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Warehouse fulfillment associates are responsible for verifying and processing online and in-store orders.
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How to Become an Inventory Planner
An inventory planner develops and manages inventory plans for a company.
Influential Women in Fashion: Maria Grazia Chiuri
Celebrating female designers who have broken ground and changed the industry
Tips On How To Brand Your Fashion Business Effectively
Effective fashion branding creates an experience that makes consumers choose you over your competitors. Read tips from Parsons faculty.
Skills You Need to Get a Job in Fashion Marketing
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How To Become An Accessories Designer
Accessory Designers develop, create, and produce items such as handbags, suitcases, belts, scarves, hats, hosiery, eyewear, and jewelry.
Working with the Factory: Choosing a Manufacturer
Manufacturing can be overwhelming.
One of the really important things in choosing a manufacturer is not having all pieces produced in one place.
It’s preferable for you to price and source your own garment and all of the pieces for it. For instance, you might have a client who says, “Maybe I should just send this pair of trousers to the manufacturer, or you say, “Can you just match this?”
That’s not going to be an exact match. You didn’t choose the fabric on your own. The manufacturer will go out and get it for who knows how much, and then they’ll just charge you for it. Also, transparency isn’t always guaranteed, and building partnerships with manufacturers take time. So, what you want to do is gather all of those materials on your own. You want to have as much control over your manufacturing process as possible.
Touch and feel each piece. Make sure you know how much it will cost. Negotiate the price of each component on your own. Then, send it all to your manufacturer, who will put it all together for you.
You’ll be curious as to who else they make items for. Sometimes it’s a matter of confidentiality, but a manufacturer will often inform you that they produce for a specific company.
It’s ideal if you can identify a manufacturer who has a track record of producing high-quality products for other well-known companies. It will assist you with quality control.
Another important element to remember is that while you’re sourcing all of those different pieces, you want to make sure that they all make it to the factory and know what to do with the pieces.
To summarize, it is recommended that you price each of those items separately for yourself. Take a look at what the company has already created. Check out who else they’re manufacturing garments for.
Also, while everyone is an expert in some areas, only a few people are experts in all areas. Don’t be afraid to defer to the experts. There’s an expert that creates clothes tags. There’s an expert that makes unique tissue paper for the package. There’s an expert that can finish the trim on your garment. Find your expert. And remember, not everything has to be done in one location.
Working with the Factory: Communicating with Factories
If you’re going to get into the fashion design business, it’s important to completely understand the varying complexities that impact the supply chain. Stick to the parameters of your business plan to get the full picture of its needs—in knowing every detail of your plan, you’ll make the best decisions for your business.
For example, if you’re going to focus on only selling underwear, you might immediately start planning to get your production completed in a hub like Medellin, Colombia. It’s a major manufacturer of underwear and denim apparel, and after locking down plans to source your production there, you may have questions about regular trips to Colombia throughout the year. It’s also worth wondering if fluency in Spanish is required, as you may want to go to the factories and communicate to the team how your product needs to look, wearability concerns, and customer expectations to consider.
Additionally, choosing Medellin as your production hub introduces questions about distributing the final product to America. Currently, Colombia has a free trade agreement with the United States, making it an excellent place to outsource. It also happens to be in the Eastern Time Zone, which is beneficial if you’re based in New York City. A production location that’s based in your time zone will reduce the likelihood of having to take midnight calls—which is often the case for those sourcing products from China, with a 12-hour difference between there and NYC.
The requirements of standardizing production can snowball to involve many small details. It’s crucial to think beyond exclusively sourcing a final piece of clothing. Rather, it’s important to think about so much more: the means of communication with vendors, ease of access to the site location, distribution pipeline quality, as well as current events and political issues.
At the moment in the United States, China is a frequent topic of conversation. We source many consumer goods from Asia, which menas political events can have an impact on your particular business. Understanding the intersection of global politics and economics and how it can affect a small boutique designer in the South reveals how pivotal these decisions can be in the global ecosytem, whether made in Washington, Beijing, Paris, or any other fashion hub.