Posts filed under 'Design Project Schedules'
I’m happy that I’m miraculously starting the planning for the Spring ’08 season relatively early – because we’ve just been thrown our first curve ball.
I have a very focused vision and the fabrics I need to make this vision happen have a longer-than-usual lead time because they are knit-to-order. I’m SO happy that the rep took the initiative to follow-up and call me back, and that she just happened to mention that because I have to get on the ball now. I have to narrow the selection down, make sure the finishing process I want to do is going to work and then get the sample fabrics ordered.
On the plus side of the whole knit-to-order side is that it enables me to make this a ‘forever’ baby line for us – I know the fabrics will always be available. As long as I’m prepared for the lead-time.
On the negative side, it means that I have to plan for orders well because if I have a 4 – 6 week lead time to get the fabrics, and a 4 – 6 week lead time to get the items cut & sewn, then I’m at least 8 weeks out from product-in-hand at any given time. So, I already have to adjust the “order sample fabrics” milestone on my project schedule.
And yet, I don’t want to over-order just because I think this is a brilliant idea. That’s why, the sales for this first round will be traditional – show the salesman samples, take orders, order the fabric (based on actual sales), and then place the production order. Once the collection is rolling, I visualize a contanst flux of production. Visualization followed by action makes dreams turn into reality.
May 16th, 2007
Since we’re now in the sprint to Spring ’08 sales, the designing must begin. This means we have to have the major milestones (deadlines) figured out. Each season, there are things that need to be done on the design side of your project, and things that need to be done to prepare for the sale of your collection. Manufacturing happens after you go to market, so we’ll start tackling that project schedule mid-design-season.
The following design deadlines need to be defined and met in order to have a successful season:
- Select Fabrics
- Create Technical Sketches
- Order sample fabrics
- First, Second, and Third Pattern drafts
- First, Second, and Third Style Prototypes
- Sample fabrics and spec sheets dropped for manufacturing
- Salesman samples complete
The following sales deadlines need to be defined:
- Product photography
- Catalog (either updated from previous season or recreated)
- Price Sheets
- Line Sheets
- Season Launch Press Release
- Create your Terms & Agreements form if you don’t have one already
If you can start with the above major milestones, and map out a deadline by which each of them MUST happen, you’ll be in good shape for a good season. It’s a good idea to set your market date a week earlier than it really is – to see if your season schedule is realistic. Remember, work backwards from your market (start of sales) date!!
And keep in mind that your deadlines should be realistic based on the number of styles you are creating for the season. This is one of the main development decisions you will make, and everything in your project will be based on how many styles you decide to design. If this is your first season, I highly recommend that you stick to just a few designs. Highly, highly, highly recommend it.
Our project schedules should be complete by Monday. I will share mine on Monday. I have already been requesting swatches from suppliers and sketching out designs. I’m hoping, that by tracking where I’m at in the season, it will A) hold me more accountable to my own deadlines and B) prevent others from making some of the costly start-up mistakes I made in the past.
Spring ’08, here we come!!!
May 4th, 2007
To begin fleshing out the project plan and schedule for our Spring ’08 Kids Collection, there are a few things I have to take into consideration. First, our schedule must be for the entire business, not just one project. Next, I have to figure out the “must-knows” in order to make the plan and schedule realistic. And finally, I’ll hash out an initial draft and get a picture of the estimated budget.
I’ve decided that I will add our marketing and other “business management” deadlines to the season’s project schedule. Because running a business is more than just launching a collection. To help me run the business, I want to get a picture of how all department deadlines are working together. The design of the Spring 2008 collection will be my main project, but we need to add weekly status meetings, marketing deadlines, admin tasks, sales appointments and tasks, and all the other stuff that has to happen to keep business running as we go along.
As I’m working through the project management details in my head, I’m getting a grip on the three things I need to know in order to make the project schedule realistic:
We need to create a budget and look at our resources. We should have a post-mortem meeting for last season and take everybody’s input on what went wrong (and what went right of course). I think I will schedule that for mid-week. By mid-week, I should have a good draft of the project timeline.
Next, I’ll work backwards from the end deadline to now to figure out all the intermediate deadlines. I work from the market date, or final deadline, because if I know when I need to be ready for market (design samples are done, print materials complete, and we’re ready to take orders) , then I know how far in advance I need to have the samples back, how far in advance I need to have the print materials to the printer.
On budget, I would approach by fleshing out how much I expect each aspect of the project to cost, from development to marketing the line. Then, see what projected total cost is, figure out if this is do-able. From there, the tweaking begins, do we need to drop a design? Move the marketing deadline? Can we add an accessory?
April 22nd, 2007
I usually use the textile show (which I missed) to kick off my season’s project schedule. So, that was last week for the Spring ’08 fashion season.
I know I’ve said this before, but I’m going to make a real effort to track the progress and main events of the season’s product development through this blog. I hope that a lot of you will jump in and comment to share what you’re doing to make it to market in time.
First things first, we need to work on a realistic project schedule. Figure out our main deadlines and then start working on the designs. I’m going to use good old MS Excel to create a project timeline and then I’ll create a project calendar.
We go to market for Spring ’08 in August. We’re going to try to run this like a decent project and not like we’re a couple of chicken’s with our heads cut off.
One week to our big event, so I’m going to make the project schedule due beginning of the following week. This week I will start to mull over the designs in my head. I’m going to try to come up with a theme and then find some fabrics to go along with it.
I don’t think I’ll miss a textile show again. It’s such a great way to kick off the season. Ah well. We’ll work around that. It’s nice that a lot of suppliers have websites now, so you can at least get a visual before you talk to them.
So, here we go. Designing for ’08 already, it’s amazing.
April 21st, 2007
Sometimes I just want to throw up my hands and give up on managing time at all. We are one week away from a huge event and I feel blind-sided by the fact that my husband has volleyball tournaments all weekend. It’s me and the kids and my biz and no one to rescue me. Boo hoo poor me. The only thing is that it’s stressing me out completely, and I wonder how I always end up here, a week or two away from an event, wishing I had better time managment skills.
I think I would recommend to everybody that you break your project down into the smallest pieces possible and enforce your deadlines. This is my advice to myself. Actually, it’s repeatedly the advice to myself. And I’m sure I ramble about it.
But we do get a little better each time. I’ve done some of the things on the to-do, and so far, I think we’re OK. But this weekend is a huge thing, I can’t believe I didn’t realize he’d be gone on Sunday too. Three days of day-long tournaments. But this is the reality of running a business and raising two young kids, something has to give…there’s give and take, push and pull. And you know, I need to lighten up a little too – it happens, we do our best, and we’re still with our kids most of the time. It helps to keep my priorities in perspective.
I need to flip my attitude. At least we are sticking to our priorities. The must-haves ARE happening; like shopping bags and the catalog – print materials. The other problem with the whole weekend of tournaments is that my husband has a lot of graphics work on his shoulder for the big b*Fab event.
I wish I had eight hands. My hands right now are off to get the kids to school. Someday I’ll have an assistant; someday I’ll have an assistant. Someday, we’ll get it all together…
April 20th, 2007
On a scale of one to five for effort, I’d give myself a three for the last couple of months. That’s being honest. Or too harsh. We have a lot going on, so maybe the fact that things fall off my plate each day is due to the over-ambition more than laziness. But, I could sleep a little less, and oh boy will I be getting little-to-no sleep for the next couple of weeks. Less than two weeks until our big retail event. As my duaghter says – “Yipes! Yipes! Yipes!”
But, we’re finally getting real about the business management and we had a good meeting on Friday, about all that needs to get done by then. We’ve got a list! We have no choice but to put one foot in front of the other all day long, every day and chink through that list.
Posters posters posters. Posters with cool images because a picture says 1000 words. This was the one thing we wanted to get done by KIDShow but didn’t. We didn’t know enough about lighting to get anything special, but this time we do.
Plus, speaking of overly-ambitious, I’m working on designing some super-cute super-simple dresses and making the headbands match. Two weeks though. This is why we NEED the list and have to start at the top – so that the most important stuff gets done first – leaving the “nice-to-haves” for last.
April 15th, 2007
With us, it seems like everything is pushed up to the last minute. Rush Rush Rush. And it’s a stressful mode to be in all the time – but I think this is the way it is everywhere. For us, this has been the case for the last two months straight because we’ve jumped at time-crunched opportunities. We’ve opted to go for it rather than pass on the opportunities, but it is crazy-making to the extreme.
I love finding videos, like this one showing designer Mendel preparing a gown for the oscars. If you get the chance to watch it, notice how they are sewing, pinning, and cutting fabric off the dress right up to the minute the dress flies out the door for the fitting. And notice it’s because he had only 7 days to create a couture gown for a celebrity for the oscars. Last-minute opportunity that you do not pass up, no matter what is going on in the business otherwise. I’m pretty positive this dress showed up on Celine Dion during her song performance – imagine that.
When you jump at the opportunities, obviously, the other “already planned and happening” projects suffer. We jumped on an opportunity to do an oscar gift bag event, the timeline of which fell exactly on top of our prep for our first trade show. It was total insanity, and my motto became “make it happen”. We made it happen. There are ways I wish I was a little more prepared for the trade show, gosh I wish we could have accomplished a few more things, but we showed up, we got orders, we spread out around the US, we met a lot of people; we accomplished our main goals. And we met the deadlines for the gift bags with some of the most amazing products we’ve created to date.
And the bags have (supposedly) been delivered, so in the next few months we’ll see if all that hard work was worth it. I’m just hoping to get confirmation everything was delivered as promised, so we can at least say these celebrities have our stuff, even if we can’t claim they love it quite yet.
Back to the last minute thing; we’d like to participate in a fashion show for an event in April; which has given us less than a week to get the look book together with our fall fashions. We pulled off a modelling shoot on Saturda; I’m hoping to pull off at least one more and get the package shipped be end-of-day tomorrow. I’d be nowhere if my husband wasn’t a fully-involved partner. He’ll get the pictures in shape and will get all the catalog graphics and design together. I’m responsible for layout, the clothing, content and shipping. And we’re both dreaming of the days when we have more hands to help. Of course, the more hands we get, the more we take on..so I guess it’s a good sign if you’re rushed all the time.
February 26th, 2007
Well, this is it. One day until I leave for the Vegas tradeshow. I’m nowhere near ready, but isn’t that always the story. This brings me back to project management. How in the world do you get better at project management; at estimating length of time for certain tasks, at not taking on too much, at finishing with breathing room?
I have a problem saying no, especially to opportunities. I know that you can’t jump on every opportunity because you can’t over-extend the business too much, but I definitely jump on opportunities which I think are doable, even if I know it will stretch us thin. I really think that jumping through hoops is crucial to a small startup. Making it look like you didn’t have to jump through any hoops at all is even better.
So, I’m open to any and all ideas that will help me with project management. I finally went back to a paper calendar that I have on me at all times. I scheduled one two-many double appointments before I finally learned that one. And, it helps me remember to write down my business expenses, especially mileage. So, that helps me a bit with the time management.
The other thing that is going to help with my time management is trusting others more. A lot of stuff has come to a head lately that has left me with no choice but to ask for help. Lining up help for all of these little parts is going to help our business a ton. But really, I’m open to ideas – what is everyone doing to set realistic project schedules?
One thing I need is many more tiny deadlines, and I have to meet those. I set intermediate deadlines, but I don’t think I set nearly enough. Ah well..here I am, one day until the tradeshow and we’re crazy not ready. But we’re going to jump through hoops and make it happen, and we’re going to make it look like we’ve always been ready.
February 10th, 2007
Oh wow, the things I’ve committed to in the last couple of days! At the time I say “ok” it all sounds so simple in my head. And I think it all is – but a whole bunch of simple things only becomes complicated. How much of business is gut decisions? How much, oh how much, of my time is spent “listening to my heart?”. I have butterflies in my stomach even now.
I chalk these butterflies up to the day I’ve over-committed to, forgetting that my husband has an unexpected trip out of town. Now, I’m on the verge of pulling my hair out. BUT, I’m into the positive vibration thing, so instead of worrying about it, I’m telling myself it will all go smooth. Totally, 100% smoooooth. And then I’m going to make it through the entire day and tomorrow morning the kids and I are sleeping in…whew, deep breaths.
Last year, we learned at a conference about how your personality type flip-flops when you’re stressed. Questioners become doers, I think. At least that’s what happens to me. I’m the big idea-girl and the big “what if” girl. They say I’ll test forever and never launch – when I’m not stressed. When I’m under insane deadline pressure (like cutting all the fabrics for my samples by 7AM this morning, so I can have them to the contractor by 8:30), I kick into action. Like, really hunker down and kick into action. The catalog is ready for final revisions. The plans are made for this week’s round of samples (and I have to say, I’m incredibly lucky my sewing contractor is ‘slipping us in’ this late – incredibly lucky) and all I have to do is cut them and prep the spec sheets. Bag em up and get through this day…
Deep breaths girl, deep breaths..
January 26th, 2007
Things are going good. Things are on the up ‘n up. I think we’ve picked up a sales rep. YES!! I’m excited to bring her on-board and she’s excited to jump on-board, so this could be good, very good.
Once momentum gets going, it’s crazy how things seem to fly by you. All of a sudden, we’re only three weeks from KIDShow, and help-me if we end up in the same scurried position we were in before the gifting suite. The planning HAS to be better than that. So far, it is.
For the last event, we planned product offering, we planned display, we semi-planned print materials. And with all that planning, the product stuff took us so long, we ended up with very little time to devote to display, and less to devote to print materials. What happened? We forgot to set all the deadlines along the way, and to write it all on the calendar.
This time we’re breaking it down to nitty gritty deadlines. We pulled it off last time, but this time I don’t want to feel like we have to pull it off, I want to feel like we’re well prepared. So, that’s the plan. And this time, the print materials and the display are higher priority.
We’re also planning on launching a few of our fashion designs. It’s fall and it’s time. It’s so time. We’ll capitalize on a lot of the designs we’ve invested in, but we’ve got a few new patterns under production – all of them are new to the market, all of them will be fabulous.
Ok, we’re off to do the calendar and then off for the night. We’re sticking to the early morning schedule and it’s really a lot nicer to get to work when we’re refreshed in the morning.
January 19th, 2007
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