Marketing Clothing Online

Q:I have designed a product to be sold to men/woman that is a very normal item of clothing but has a definitely unique feature. I would like to sell it over the net, at "parties", and possibly retail stores that would carry a line similar to Fredericks of Hollywood or Fantasy Fashions. While I have much sales and marketing expertise, I know nothing of retail pricing. Like, if it costs $20 to produce, what should it sell for? Is there an inexpensive way to get a credit card web service. I've been quoted $1500 for software and fees of about $50 a month. Is this high or low? Can a product be successfully sold over the web without credit card availability? Since I only have one item, are their existing companies where I could "partner?"

A:digressing from the subject, and getting somewhat off-topic for MBMM, sorry. I'm considering signing up for paypal (customer suggestion). So far I've only taken checks, money orders or cash, and I think it has lost me some business. What are people's experiences with paypal? (went to payplace and found it discontinued, but with some links to others, c2it (which told me to download a new browser for Mac or PC - I got a Sun in front of me), paypal, and ecount (which is debit only and not what I'm looking for) ) What I'm concerned about: - does it work? - is it secure, both for the customer, and for myself? (do I need to enable javascript? If so the service is out.) Info: so far my very small business has worked with only taking checks, etc. as mentioned above. I'd like to get into credit card acceptance of some sort because it makes the process faster, and I think I'm currently losing impulse buyers (of course I'd lose impulse buyers, but I never considered impulse buyers very important), as well as looking at the possibility of shipping 'undefined until after harvest' amounts of waltheria (see my posts in MEM), which at least for the moment I'd like to get paid for before I ship, and can't wait for too long because it dries out too much. (or see http://www.jach.hawaii.edu/~maren/plants/ - I didn't say it was fancy, but that's how I like web pages. Well, I could do some work on the colors I guess) Most direct marketers agree that profits result from "back end" or subsequent sales, not the first one. As a result, unless your product is consumable and needs to be purchased repeatedly (such as disposable contacts for example) your odds of being succesful with a single item are not good. Even if you go through distributors, you will spend as much in sales and marketing costs to sell that one item as you would to sell many more. Unless it's a very high profit item, you're facing an uphill battle.