: Make products appealing to local residents
• Go hyper-visual: Make products that look great on social

Step 2: Find a factory

Use Alibaba, and search for vendors with:

• Fast response time
• High on-time delivery
• Hundreds of thousands in transactions
• An inspection from Alibaba

That’s going to ensure you have someone legit.

Step 3: Find your inspiration

Here’s some factory ideas with pricing and quantity breakdowns.

Vendor: Dongguan Hongjin Printing Factory

• 300 piece minimum order quantity (MOQ)
• notebooks from $.82-2.00 with different finishes on the front
• choose from PU leather, stamped felt, etc.

Dongguan Hongjin Printing Factory also makes sticker books, drawing and activity books, etc.:

• all printable with exact custom designs
• starting at 1000 pieces
• priced at $1.80

This is an amazing opportunity to lean into visual themes or showcase your own art!

Want to go really ‘out there’ for social media?

Vendor: Xiamen Hailun Trading Co

• transparent binders
• 5000 unit MOQ
• covers really pop
• priced around $2

Vendor: Ningbo Langterm Import And Export Co

Very nice mechanical pencils:

• 3000 unit MOQ
• only available in .30
• great for packs with unique packaging
• blister packs!

This factory is also a direct source for all mass-produced pencils, protractors, scissors, and hardware supplies.

Vendor: Shanghai Joan Industrial

• complete art kits
• from sub $10
• unique color varieties that you can combine with tutorials, etc.

Big opportunity here, even outside of school.

Step 4: Customize your product

The easiest way to do this is to pick something similar you like, and sketch or painstakingly describe how to make it your own. Some quick ideas:

• Unique color schemes (think matte pastels, marbling)
• Unique materials (consider flourescent, imprinted leather, suede)

To get started on content, get a sample of your product sent to you via air from their initial production and use this to make content on your own page or a test page. Start cutting many different video styles. Search “back to school” and emulate the formats of successful vids.

It’s going to take 6-8 weeks for your products to come. In that time, make 3-4 videos a day on your test account just to find what works. Check out quality products on @thingtesting and get ideas form their social.

Too much product for your house? You need a 3PL (third party logistics) or FC (fulfillment center). Here’s my comprehensive list:

Best 3rd Party Logistics for CPG Businesses

To kick off your store, I’d use @Shopify and keep it simple. One page website, lots of the same video content you will make for TikTok, lots of reviews.

• Start really posting content organically
• Run your first ad tests
• Pick 50 influencers to DM for free product

If you want to dive deeper on specifics, here’s a few recommended follows:

@LaurenLabeled for TikTok content strategy

@flips4miles  to learn to sell on Amazon

@kobegatsby for building ecom

@jamesoncamp for buying or building a niche website

Step 5: Find a collaborator

• with an artist for gorgeous sticker sets or cover art
• with a “mommy blogger” or parenting site to help them monetize
• with a local business to offer products in-store

I love this niche because you can start small in terms of cost, their consume-able items that parents always need more of, and there’s tons of room for collaboration.

Remember, you don’t have to go it alone! Working together with others online is a superpower.

The next 18 months are a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to build a brand on a new social network. Utilize the global economy through Alibaba to get enough margin to really give it a shot. Don’t sleep on it.