Your product development timeline and steps involved will vary depending on the distribution channels of your fashion business. Understanding the differences will help you best plan your product launches and help you navigate shifting from one to the other if that is the next step to grow your brand.
There is no doubt that the events surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic have affected each of our lives. But despite the situation, there are things your small fashion business can do to create positive opportunities during this pandemic. Here are a few ideas to get you brainstorming.
You may think you just got lucky finding a factory that would develop your patterns and make you samples for free as part of your production order. What you might not realize is that those “free” samples and development will cost you in other ways.
There it is: your design! It looks just how you envisioned it. You need to evaluate the sample and approve it for production. Here are all the things you should check on your samples to make sure the production order doesn’t disappoint.
Fashion is a very old-school industry. At the same time, companies are adopting technology within their design, development, and production processes – including patternmaking – more and more. This transition to digital has brought up the question whether traditional paper patterns or digital ones are better. Here’s my take.
On one hand, you want to wait as long as possible to start designing so you can make better predictions about what will sell well for the season. On the other hand, you want to give yourself enough time to get the designs made. Set your design timeline by working backwards from your release dates.
Around New Year’s there is always a focus on dreaming of what’s next and making goals to get there. If one of your goals this year is to launch or grow your apparel brand, here are my top resource recommendations that will help you make it happen.
Whether I’m meeting a new factory at a trade show or interviewing a factory for a client project, the one question that I always ask is ”What do you specialize in?” How they answer tells me what type of work I should send them and whether I want to work with them at all.
Fit is a big factor in the success of a garment. During the product development process, you can tweak your design to make sure the fit is perfect before it hits the sales floor. How do you know if the sample fits? I think there are three elements of good fit – size, shape, and movement.
Whether you are doing a quality control check on your production or need to help a customer find the size that is right for them, having a solid understanding of the points of measurement on a spec sheet and the how-to of measuring a garment are essential.