A Hybrid Model for Garment Production

The traditional model seems so wasteful: make $20,000 worth of samples which you will distribute to your showrooms, ALL of which cost 3X the standard garment production cost, FEW to NONE of which will ever be sold to recoup any of the money.

In launching Pixyworld, we just couldn't do it. Why not do a real production run right off the bat, with reasonable production costs, and sell direct to the retail customer, at a reasonable retail price?

Well, this approach turned out not to be the whole solution either. Selling to the retail customer, "cold," without brand recognition, turned out to be unworkably slow. We realized that retailers and showrooms do provide a valuable service to the designer, especially the new designer.

So we have begun giving samples to showrooms and taking wholesale orders. Mind you, the samples we are giving them cost a fraction of the typical sample cost. Also, we believe we are giving retailers a much-needed option: to buy small quantities for immediate shipment, rather than ordering large quantites 6 months in advance. In today's retail climate, retailers need this kind of flexibility.

But there are still two down sides to this approach: First, it limits our sales potential to what we actually have in stock. Our fabrics, to date, are non-reorderable; so we have no way of taking orders for more garments than we had made initially. Second, we are finding that many retailers, used to the season-ahead ordering system, simply don't have money to spend on orders for immediate shipment; they have already spend this season's money, last season.

So our idea is to move toward a hybrid approach: make a moderate-sized first production run, rather than making samples. Make these garments available for immediate sale. But design the garments so that they are also re-orderable. This way, we can also be taking orders to be filled at the beginning of the next season.

This approach can only work if our collections are extremely versatile, season-wise. Also, it will only work while we are small enough to avoid the stigma attached to "last season's" designs. But those are exactly our strengths. Perhaps this can be a way forward for today's new boutique line.

Spec Sheets, Schmeck Sheets.

As much as I love Mary Gelhar's The Fashion Designer Survival Guide, there is one area in which it hasn't tallied with my experience.

Tech sheets. Spec sheets. Whatever you want to call them. The fact of the matter is, I have rarely ever been able to get a manufacturing quote for my little girls' clothing line with one.

When I first started looking for a factory, I made beautiful tech sheets. By the book. One production manager even went out of her way to compliment my flats. But the response I invariably got was, "Send a sample."

Fortuntely, I happen to sew. Otherwise, the amount of capital needed to start this line would have been prohibitive. Can you imagine?? Hiring a sample maker every time you have an idea?? And then most of my ideas don't even make the first cut, (no pun intended) once I see them in real fabric on a real toddler.

We would like to think we can visualize the whole manufacturing process in the abstract, from a spec sheet. But we are in the garment industry. Production managers need to touch and hold an actual garment to think about making it on a large scale. And I can't say I blame them.

Also posted at Pixyworld Blog