Sourcing Materials: Sourcing

Sourcing can be complex. It also can be simple. It just depends on what you’re going for. If you’re a company that wants to simplify your supply chain, then you usually go for an all-in approach, right?
Go with one company, they’ll source everything for you. They’ll produce the product for you. You pay them one price, you bring it in, and then you sell it.
If you’re a company that cares about where everything comes from, if your customer is concerned about sustainability, if your customer is concerned about child labor practices, if your customer is concerned about the environment, you can’t put your trust in one company and assume that they’re going to also have those things top of mind as well.
In today’s world and in today’s market, how the customer is so important to how people buy and what they produce, go to each company individually. Maybe you have to source a button from this factory and fabric from this country and this factory and maybe zippers from this country in this factory because you really are looking into the business practices, the reputation of the company, who they are, and what their story is.
Then, when you bring all of those pieces together, you can communicate with your customer, “Hey, we were thinking about you in this entire process. That’s why it took us three months to find three components to get you this hoodie because we know what’s important to you and we know that sustainability and the environment are also important to you.
If you care about who your customers are, maybe you can find a company that does all in production that also has the same business ideals that you do and the ideals that your customers have. But from my experience, sometimes it takes going to three different manufacturers, getting different components, and then bringing it all together to make the final product so that you can be really proud of the product that you’ve produced.