New Fashion Line: How I Got Started With My Own Line
It has taken me a long time to get here. I’ve been thinking about having my own fashion business for a long time but I didn’t know where to start. So many questions!!!
When I finished school in 2013, I took a job right away at a media company in my city. Ah the dreaded 9-to-5 lol! But it was good. I knew I needed to gain some experience working in a corporate environment. Its not all that bad to be honest. It was definitely a great way to meet new people.
But I found myself constantly looking out the window, dreaming of what it would be like if I could just have my own clothing line, start selling my clothes online, and get to travel.
I’ve been into fashion all my life. Although my mom dressed me in the most Gawd-awful clothes when I was little, I would still spruce things up by adding patches or create tears in my clothes.
Anyway, about two years ago I started sketching my first few jumpsuits. I love jumpsuits by the way! I sketched jumpsuits designs and I knew I wanted some natural prints too. One of my girlfriends was working at a company that did printed t-shirts so I asked for some help. She guided me a little but it turns out t-shirt printing and clothing deisgn are totally not the same thing! lol.
I thought I was ready for what came next. I wasn’t.
When it was time to contact manufacturers, I started searching on the internet. It’s a bit overwhelming considering there are millions of factories it seems, and WOW Alibaba is crazy! How many Chinese factories are there anyway? Sheesh.
But I wasn’t going to let this get to me. I needed to talk to someone about how to make my clothes. So I started at the top of the list and started working my way down. About 30 listings in to Alibaba, I gave up! It was crazy, there were simply too many. And lots of them (all Chinese) were more like suppliers and not custom factories, but I didnt want to buy designs that weren’t my own.
I then tried factories in India. Also here, there are so many listings. But again I kept contacting them and found that they were easier to deal with. But in India it seems everything is about money. Factories would immediately tell me about discounts when I would ask about quality.
But I learned a valuable lessons when I started contacting these factories. Most of them asked me for something called a spec sheet, some of them called it a tech pack. I’d never comes across this before; another challenge!
It turns out that factories can give me basic guesses at my quotes but without these tech packs, there was no way for them to give me real quotes. The prices all did seem pretty out of whack at first to me but I was never really sure how much something should cost anyway.
I found a bunch of these spec sheets or tech packs online and decided to copy one of them that looked really good. The hardest part for me was trying to get my measurements right. It turns out I needed to know all my seam measurements, and fabric types, and what my design was going to be for my printing, and so many other bits of information.
Took me about a month to finally get everything — ugh! lol.
In the end, I had contacted about 80 factories in both countries but they had either huge minimum orders or their quality was poor. I don’t want to get into too many details here because as much as this is my experience, I know that factories in these countries are good. I just couldn’t find the one that fit what I needed.
Remember, small startup brand here! lol.
Anyway I started talking to more friends about what I was trying to do and one of my girlfriends told me to try Bali in Indonesia. I hadn’t thought of it before, it was never on my radar. But who knows, I could make my jumpsuits on a resort island and spend time on the beach. Oooh lala! lol.
Once again I found myself on the search. I contacted many factories that I found on Google. I never knew there was so many little factories there.
I actually got frustrated when dealing with Bali factories though. I would send them all my inquiry emails, and so many of them wouldn’t even respond. I called and so many of them had staff that kept either hanging up because they didn’t speak English or they would keep passing me around from one staff to another. Eventually I got through but it was pretty annoying because I feel like I wasted a few weeks just trying to get through to people.
Anyway, I started sending my tech packs and it turns out this whole tech pack thing is common everywhere :-)
The minimum orders were reasonable but the prices were actually higher from a lot of the little factories than in China and India. I thought this was weird though seeing as how Bali is much cheaper to live than the other bigger countries I was doing my research in. If living costs are lower, how can my production cost be higher right?!
The really good thing was that I could get started with some samples at first to see the quality. I sent out for samples with 4 different factories. I’ll be honest, the quality was ok at best. The stitching was coming apart, the fabric was sort of low quality with one of the factories, and one of them couldn’t seem to get the cut of my jumpsuits right.
I was thinking about taking my designs to India but I was finding it very hard to keep up with my work and deal with factories directly. I’m half way across the world and my timezone mad it hard to check in on things.
So I started contacting clothing agencies there instead. These are the people or companies that work for designers and its their job to source all my materials and fabrics and look after my production for me.
They were actually quite communicative but their agency fees are huge. The cheapest one I could find started their fees at $2,500 USD, and they were also charging commissions on top of this. Why do they charge commissions? But when I say cheapest, I should say the cheapest legitimate company. I found many agents but some of them seemed like independent people who were happy to do the running around for me. But I didn’t feel comfortable with this. How can I guarantee that some guy half way around the world isn’t just going to take my money or just quit in the middle of the job; right?!
Anyway I keep searching and found an agency called Clothing Manufacturing Agent Bali. Yey back in Bali again! :-)
They also had an agency fee (less than $500 per year) but no commissions; score! They have a rally good sales team that worked together to help me get things going. I spoke with two of their sales team and they told me what I needed to do. I had a Skype call with one of them and I got to answer all my questions. What I really needed was someone who could help me chose the best fabric. I wanted my customers to feel comfortable in my jumpsuits but I also didn’t want something that fell apart after only a few times in the wash.
Once again the tech packs! lol. But this is good, by now I had a lot of experience with getting my measurements and requirements laid out correctly. But they actually offered their own tech packs for me to use. I didn’t need it but it was nice to know they offer them for free (one factory in India charges for tech packs!!!)
When I sent my tech packs off, I got my quote the next day. That was fast! The prices came in fairly reasonably close to what I expected. After dealing with other factories before, I already knew what to expect. But I wanted a bit of negotiating room so I asked if they could help me bring the prices down a but more. They contact the factories and came back with a slightly lower price. But that’s all I needed to get things within my budget.
I hadn’t know this but CMAB actually works with lots of larger-scale factories in Bali and other parts of Indonesia. What I didn’t know was that when I first sent my tech packs for quoting, they had sent my tech packs off to a bunch of factories in their network. So when my prices had come in, they were in fact some of the best I was ever going to get in the area.
Anyway, I decided to give them a try. But I wanted to do a sample run first. With my previous experiences with factories in Bali, I wasn’t exactly brimming with confidence.
But this time they got it right. The sampling process was actually pretty straightforward. When CMAB chose a factory for me, they also assigned me a Production Manager. She was constantly sending me videos and photos via WhatsApp to show me the progress, to get my approvals, and ask my opinion on things such as my fabrics and my print strike-offs.
I actually felt like I was in the factory with them, even though I was sitting at my desk at work when I was seeing some of these updates. lol!
When my samples were done, they sent them to me and I tried them on. It fit like a glove! But I had a few alterations i wanted to make still. I made some notes, added some pins and post-it notes, and sent my samples back. This whole back and forth process only two about 2 weeks, mostly because of the time it takes to ship something between us.
My production manager then sent me more videos showing me that the alterations were done exactly the way I wanted them. I asked them not to send me this next round since everything looked ok to me, and they went into production. But my production didnt get started right away.
There’s something called a lead time. This is the time that I had to wait in the production line up until it was my turn. When factories are producing one brand, they may not start another because of the number of machines and workers or that they don’t want to overlap productions in case something doesn’t go according to plan. I think I had to wait about 2 weeks. But thats ok, it gave me time to set up my hang tags and clothing care labels, and also gave me time to sort out my budget and get my Instagram started. So exciting!! :-)
When everything was finished CMAB did my quality control checks, and got all my jumpsuits packed up into boxes. They arranged my shipping for me and I chose to use DHL because I have an account with them.
By the way, although I could have saved some money by using local couriers from Bali, I chose to use DHL because they are reliable and I had used them at work before.
My boxes arrived about a week after i placed my pickup order from CMAB’s office. I was like a little girl on Christmas morning! lol.
As soon as I could, I tore into the boxes to see all my jumpsuits neatly packed. There was actually a really cute post-it note at the top of the pile in one of the boxes that thank me with a smiley face :-) like that. It feel special because I was receiving a hand-written message of happiness from someone on the other side of the planet.
Anyway, I had a very good experience with CMAB and my production team. I felt they were really a positive group to work with. It seemed like everyone on the team was working just for me, trying to get me start my own clothing line.
I wanted to write this to share my experience with others who may feel that starting a clothing line is a daunting exercise. I know its difficult with so many choices for factories, and so many potential pitfalls. But whatever you do, don’t give up on your dream.
For me, I found my dream come true on a resort island in a far away place. My production team was fantastic. And today I have a new collection Im looking to bring out. I feel I have the right team to do this.
Oh and one more thing. I’ll be travelling to Bali in May 2017 to get that beach and check on my next production. Yoohaw! :-)
Heather.
