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.

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.

Modern factories are sophisticated. They used to be in Hong Kong and China, and now they are everywhere. They are available almost 24 hours a day. They take your design, turn it around as quickly as they can, and get it back to you.
Most people don’t understand how the factory economy works. It’s very similar to the airline industry. If an airplane is one-third-full, it loses money. When it’s about half-full, it makes money. At three-quarters-full, it makes a lot of money. And if it’s running at 100%, it’s making a ton of money.
The word factory in the fashion business refers to textile mills and sewing factories. A sewing factory traditionally is a CMT – Cut, Make, and Trim. They take the raw material and put it on the table, cut it to shape, and assemble it. They deliver a finished garment to you.
A textile mill is different. It has three functions. They spin the yarn, weave or knit it to shape, and then add the dye.
You deliver that raw material to the CMT factory. Designers will frequently tell the factory, “You buy the raw material for me.” The process becomes a little easier. But, remember that if you provide better inputs, you get a superior product. So, the designer should go to the textile mill and get the correct material. Because if you use sub-standard material and assemble it into a beautiful garment, no one may buy it.
You take a similar risk in the CMT when cutting the raw material. How well you cut the cloth, and how much utilization you get from the fabric is a significant part of this online fashion education course. How you assemble the garment is also an important part of the course.

One of the most popular fashion parlor games is figuring out who the consumer is. In the past, brands would construct a profile.

Suppose I were interviewing a CEO or a designer as a journalist. I’d say this: “Who are you trying to sell to? Who is your target audience for this?” And they’d say things like, “We imagine our customer to be Sally, a 20-something-year-old woman who has recently relocated to the city and is working her second job in advertising or the creative arts. She also wants to wear something appropriate for the office, go on that date, and then meet up with her friends afterward.”

They would invent this person in their head.

They would spend all this money on targeting. And find it. Then try to design something for that person. Finally, they’d hope that there was a large enough portion of their target audience to communicate with.

From Gen X to millennials to Gen Z, we’ve been following these diverse generations. People are continually trying to figure out who’s out there. The responses we receive when we ask that question and look at the consumer base, I believe, are so often just too simple.

It’s always been too simple.

If a brand had a vision of its ideal consumer 20 years ago, that person might’ve been out there. But how many of them were out there? We have no idea because people are now trying to speak with 10,000 people at the same time. You won’t be able to accomplish that either.

I’ve always disliked the idea of Baby Boomers, Generation X, and Millennials. I don’t believe in generations. It’s sort of like a big thing that people talk about, in my opinion. You have a way of making sense of things.

Millennials are people who are between the ages of 25 and 38. That’s a really broad age range. There are many life cycles between those two points—from someone starting their first job to someone having their third child.

Because it’s such a significant change, and I’m personally skeptical, can you draw all of the conclusions that everyone does? The world is a confusing place. There are people from various walks of life. They’re on the go and doing all these things. Brands are attempting to find some way to think about it and who they can sell to.

There are 330-340 million consumers in the US who buy footwear. Businesses need to take a lot of careful consideration when designing and developing their footwear so they produce products that consumers want to buy.

In America, we import about two and a half billion pairs of shoes every single year. Looking at this per capita, this equates to around 7.2 or 7.3 pairs of shoes for every single man, woman, and child in this country every single year.

American consumers import and purchase more footwear per capita than any country in the world. We don’t have the resources in our own country to meet the needs of the American population so we import a lot of materials from other countries.

Of the two and a half billion pairs of shoes, we may produce around 30 million pairs a year here in the US. Production takes a lot of capital-intensive investments, as well as high skilled labor to ensure that the footwear is of the highest quality.

Often, companies have to figure out more innovative ways to source their products and distribute this product through the supply chain. And this supply chain involves the movement of materials through several other countries before they arrive in America.

For example, they may be shipped to Vietnam from China, then exported out of Vietnam across the Pacific to the port of Long Beach or the port of LA. The products are then distributed to a distribution center in Southern California or somewhere in the Midwest, such as Louisville or Memphis. Finally, it is distributed out to a retailer or consumer, which can be in any state of the country.

So, as a business, it’s important to focus on sustainable practice when sourcing the materials for your footwear. This is important for both a consumer awareness perspective and an environmentally friendly perspective.

When it comes to retail, it’s really important to understand its history.
The birth of the modern fashion idea started with Charles Frederick Worth in the late 1800s. The idea of retail started to develop, especially at the turn of the century, by folks like Selfridges and Macy’s.
Here’s why: All the way up until that point, you always went to a tailor or a dressmaker to have something made specific to you. Macy’s and Selfridges had to figure out how to get people into a store to buy mass-produced clothes.
Why on earth would you want to go buy something mass-produced, when even if you were not that wealthy, you could have your mother create something that fits you perfectly?
So, at the very beginning, Macy’s and Selfridges had to figure out how to get people into the store. It had to be about more than the product. It had to be about the service and the experience. Hence, customer experience.
If you’ve ever watched any of the films about Macy’s or Selfridges or read any of the books, you’d know they were the ones that created things like the perfume counters on the bottom floor. Why? Because when you spray smells, people react to them. Consequently, they’re gonna stay longer. It’s also going to get people to come in.
Nowadays, that might look like a DJ or an influencer coming in to talk/meet fans. Back then, it was Charles Lindbergh who showed up at the Selfridges in London after his transatlantic flight.
In short, retail isn’t just about a transaction. It’s so much more than that. Hence, there are a lot of moving pieces in retail.

Historically, trade shows were an enormous vehicle for moving your brand. Smaller brands who were looking to get their brand out there in a larger way or bigger brands who were looking to increase visibility would get a booth at a trade show. They would put their booths together as if it were a store, and buyers would walk the floor. They’d come and check out the brands to see what they had. It was really a huge vehicle, and a lot of people used it all the time. They were typically done in New York and Las Vegas. There were some on the West Coast for apparel as well. You would have a store in South Carolina, like a family-owned shop that’s been in your family and you’re looking for new product, fly to Vegas, walk around, and place all your buys. That’s not going to go away because people will still need a place to shop the market and will still need to see what new things are out there. But, it’s going to change.

Within everything, we have to evolve, so trade shows are evolving. ComplexCon’s something that’s evolving. Everyone wants to experience something, and if you can bring it to the consumer, and you can have that conversation. It’s all about driving conversation because the same brands that are doing the pop-ups, the same brands that you may find at a trade show, you’ll also find at ComplexCon or Sneakercon or any of those things. It’s all to drive conversation. These things won’t cancel out the other, but they will continue to evolve.