Fashion business information, advice, guidance, and education for fashion brands
Today’s post offers 4 tips to help you get the best results out of your pattern maker.
Knowing what to provide and how to direct your pattern maker is crucial to how well can they execute your vision. Whether you are a veteran or new to the industry the following should make your pattern maker job easier and will make you look like a pro not to mention save you time and money:
One of the most common mistakes we see with young designers is grading a pattern too early in the development process.
At what stage of the process should you grade your apparel pattern?
First, let’s explain what grading is:
Grading is the stage of sizing an apparel pattern up or down to create the patterns for the other sizes of that garment.
Sustainability - The ability to continue a defined behavior indefinitely.
In the fashion industry we are constantly producing more and more goods. We use tons of natural resources, produce garments all over the world and all the while we are trying to keep up with ever changing trends and timely demands of the fashion industry. What is that impact? Most of the pollution in the garment industry comes from textiles. Water usage, finishing agents, and dyes. 20% of the worlds water pollution is due to the garment industry. How does it affect the community that work and live around these factories? As designers and consumers we have the responsibility to ask ourselves these questions and the ability to make change.
How do you as a designer build a company with all of these things in mind and as a small brand be a part of this change?
Boaz was recently interviewed by Monica Lee for her Smart Creative Women website Where he shared his own story and experience in the fashion industry, shared lessons he learned along the way and talked about the concept behind our company Human B.
So tune in to listen here, learn a few things and get inspired!
When starting a fashion brand, thoroughly understanding your product, knowing who you’re selling to, and defining your USP (Unique Selling Proposition) are vital for the success of the brand. It sounds pretty obvious, right? Apparently not all businesses follow that.
Niche business - a business targeting to a specific group of customers with a specific common shared interest, passion, or desire.
Many new fashion brands don’t take the time to define their niche and end up spending their money and affords on the wrong targets. Starting a brand of dresses with interesting designs or with the
A guest post by Maria Pesin from Vibe Consulting
I know, I know, selling is scary. Will the customer like your product? Will you seem too pushy? Will you not push enough? What if they reject you? How do you even start? These are many of the questions my clients ask me. The truth is selling is not as hard as you think. Just like anything you do there is a process. Following the process will help take the fear out of selling. The more you do it the easier it becomes and the better you get at it. As entrepreneurs we need to get over our fear because without sales there is no business. Even if you hire great salespeople, business owners who involve themselves in sales have better results. Buyers love when the owner cares enough about their business to interact with them. Here are my 5 tips to selling your brand to store:
PaperGirl is a brightly illustrated and inspiring made in NY childrenswear line that our company manged the development and production for this past year before launching their first collection in April 2015!
The stunning original artwork that make up each print on the garments, coordinates with a booklet (also designed and written by the designer) stored inside the garment’s pocket to inspire its little wearers to dream as individuals. Here we meet the designer behind the imaginative brand to hear her unique story:
This is a guest post by Eric Fitzgerald, an independent business consultant and the founder of Fashion Business Insider.
Like most aspiring designers, your sketch books are probably filled will lots of new and exciting design ideas that you want to someday explore in your collection. Having a platform to experiment with new ideas, fabrics, and silhouettes is the dream of any entrepreneurial designer. As much as creativity will help define your brand, remember that you’re also running a business and that brands take time to develop. Part of that development process is being consistent with what you offer your customer and how you offer it to them.
Consistency does not mean you need to be boring or basic. In fact, as an emerging designer, ensure that your product speaks volumes about who you are and what your brand stands for. Push yourself creatively and continue to innovate. But do so from a vantage point that is
Ever wondered how the New York Garment District got its start? What happened to it and where it is heading?
In the Mid 19th century, New York City’s Garment District was built on ready to wear clothing that was mass produced and mass-marketed. The industry relied on the workings of a cheap yet skilled labor force—primarily immigrants of European Jewish and Italian descent who arrived in the United States trained in traditional tailoring.
During this time the garment industry was New York City’s largest employer, employing one hundred thousand people each year. Rapid growth was seen in twenty years when the amount of manufacturing firms increased from 562 in 1880 to over 1,800 in the 1900s.
In an effort to increase New York City’s shopping culture Fashion Row and Ladies Mile were
You have a great concept, you have the backing and the drive, but all of these things can’t make a line successful if it doesn't ship on time.
One of the biggest pitfalls for designers is staying on schedule and making their deliveries on time. It’s a struggle to design, produce, ship and sell on time, especially for designers who are learning how the fashion calendar works. The industry has standard dates that are predetermined for designers to follow as guidelines:
- Fabric shows – when the season’s fabrics become available
- Sales shows – when the current season collection is presented to stores
- Store delivery dates – when stores accept orders
How you organize your time before and in between these industry dates will make or break
As a designer, it is very important your collection is well executed for a show, presentation and market week, as well as the selling floor. And to have a well-made collection, or just a single garment, it starts after your designs are finalized and it’s ready for construction.
Most fashion houses already have their team of sewers who understands the design concept and know how each garment should be constructed, with some instructions given. However, majority of young designers don’t have the same resources. When they find a sewer or factory to sew their garments, young designers would think that this person would understand their design because of years of experience the sewer has under their belt. This is actually a BIG misconception. If no instructions given, the sewer can have a garment finished in a way that you originally did not want. This mistake would cost time and money.
When you give a new design to a sewer/factory, you should think ahead about the steps they
Inspiration - the process of being mentally stimulated to do or feel something, especially to do something creative.
As creative people we are constantly stimulated by various (and sometimes random) things around us: visuals, sounds, text, smells, memories, feelings etc. Translating all of that into unique and wearable designs is where the magic/creative part happens!
When beginning to design a collection it’s natural to start fantasizing about your favorite designs, spilling sketch after sketch over each page. But good design is not born in a vacuum. The key to creating a memorable collection is to build a story from which you can then draw inspiration from to enhance your designs.
Simply picking and choosing elements that you like will leave the customer confused and will not
Starting a business is a marathon.
As a business owner you must be mentally prepared to live with uncertainty and fear while pushing through obstacles for years on end.
Every successful entrepreneur will tell you that before they had success stories they had numerous unsuccessful stories. Bill Gates watched his first company crumble, Milton Hershey started 3 candy companies before Hershey’s, Walt Disney was told he lacked creativity and was forced to close his first animation company and the list goes on.
The ability to control fears and detach from the outcome is what sets successful entrepreneurs apart from other business owners. They are visionaries who have the ability to turn the
Your selling season just ended, your got orders (hopefully more than what was projected), Congratulations! So what now? What should you do next?
This next preparation stage can help iron out and clean any possible issues before you commit to production. This is where you will need to consolidate all your orders, confirm them, make production decisions and start the pre-production phase.
Here is a detailed step by step on what you should do now:
Collecting - Collect all your orders, go through all the details on each one of them to make sure all the info on them is clear and complete. Many times orders are being
This post is written by our branding consultant Maria Pesin from Vibe Consulting.
I was at a trade show one day shopping for product to sell in my shoe and accessory store. Passing by a booth I saw belts that looked interesting. The salesperson gave me the information about the belts and I was ready to leave. Then the owner of the company came over and told me the story of the company and the belts. The story was so compelling that I sat right down and wrote an order.
Stories have the power to inform and educate, entice and engage a customer. Stories can
How many products will you need to sell in order to cover your cost and at what level of sales will your business make a profit?
To answer this you will need to calculate and find what is the breakeven point of your business.
Breakeven point (or breakeven analysis) is the point in which expenses are covered, and anything that is sold above that point means that your business is making a profit.
Calculating the breakeven point is done by defining the relationship between expenses and revenues and understanding how expenses/cost will change as sales increase or decrease. Let’s look at how it’s done.
As creative people most fashion designers are not well versed (nor they should) in the legal aspects of starting and running a business. Never the less a design business that is responsible for producing products from scratch. When done wrong, things such as protecting your business identity, dealing with vendors and contractors, paying your taxes etc. can end up costing your business money and quite a lot of headache and time when facing these issues later on.
To help you with this, here are 4 things to consider before your start your fashion business:
When developing a product or collection from scratch it’s easy to start designing and planning without first considering the importance of how you’ll communicate your designs to the team that will help bring your vision to life. A tech pack is the fashion industry’s universal form that explains all the details and specs for each garment. Before getting too far into the design process, consider these three important reasons how a tech pack will help your business:
“How much does a fit model cost? Is that for one hour only? I really can’t afford that. Can we just fit on me? I can use my friend, he/she is the right size…”
This is a common response from emerging designers when discussing the fittings.
The main misconception about fit models is due to the fact that they are called models. Therefore, it’s important to understand the differences between a runway model (which is what we normally associate models with) and a fit model.
Here is a brief explanation to better understand the difference between a fit model and runway model’s job descriptions:
