List your shop or brand

The fashion directory exists to make Manchester's independent shops, market stalls and brands findable by people shopping locally rather than defaulting to whatever a search engine surfaces first, which tends to favour whoever spends the most on ads rather than whoever is actually good and actually Manchester-based. Getting listed is editorial, not automatic: someone reviews what gets sent in before it goes live, which keeps the directory useful rather than turning into an open noticeboard anyone can post to.

To submit a listing, use the general contact page and pick the right subject from the dropdown there, which routes enquiries like this to the editor rather than into a general inbox. Include the basics: your shop or brand name, where you're based or your website if you're online-only, what you actually sell, and a short honest description rather than marketing copy. Photos and social media links help people find and follow you once you're listed, and are worth sending alongside the initial submission rather than after.

The main editorial bar is straightforward: the business needs to actually be Manchester-based, or genuinely operating within the city, rather than a national or international brand with no real local presence trying to get a local mention. Beyond that, listings are free. There's no charge for inclusion, and nothing about being listed obligates you to advertise separately, though advertising is handled by a different part of the site if that's something you're also interested in.

Once listed, updating your entry is always possible if your hours, location or what you sell changes, rather than the listing being a one-off snapshot that goes stale. A physical storefront, an online-only brand, a market stall and any combination of the three all go through the same process, and the directory doesn't rank a shopfront above an online brand or the other way round.

A submission tends to move faster and land better when it front-loads practical detail rather than marketing language: an exact address or a working website link, honest opening hours where they matter for a physical shop, and photos that actually show the shop or the product rather than a logo on its own. A short, specific description of what makes the business worth listing, what you actually make or stock and who it's genuinely for, does more work than a general line about quality and passion that could describe almost any shop in the country.

Manchester's fashion economy didn't start with any of its biggest current names as an already-established brand, and that's worth remembering when weighing up whether a small, new business is worth listing. Boohoo and PrettyLittleThing both trace back to market trading rather than a funded launch, and the city's wider fashion retail landscape, from Afflecks Palace's individual traders through to the independent shops along Oldham Street, has always run on the same basic principle: a market stall, a single rail, or one well-run online shop can genuinely grow into something much bigger from here. The directory is built to list a business at whatever stage it's actually at, not only the ones that have already made it.

It's worth knowing what kind of scene you'd actually be sitting alongside, since that's a fair way to judge whether your business fits what the directory is for. Manchester's fashion output splits roughly into a few real, distinct categories rather than one identity. There's the fast fashion side, which is a genuinely enormous part of the city's economic footprint: Boohoo, PrettyLittleThing and In The Style are all headquartered here, and more than one started life as a market stall before becoming a business that dresses a large share of the country. There's heritage manufacturing, smaller in scale but real: Private White V.C. still cuts and sews outerwear in the city rather than outsourcing production, which is genuinely unusual for a British clothing brand at any size today. There's the casuals-adjacent menswear lineage, terrace culture translated into brands like Pretty Green and Marshall Artist, still a visible thread in how a lot of Manchester dresses on a night out or a match day. And there's the independent retail side, the shops rather than the labels: the Northern Quarter's vintage and indie strip around Oldham Street, the designer end around King Street, and Stockport's Underbanks a short trip out of the centre.

Not every submission goes straight up. Editorial review occasionally means a follow-up question if the essentials aren't clear from what was sent, or, rarely, a listing isn't accepted because the business doesn't genuinely meet the Manchester-based criteria. That's not a judgement on the business itself, it's the same standard applied to everyone who submits, and it's what keeps a directory entry meaning something rather than becoming a formality anyone can tick off.

A new listing doesn't need to fit neatly into one of those categories, most genuinely independent Manchester fashion businesses don't, but it's useful context for what "Manchester fashion" actually covers on this site rather than assuming it means one specific aesthetic.

If what you're actually trying to do is find people to shoot with rather than list a shop, our stylist and photographer guide covers that separately. And if you're trying to move stock through a pop-up or a sample sale rather than a permanent listing, our sample sales and pop-ups guide is the better fit for that.