Clothing Line

[Simba No More 9-5]

Hi,

My partner has just started a clothing line (
athleisure wear) and is at the stage where everything is done - registration, business plan, loan from princess trust and a few fashion shows etc.
Now the biggest issue is finding a manufacturer ideally UK based but a company that will implement her designs and send good quality items.
It’s been so difficult especially dealing with foreign company who send samples that are just not up to par.

What’s are the next best options:

- Seek UK manufacturers
- carry on seeking foreign manufactures (sample payments are costing the business money too)

Does anyone have any referrals ?

Thanks
Simba

 

[JJWinst]

How have they got funding without finding a manufacturer who can produce garments for them?

Finding a good trusted manufacturer is a key part of any new clothing line, I doubt anyone would be willing to share when most have spent a lot of man hours researching/testing and learning.

 

[Simba No More 9-5]

It’s a valid question. But sometime people are more than willing to help plus who knows what could happen in future, collaborations etc.

 

[Chris Ashdown]

Are you talking 500 of each item or less that say 25

Factories get loads of potential customers asking them to make a few samples for a new venture and maybe ten of a size colour,They dont have the fabric, or any attachments or patterns but expect the factory to spend time doing their work for them

Factories are rushing through orders usually of a few thousand of a style with 3 month waiting lists and in some instances about 6 months for smaller items runs

One minor point worth mentioning is that commercial fabric often has a minimum order quantity of maybe 200 metres sometimes you may be lucky and just get a end of roll, some specialist fabric will have much larger min order

I would suggest the first thing is to get a computerised design and pattern software package so you can produce the templates for the cutters for the different sizes and also look again at your business plan to see if anything else is missing especially marketing and stock levels, (nobody will by one item and when its sold wait more than a couple of days for new stock)