Trademark Advice

Hello everyone! I am currently in the process of starting a clothing company. I'm preparing to get a business license and start ordering merchandise. Through this process I have been doing research on a lot of things and one of them being getting our brand trademarked. As I was searching the USPTO I came across a mark "Southern Brand" that is currently in use. The drawing code is 4 and it falls into our mark category of Goods and Services/Clothing. The name of our company is "Southern Brand Company" and the drawing code for it would be a 3, but I'm not sure if that matters. I am pretty concerned that our mark my be denied as it could be deemed confusing for customers. However, I feel like the mark is pretty generic and therefore "weak", which could open the possibility for our mark to get accepted. Also, the mark is registered and operates locally in FL and we are based in AL. If anyone with any experience or knowledge on the issue could help me out that would be great. I don't want to infringe on their work, but I also don't want to flush everything I've done down the drain and go back to the drawing board if there's a possibility that we could still use the name.