I'm male, and want to design male clothes. (Think: t-shirts and tanks.) I would design everything myself (probably with photoshop).
After that - after I get a site up and sketch out my ideas - where do I go? Where can I get the clothes made, for instance?
A few things to keep in mind, though. I have just typed these in no particular order off the top of my head. I'm going to shy away from offering marketing advice and stick with what I know best.
(1) This is probably the worst time in history to enter this market. Cotton yarn is at all-time highs (70-80% increase over this time last year), and it's hard to get deliveries even if you can pay. The average Joe has no idea how many people between the cotton farmers and the store are struggling to maintain the shelf price of a garment. A great example of this is the fact that everybody in this thread is suggesting that you get your t-shirts from China. This is bad advice--China has increased labor costs and has tremendous yarn shortages for cotton.
(2) The small-volume t-shirt business is all about logistics. Getting t-shirts made and printed is extremely easy (getting them made cheaply is a little more involved). Arranging for the logistics of sizes, colors, styles etc. is complex and expensive if you don't have access to good storage.
(3) Please, please, please don't use CafePress/Zazzle etc. The quality is terrible and their prices are pretty outrageous.
(4) I take it you have very little experience in the industry. I suggest you spend some time doing your homework. I wouldn't worry too much about the chemistry behind dye science, but you should really be familiar with some basic knitted structures, your yarn options, dyeing options and you should have a solid knowledge of your printing options. Look at value-addition treatments to garments.
(5) Get a firm understanding of getting your t-shirts manufactured. If you are looking for poorer quality (but better price), Central America is a good bet. They use cheap dyeing methods and open-ended yarn, but because of some political help, they have amazing prices for USA importers. If you are happy to pay more, then import from Asia. You will not get duty-free garments (think countries like Egypt, Jordan or Kenya if you want duty-free), but you can get excellent quality. You also need to understand the duty structure of importing apparel into the United States.
(6) Most people who export to the United States quote prices for putting the container-packed garments onto the ship. You are then responsible for shipping, insurance, duty and trucking from the port to your DC. Trucking is painfully expensive. Take lead times from various countries into account. I also highly doubt you will be importing even a 20' container's worth of t-shirts in one go, so you need to investigate the route of partial container shipments.
I hope I didn't put you off--every industry has challenges. This one is still really fun and exciting, especially if you are new to it. There's a lot to learn.
[edit] I should add: I'd be glad to review your sourced costings for you once you get them from wherever in the world and make sure you aren't getting ripped off, assuming you are willing to share them.
[edit] Talk to shippers for both air and partial containers. Offer them back their quote at 50% and negotiate from there.
There are plenty of boutique garment laundries in LA that air garments from India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh or China and process them in small lots in their laundries and sell them on the LA fashion scene. If you see a washed t-shirt selling for over $75 around there, that is a good indicator that this is what is happening.
Any thoughts on finding/making cotton-silk blend knits (for women)? I rarely can find this but it is awesome when I can. Silks are too expensive and too fragile for my lifestyle and rarely come in knits. They shrink horribly when washed and just don't stand up to my lifestyle (which is rooted in keeping everything clean enough to stay well in spite of my medical condition, and dry-cleaning is not acceptable as I react badly to the chemicals). Most knits are cotton-polyester, not acceptable in my book. I don't wear polyester....etc...etc.
I have gone so far as to look over a few websites that I felt had good online shopping interfaces for clothing. Most of them suck big time. I tend to prefer to shop in person for clothes, in part because most online clothes shopping is so bad.
So I have played with the idea a bit. I looked up a site called "French Rags" because I know they do mass customization and they sell knits. But it turns out they use a yarn blend I don't want (IIRC: cotton-acrylic). Good quality affordable clothes is really tough to find. Nylon and some spandex is also acceptable for me. But polyester is absolutely unacceptable, most other synthetics are not really very acceptable, and 100% cotton wrinkles so bad and therefore is too high maintenance. Most of the clothes I buy is 95% cotton, 5% spandex or 90% nylon and 10% spandex. I don't own an iron but can't afford to show up at work all wrinkled -- it's a violation of the dress code. Knits with a little spandex generally avoids that issue altogether.
So, I have thought about a DIY approach to solve my problem and also thought that the amount of work involved, well, it might make sense to do it as a business rather than jump through all these hoops to dress one person.
> This thread (and especially this post) are interesting to me because I have considered -- on and off since I was a teen -- designing/making my own clothes (to meet my special needs) and, recently, toyed with the idea of doing something like that as a business (and all but dismissed the idea out of hand as just too much trouble).
Don't give something you are passionate about up! Please contact me if you need help getting off your feet. I will be happy to help you with as much advice and direction that I can.
> Any thoughts on finding/making cotton-silk blend knits (for women)? I rarely can find this but it is awesome when I can.
Cotton-silk is difficult and expensive to process. In knits, you'll only find this in the high-end. Zegna does the best big-name cotton-silk knit fabric that I have seen on a garment. If there is a store around you, go to their polos and take a look.
Why silk? If you want a soft hand feel, look at modal. It is a stronger fiber than rayon, significantly softer than cotton, and processes about as easily. In today's cotton market, it is only marginally more expensive. A cotton/modal blend is magnificent.
> Silks are too expensive and too fragile for my lifestyle and rarely come in knits. They shrink horribly when washed and just don't stand up to my lifestyle (which is rooted in keeping everything clean enough to stay well in spite of my medical condition, and dry-cleaning is not acceptable as I react badly to the chemicals).
If you are talking about woven silk shrinking, then you are doing something horribly wrong. If you are talking about knits shrinking...well, that's difficult to explain. Shrinkage is controlled in fabric finishing by "setting" the fabric while holding it at the dimensional stability you are after. Most garments that are 100% cotton in the US/Europe will have between 7-9% shrinkage in both length and width. This means the dimensions will shrink by that percentage after the third wash.
> Most knits are cotton-polyester, not acceptable in my book.
100% is by far the most common yarn to knit with. Cotton and polyester have to be dyed in different processes, so to make a solid color (dyeing both cotton and polyester as opposed to just one or the other) is more expensive than starting off with cotton yarn and just single-dyeing it.
Incidentally, the whole "heather is the new black" phase in the States confuses me. Most cheap heather garments are a cotton/poly blend and suck. Look for 100% cotton heathers--they are dyed at the fibre stage (before the yarn is spun) and are significantly better garments.
> I don't wear polyester....etc...etc.
Polyester, when processed correctly, gets too little credit. It has better drape and appearance than cotton, and is orders of magnitude stronger. It obviously has different uses.
> So I have played with the idea a bit. I looked up a site called "French Rags" because I know they do mass customization and they sell knits. But it turns out they use a yarn blend I don't want (IIRC: cotton-acrylic). Good quality affordable clothes is really tough to find.
I don't know French Rags, but a good-quality store wouldn't use blends like that. What is affordable to you? I can make recommendations.
> Nylon and some spandex is also acceptable for me. But polyester is absolutely unacceptable, most other synthetics are not really very acceptable, and 100% cotton wrinkles so bad and therefore is too high maintenance.
Viscose/rayon, modal, bamboo etc. all count as synthetics. All of those are significantly superior to cotton in all aspects of feel, coolness and drape.
100% cotton doesn't wrinkle bad if you get well-processed fabric, and understand how to iron clothes properly. The key is medium-high heat and plenty of moisture in the form of steam. If all else fails, iron your clothes with only 90% of the dryer cycle. On all good steam irons there is a button that squirts water. If you've ever wondered what it is for, then this is it. If there is a hard crease, just squirt it with water and run the iron over it with steam and the crease will be gone.
I don't own a single "wrinkle-free" shirt or pair of pants. I buy good quality dress shirts and pants, and only wear 100% cotton (100% linen shirts for the summer). If you are willing to commit to 7 minutes of ironing per garment, then there is no reason that you shouldn't have crisp clothing.
Plastic-based synthetics are harder to iron than cotton.
> Most of the clothes I buy is 95% cotton, 5% spandex or 90% nylon and 10% spandex. I don't own an iron but can't afford to show up at work all wrinkled -- it's a violation of the dress code. Knits with a little spandex generally avoids that issue altogether.
Ah, no iron. Buy one [1], since they are cheap and handy.
Spandex knits shouldn't make such a big deal. One trick is to use a setting on your dryer (if you use a dryer) usually labelled something like "perm press". Make sure you use 2 dryer sheets for anything over a 5kg dry load and plenty of softner, and then take the clothes out of the dryer the moment they are done and hang them up. Your clothes, after a night, should lose their creases just through gravity.
Protip: good quality suit jackets and blazers should never touch an iron via this method. Don't let that ugly iron shine ever appear on your clothes.
> So, I have thought about a DIY approach to solve my problem and also thought that the amount of work involved, well, it might make sense to do it as a business rather than jump through all these hoops to dress one person.
It's a great idea. With the kind of upscale market that you are looking into, you could definitely look into getting value-added garments and fabrics sourced from duty-free countries.
Good luck! Please let me know if I can offer you any advice on starting up. My contact information is in my profile.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dap...
A few comments:
I don't know that I would say I am "passionate" about it. I am tall for a woman and have a genetic disorder and happen to know a lot about clothes (which might, actually, indicate I am passionate about clothes :-D ). When I am thin, it is quite hard to find clothes that fit properly. Men have "big and tall" shops. Women get "petite" and "women's" departments -- ie short or fat. Tall women -- especially tall, thin women -- get somewhat left out in the cold. When I am quite heavy, it is actually a bit easier to get clothes that fit me. I had a serious health crisis about 10 years ago which led to a diagnosis of a genetic disorder in my mid-thirties. The diagnosis empowered me to begin getting well for the first time in my life and I have lost several dress sizes. I expect in the near future to be thin enough again to have real difficulty finding clothes that fit well. Additionally, what I wear and how I deal with it plays a very large role in my ability to get well and stay well.
By trial and error, I have found that certain fabrics are tolerable and others are not. For example, I am actually allergic to wool and needed a good deal more medication than normal anytime I wore a lovely wool jacket I owned at one time. I finally got a clue and got rid of the jacket. We also gave up our washer and dryer and wash everything by hand. I considered getting an iron or steamer but decided against it. Every single thing I own has to be kept to a ridiculous standard of germ-free cleanliness in order to keep me well and off medication and I just don't think an iron and ironing board are worth it (at least not right now) when I know I can just get around the need to iron by shopping carefully. I have gotten off 8 or 9 prescription drugs and escaped a personal living hell. It would be difficult to convey how utterly miserable I was while accepting conventional treatments for my condition. Whatever hoops I have to jump through to stay well and off medication are well worth it to me.
But it is quite challenging and this wouldn't work at all if I didn't know a great deal about clothes. I have yet to write anything in particular on my health site about the whole clothing issue. I keep meaning to but I also think explaining to other people what I do with regards to clothes would be just another reason for most people to reject my approach to dealing with this genetic disorder because most people don't have the knowledge I have about clothes. So I have thought that offering a solution rather than just information might be something that would go over better.
I don't own a single jacket or blazer. They are too hard to keep clean. Most are dry clean only and I can't do that. I find that an undershirt works just fine in the cold weather here (it's pretty warm where I live). As a bit of an aside: The dress code at work is "business casual" and most men there show up in slacks and either a polo-style shirt or button down shirt. I can only think of a couple of occasions when I have seen the highest ranking men in my department wear a jacket or suit. In contrast, some of the high ranking women wear jackets and suits on a routine basis. To me, this just screams "I'm a second class citizen and I need to try harder because I was born with the wrong genitals". I don't think I have any realistic hope of climbing the corporate ladder and would rather go do my own thing anyway. But if I were trying to climb the corporate ladder, I would be doing my best to come up with a female equivalent of how the men typically dress and would avoid jackets on principle. As it is, I avoid them just because they are a nightmare to keep adequately clean for my needs. Nonetheless, even if do build a successful e-business and can live in shorts most of the time, I expect there will still be times when I need to dress appropriately for meeting people in a capacity related to my business. And I like dressing nice. So I don't expect this need to ever go away completely.
For a little bit of background related to me and my experience with/interest in clothes:
My mom apprenticed with a tailor for a time when she was young and she learned to sew so her kids would have nice things even though there wasn't much money. I stood for fittings and had most of my clothes custom made as a child. I don't have the money to pay people to custom-make my clothes as an adult. In my teens, I realized how spoiled I was and that I would be moving out soon. I began to toy with the idea of learning to sew or knit or something and making my own clothes. But I never did learn, even though I did try. It just didn't work out. I think my medical condition makes it problematic for me to handle the materials in the production stage. I think that's a factor in my failure in that regard.
I had about 20 books on clothes in my teens/twenties. For a time, I wanted to be an image consultant. I even gave a class on it once and used to help friends go through their wardrobes and taught my ex to dress well. I was a homemaker for many years and I used to think that if I got a job, I would finally be able to dress well because I would have some place to wear nice clothes. Now I have a job and I have found that is not true. Most of the stuff in magazines and on store shelves would violate dress code at my office. I have a tendency to attract attention, often unwanted attention, and have found that although other people seem able to violate dress code right and left and get away with it, I cannot. It gets noticed and I get pulled aside. Anything too tight/revealing or whatever and I'm in hot water. Meanwhile, other women can show up looking like hookers and no one seems to say a word. So I think there is a serious disconnect between what women need to wear for business and what is available and most women probably are less painfully aware of it than I am because dressing "normally, for a woman" doesn't get them into the hot water it would get me into. Women at work mostly either dress too sexy for the office or they wear suits in imitation of "how men dress for work/business" when that isn't, in fact, what the men are wearing at my office. I think women need another option, one that isn't "wearable art" (and to hell with practical concerns or comfort) and also isn't some attempt to imitate men.
But I also don't know that I want to put in the hours this would require. I just want to be able to get dressed in the morning but am frustrated by how challenging that is.
If not, oldmanstan will probably need someone to take his artwork and turn it into a base pattern. Not that t-shirts and tanks are particularly difficult, but patterns can rapidly become more complicated when elements like pleating, draping, pockets, cuffs, collars, hoods and so forth are part of of the overall design.
To me, this is the absolute most fun part of designing a garment. It's pretty much all I think about -- to me, exciting design is all about clever seam placement. Textiles are a medium. A well-designed garment brings out the best of the fabric. So, oldmanstan, if you want to take a whack at that part, you can email ME, and I'll send you some book recommendations.
It's a bit silly to experiment much beyond the cut of the neck. Besides various v-neck and crew styles, I wouldn't venture out too far. The "pattern" (the technical term for the shape of the garment) of a t-shirt is a solved problem. The trick is designing innovative artwork in printing, clever usage of embellishing stitches and garment washes that give a certain look.
If you want to see innovation, then you're right on the mark with clever seaming. Use a saddle stitch over your shoulder and sleeve seams in a colored polyester thread, and then put the garment through a pigment dye treatment. You'll get a beautiful contrast stitch on a washed-look garment.
And here's a website: http://vintagesewing.info/
And a good book on textiles: http://www.amazon.com/World-Textiles-Visual-Traditional-Tech...
There are some other books I've read over the years (a couple of them very rare), that I can't seem to find references to. But if you need beyond that, feel free to email me.
I was looking for your email but couldn't find it. Just wanted to ask you a few questions regarding getting cloths made for a business.
send me a message at bardebes@gmail.com
I'm curious what kind of clothes you want to design. Are you thinking about fresh prints or fresh cuts?
That is, when you say 'design clothes' do you mean material, cut, and construction, or jut a picture on any old t-shirt or tank?
What contributes to an item of clothing being 'well made', in your eyes?
Then try to get the word going like crazy.
As there's already an established community around Threadless, it might also be a good way to build an initial following for your brand/style.
Think your designs will capture the public? Cool! Then, why not running a beta test on threadless.com?
Put your designs online, see if people are actually liking wearing it. If all goes well, then perhaps you should consider making it all by your own.
If not, then perhaps you would have to understand what was wrong in order to success at the next round.
When I was in high school, at the age of 16 I decided to start a "clothing company." At the time I already had been working part-time on the weekends, so I had been saving up. When I had about $700 saved up I told my mother I wanted to start this business of my own, she encouraged me and gave me $300, so I now had 1K in funding to launch my "business."
I knew with this small amount it would be limiting as to what I could do. At the time it seemed the cheapest thing to do was to only start with t-shirt prints. I headed to several screenprinting shops around town, but it was costly unless you got a bulk of shirts 100+. I did some online research and found this pretty cool screenprinting shop in Auburn, Alabama (I'm in California). Got in touch with them and I was able to work a great deal.
Next, I had to think of a name for my company. This process took a while, I went through probably hundreds of candidates before I chose one the one I felt was right. I think this was the most tedious yet most important step of the process because it is what represents you.
Once I had the name down. It was time to do some designs. To me this part was the easiest since I've been drawing for years and had recently started using Photoshop/Illustrator enough to manipulate it. I did several designs and showed them to friends and family so that they could give me feedback. I especially paid attention to friend's feedback because they were the targeted age group. I must also add that I would constantly look at clothing companies websites just to get an idea what the current "trend" was.
To start off, I just had 3 t-shirt print designs and got 50 t-shirts of each. So that was 150 shirts to start off, if my memory serves correctly it came out to roughly $4 per t-shirt. What helped a lot was that they cut the design fees since I designed the shirts myself with photoshop/illustrator.
As the shirts were being printed across the country. I started promoting it on MySpace (I should note, this was around 2004) and launched a website for it. Also wrote what was the beliefs and life-style that the company represented.
Several of my friends and acquaintances had bands in high school so I talked to them so that we could cross-promote each other. At the time my website design skills were limited to HTML and graphics so I had no idea how to even put an ecommmerce site together.
Nonetheless, once I had the shirts in my hands I started selling them to friends and family for $10 a pop. So I was making about $5 per shirt. Being promoted by friend's bands really helped since I sold several at local band shows. I sold all 150 and went through a couple more batches, but eventually sales dropped and I didn't want to take the time or effort to try to improve it. I decided it was a good experience and ceased it. In the end I cut even and had about 3 dozen shirts left. I gave many away for free and til this day I still have a couple left in my closet for memories.
Also check out http://shop.johnnycupcakes.com/story/ Johnny's story was really inspirational to me!
It looks like you mean "I want to design screen prints", rather than design clothes. This is actually pretty easy. Find a local screen-printer, and they'll probably be able to sell you some American Apparel (or Alternative Apparel) blank shirts at wholesale rates, and print your designs onto them. You might make about $10 per garment. It's really, really, really not worth the effort of having tshirts or tanks custom made.
If you want to truly design clothes; each step of this process requires hiring someone, since you probably don't know the skills or industry or have any contacts. Unfortunately, the newer you are at this game, the more people you have to hire, and the less money you can make. In fact, it's almost impossible to make any money at all as a new label unless you do most of the work yourself, and this involves experience and formal schooling, mostly.
You'll need to pay someone to sketch out your designs, and convert those into patterns. You might try doing this yourself, but this is a little like building a house without an architect. Or building a website without knowing HTML.
Next, you will have some samples made up, have the patterns modified so the fit is good (bigger labels actually have people called fit models). You'll need to adjust the pattern for all sizes you want to sell (XS-XXL).
It's best to have your samples made locally so you aren't waiting 6 weeks between revisions. Fit is everything! Once you have a few complete sample lines, you can take them around to local retail buyers and try to sell your line based on these.
You'll have to make sales before you actually have your garments made in bulk, unless you have a bunch of money to throw down the drain. Many people go to the Magic or Project trade shows in Vegas. You rent an (expensive) booth, make appointments with all the buyers, and on the days of the show, they come and make orders. (You don't know the buyers? You'll need to hire an agent) They won't pay you yet.
If you do make orders, now you can get your garments made in bulk in China, or wherever, and hopefully they can be shipped back by the time the orders are due (i.e. in time for the next season).
Something that takes half an hour to make will cost you several dollars in the US or tens of cents in China.
Unless you have a good contact at the other end, the first few runs will be horribly wrong, because people don't pay attention, particularly on new/small clients with low revenue. This happens no matter where you have things made.
Finally, you get your garments shipped, and then you send them off to be dyed, screen-printed, tagged, and packaged.
Then you deliver them to the places you sold to, and then 3 months later they pay you. Note that this is the first time you see any money in this whole process..!
I think you had a rough time. Every factory that I am personally in contact with (it's a fair number across several countries) are significantly more professional in sampling, production and payments than what you describe. Sampling done at the place of production, no matter where in the world, should be measured in days.
There are plenty of good agents if you know the right places to look who handle a lot of the details for you. Obviously, the problem is finding the right guy. All your problems of solved issues like fit, patterns etc. are taken care of then. Something like pattern grading can be done in 5 minutes by anybody who has experience to 90% accuracy.
To say that a t-shirt takes a half hour to make is a bit naive. The amount of processing and handling that goes between picking cotton and packing a t-shirt is non-trivial. Even if you want to just limit yourself to the garment process, you are talking about fabric handling, cutting, sorting, stitching, checking and packing. This is a complex procedure.
> Unless you have a good contact at the other end, the first few runs will be horribly wrong, because people don't pay attention, particularly on new/small clients with low revenue. _This happens no matter where you have things made._
[emphasis mine]
This is not true. Again, work with a professional factory, and you should not have this problem.
> Finally, you get your garments shipped, and then you send them off to be dyed, screen-printed, tagged, and packaged.
Or...use a manufacturer who can do all of that for you. I'll admit that finding a world-class garment laundry outside of California is difficult, but I guarantee you that you can get a lot of the way there for dollars a garment cheaper if you look hard.
> Then you deliver them to the places you sold to, and then 3 months later they pay you. Note that this is the first time you see any money in this whole process..!
90 days payment terms is pretty bad. Most of the industry works on 30. Domestic business in a lot of Asia is 10-21 days from delivery. You should look into opening an L/C. The fee is not so bad and you get good security.
China.
On the phone:
Hello China?
在中国的东西
I'd like to use you're limetless labor pool to build a business
在中国的东西
Can you help with that?
在中国的东西
Um, no?
在中国的东西
Ok, um, bye.
在中国的东西
Please think of your workforce and make sure they get paid fairly and aren't deprived of safe working conditions ( http://www.fairtrade.org.uk/business_services/default.aspx ).
I am disappoint, as the saying goes.