She's Gothic?

She's Gothic can simply be explained as a fashion brand for Gothic Attire featured toward women. I've loved all things gothic attire for what feels like my whole life. The aesthetic, the darkness, the obscurity. It's just always been a style I've been drawn too. Maybe it's because I wear black religiously so I don't have to worry about matching colors before walking out the door every day. Or maybe it's because I'm a rocker and it's a side effect that just comes with the life. For whatever reason it's just passively been a love of mine but not exactly a passion until recently. Another love of mine is graphic design which I first started at about 14-15 years old as a freshman in high-school. I've designed everything from shirts to album covers, logos, and other personal works of art just for fun. Unlike gothic attire, graphic design was a love I found a passion for early on. Basically She's Gothic is what happened when I decided to marry these two loves together. Essentially my own take on a devilishly styled clothing brand.

Purpose

Happy as I was when the idea for She's Gothic originally came to me, through time I came to realize that it could grow into so much more. Ultimately, I want She's Gothic to serve a purpose beyond a simple store page. So I decided that She's Gothic as a clothing brand will be more just like the first layer of this company. The crux of this brand will be essentially to provide a social hub for freelancers, entreprenuers or people aspiring to learn and follow such endeavors. Basically a general hub for entrepreneurs at all levels to network, share information, build a team, and generate possibilities. I plan to facilitate this community mainly through Discord but of course will provide social spaces on other platforms as well as the She's Gothic official web-page. There will be custom spaces for individual niches [Such as modeling, fashion design, photographry, graphic design, film, video editing, web development, music, sound engineering, writing, game design, streaming, content creation and many other forms of entrepreneurship.] You can think of them as sub cultures in an overall entrepreneurial based community. The main culture being brand/business development and content creation. The Discord will also include general social spaces that will be more like a community melting pot where people can blend together different ideas and interests as well as develop relationships. And of course I'm interested in any recommendations on what topics that you "the community" would like to see in our Discord. Join the She's Gothic Community Discord and lets build this community together. People will be drawn to She's Gothic for the store and brand appeal, but our community will be the reason they stay.

Brand Design Course

I want to encourage people to follow their passions but also teach them the steps to make a living in doing so. I want to break the stigma that providing for ones self while pursuing your passions or dreams is some impossible mountain to climb. Although I admit it is a mountain, impossible is definitely not the case. And so to aid people in conquering their own "mountains"; along side our store and community spaces will be a completely free business course using my very own brand as a model for others to follow. There will be absolutely no paywall, no upfront payments, no monthly subscriptions, or any such thing involved. Allow me to put it on record and say that if there ever turns out to be a She's Gothic branding course that is charging a fee just know that it didn't come from me, is not supported by me, and is a complete impersonation in an attempt for monetary gain. I don't want to put any obstacles in the way of this information and I want it easily accessible and available to everyone risk free. And if you find that this course isn't for you and you were unable to gain any value from it then the worst you would have lost is some time. Though I'm quite certain that won't be the case. The goal is to have all the information in one place start to finish. This will include roughly 12 years of my own business related personal research compiled all in one place. I will include my entire business portfolio and plan for She's Gothic. Useful and nifty tools or services I used to create things like graphic designs, web-pages, automated emails, etc. Informational sites where you can find useful knowledge and study material that you may need in order to gain or improve on certain skills. Section on Margins (Earned Income vs Costs of Business) A lifestyle portion because honestly I feel it is greatly underestimated how the scale of your business directly reflects from the habits and choices you make in your day to day life. I will also detail the steps I took along the way, in order, and explain why I took those steps. I want to stress this is not for you to just simply copy & paste. It is there for you to pull from and make into your own. It is on you to reverse engineer my brand using this course to design a brand & business that ultimately belongs to you.

Female Representation

I also want to use this brand as a way to shed more light on industries where females may lack representation such as streaming, gaming, sports, programming & web development etc. Growing up with four sisters has made me keenly aware of the world that women have to live in and I want to add value to that world. I want to use the asthetic of She's Gothic to garner eyes and draw attention to things like female sports for example. Whether it be basketball, skating, golf, etc. Many industries in our world are based on marketing and how things are presented to us as an audience. From commercials to product packaging, or store logos. As people naturally we put a large amount of stock into the visual representation of things. We're always craving art whether you realize it or not. And if there's one thing I know I'm good at it's art. I believe there is a void to fill when it comes to marketing & advertising for certain female driven industries. Whether it be a lack in ad dollars, lack of proper advertising, or just a lack in overall interest. I believe She's Gothic can most certainly play a role in filling that void. So I plan to partner with companies in different industries such as gaming, sports, web development, content creation, etc; in hopes of designing marketing campaigns to bring more attention to certain female driven industries.

One Man Army

Up until now I've been working on everything entirely individually. 100% home grown. Designing products, developing a full stack website, user interaction (UX/UI), updating social media, developing a catalogue, margins, tax documentation, portfolio and business plan, etc.. Now as proud as I am to be able to say all that; if anything it's made me even more aware of my limitations and understanding of the fact that there's only so much that I can accomplish by myself. With any business that you choose to develop and scale, eventually will come along the necessity for a team. And here lies my need to acquire funding to hire on some help. Currently the main task I'm trying to tackle is developing the She's Gothic Website Back-End development. This is my sole reason for starting this crowd funding campaign. To hire on freelance or company based web developers and create a functional full stack web site for the She's Gothic Official web-page. I've been able to handle everything front-end related and simple server side development like setting up a database for user sign up & login accessibility. Here are some screenshots of She's Gothic Official Website as of current. (Link Here.) But the Website for She's Gothic still requires a lot of work like setting up API's, data tables for item and order information, setting up order processing with Stripe, order tracking so customers stay updated on the shipment of their orders. These are just a few examples but there is much more back-end functionality needed to offer a complete and secure user experience. This is the main goal that I am seeking your help to achieve.

Time

Another main factor is time. As I stated previously everything currently that is She's Gothic is being created and managed solely by me. ((That includes the graphic designs, this very site you're on now the She's Gothic official website & more.)) In February 2024, I started learning programming languages particularly for web development. This would include HTML, CSS, JavaScript, JSON, Nodejs, PHP, SQL and Python. I've been off to the races ever since just building as I learn and vise versa. Essentially studying, learning, and applying different programming languages as I went along to fulfill what was needed for the website at the time. Mostly front-end related. I've practiced building and designing servers and databases. Sending HTTPS requests & setting up API's to create and simulate the interactivity of information needed for an online clothing store. One of my favorite experiments was designing an API that tracks the ISS (International Space Station) and displays the information in real time. (Link Here) I've done many other similar tests or experiments just to help gain a practical understanding of relational data tools & concepts that I would be needing for the back-end web developement of my website. In terms of front-end web development I have that part covered. I've already designed the front-end for 16 web-pages for the main website. User-login, sign up, home page, email inquiries, for example. These pages and more are included in my portfolio as well. While I do plan to continue learning and developing a She's Gothic full stack website you could probably guess it is a very time consuming process. Here is a visual representation of what I've been learning in order to build a full stack website or web application. (Roadmap.sh/backend) While it's completely doable to develop a full stack website by oneself, it'd just take a significant amount of time. So my solution to shorten the amount of time it would take for me to develop everything on my own is to attempt to raise the funding to hire on some help. And in this way pursue the creation of this web-page in a timely fashion.

Investing In A Plan

Also I'd like to assure people that you are investing into a plan. This is not a shot in the dark idea, there has been and will continue to be an a high regard for precaution, effort, an extreme amount of calculation and brainstorming as to what direction I will be taking this brand. As I stated in the Learn About Us section, my business/brand portfolio & plan in it's entirety will be displayed in the She's Gothic Branding Course. Which is completely free by the way! But until then, to protect certain ideas and designs from being copied or stolen before the official launch of She's Gothic, I will be keeping it offline and mainly for the eyes of investors I sit face to face with. Along with our business plan is a visionary plan. Also detailed in the Learn About Us section. I want to use She's Gothic as a template and model for a business/branding course, to build a community for entrepreneurs & freelancers at all levels, act as megaphone in industries (Sports, Gaming, Programming & Web Development, etc) where females may lack an audience & or revenue, and of course as a way to stay true to my passions and pursue something that I love to do.

The Objective

I want to point out that my goal for this crowd funding is to raise enough money for a fully functional e-commerce website. So I will add some sources & guides below that have been helping me to build a general estimate on the costs for building the back-end for a website. I'm including these sources to provide you with the understanding of what you would be donating your money towards and how this funding would be utilized. But I of course encourage you to do your own independent research as well before donating into any cause not just mine. If the entire amount raised supersedes the estimate for the website the rest will either be put towards our first marketing campaign (This would include pictures, video content, hiring models, advertisements, social media posts, business cards, posters, essentially anything required to help market and spread awareness for She's Gothic.) or simply donated to another cause.

Sources

Some Technical Info

So I'm essentially campaigning to raise funding to achieve certain Back-End Website Functionalities. If you aren't a web developer some of these may be hard to understand but I will list them anyways. For example this would include things like - An online shopping cart, like and share buttons, relational databases, transactional & payment services like Stripe, web security (Like making sure user login credential ports are secure, etc.), Designing API's, HTTPS Requests, Servers, tracking orders, email automation and more. Setting up these different things would require Web developers who specialize in JavaScript, PHP, SQL, Node JS, JSON, API development, and HTTPS Header requests. The range for costs could vary depending on the various skills required, time required, the number of developers required, and the regions from which these developers would be hired would also affect this price range. And while I'd like to pay developers the same regardless of which region they are from and currency they are subjected to, I can't exactly afford to be picky with any money dedicated towards this campaign. I do plan on price shopping and trying to spend effectively to complete the back-end functions of the website. Here's a small Glossary on some of the lesser known terms used if you are interested in a better understanding.

Transparency

I want to offer as much transparency as possible with any funds that are received as well as the rate of progress of our main site in monthly increments. I will either be posting updates our progress on our Discord or you can sign up to the She's Gothic Newsletter to receive monthly updates on She's Gothic through email. In this way I can guarantee that people can trust that their hard earned money that is donated won't be misappropriated. Even though this business isn't in full operation I would still like to treat it like so and be as professional and transparent as possible. I would much rather have a small customer base built through trust rather than a large customer base built off of bad business and lies.

Thank You

There are many ways you can contribute to She's Gothic aside from providing money. Whether you are willing to donate and want to take it a step further or if you are unable to provide contributions through money and still want to play a role; you can always contribute simply by spreading awareness and sharing this vision with others. You can post on social media, share our pictures in your reels or stories, even just talking about She's Gothic is a contribution in my book. Or if you are a web developer you can contact me through email to see how you can aid as well. In any case I want to say how grateful I am to any and all supporters and thank you for even coming along this far. She's Gothic is more than just a store page it is a vision as well as my journey, and a way for me to provide value to people in our community. I want to encourage you all not only to dream but also teach how to structure the steps to make your dreams attainable. And the best way I can do that is by setting the example. Join our Community Discord & or She's Gothic Newsletter if you'd like to stay updated or visit the She's Gothic Official webpage when she's up and runnin!