Hi all -Just taking a quick second to share info with you about a new trade magazine: Maternity 360.
Since it’s a new magazine, I can’t vouch for the quality or the contents, but since subscriptions are free to the first 5000 visitors, I thought I would pass on the link:
Enjoy!
~Amber
Add comment August 5th, 2010
I figure a good place to start talking about planning the Fall ’11 collection is to just start listing some of the things that I need to start getting together NOW and the things that I need to make sure stay on my radar the whole time.
Get it together
Literally – I want a collection that goes together. No matter how many styles I settle on for the final collection, they must be cohesive. Cohesiveness matters to more than just the look and feel of my collection- it matters to my overall brand building and my bottom line. If you are a small, just-starting-out business, then you are going to want to maximize your buying ability. You will want to use the same fabric in more than one style – this will help ensure you can ‘make the cut’ (meet the minimum yardage required by the supplier).
To get it together, I’m starting with a theme. I feel incredibly lucky to have been struck by a theme idea when I was doodling the other night. Right now, there is nothing solid behind my theme idea – but it gives me ideas for discovery. I’m starting with a combination of two keywords – those keywords are already inspiring me to look at fashions, cinema, movie posters, etc. from certain eras. They are basically a great starting point for exploring. Just an idea to kick-start your theme hunt – try random keywords together, jot down words that strike your fancy.
Plan, plan, plan
Right now – I’m gathering some discovery tools (sketchbooks, color books, reference books) and hashing out a broad time line for the production of my collection. From there, I can layer my marketing and sales plans on top of the production plan. To start your production plan, work backwards from your launch date (selling season for Fall collections is late Jan/early February through May; shipping starts end of July; of course, nothing is ever set in stone) and set at least the following milestone dates:
Keeping on my radar
So much goes into just developing a collection, that it’s easy for me to let a lot of the “launching a business” activities get pushed to the side. I will keep bookkeeping activities on my radar daily. Stay on top of your bookkeeping from the very beginning, if you can manage. In addition, I have to constantly and consistently work on your branding, pr, and marketing –>both the plans and implementation. We just wrapped up a new logo design today – I’ll need it on my hang tags and care labels, website and marketing materials, email signatures, social media site avatars, website, and on and on. This time around, I promise to keep the trade show booth design and trade show schedule on my radar from the beginning too. Also – supporting my sales rep by providing them with pre-launch information and sneak peeks at the collection.
Ok – enough to do right now and more than enough to keep on my radar, I think I just made myself dizzy!!
Add comment May 20th, 2010
“come go with me -oh wo oh – have no fear” – I’m pretty sure those are the right words to the song that’s playing in my head.
Here we are coming out of a recession. And I’ve been quieter than ever in the last few months because the sudden growth spurt almost killed us quicker than the recession did. All kinds of stuff fell apart at the same time, but really, it all boils down to the fact that I got in over my head. Looking back, I don’t know if there is much I could have done about it. And “it” isn’t really that bad. “It” is just falling way behind on a few orders..but there were a lot of root causes to those orders falling behind (sewing contractor falling off the face of the planet) that had me questioning our viability for awhile.
But bygones – we are here and a good half (okay more) of those customers have forgiven us and been patient during our delays. And now that we’re growing and getting out of the “keep-spending-beyond-tight” times, I see, finally, the possibility of growing our product lines. Which brings me back to “come go with me” – we’re launching a new collection for Fall ’11. I know a lot of you are in the design and development phase, so I’m hoping that if I share my design experiences for this collection, it will help move you through the steps too. And maybe I can keep you from making the numerous, costly, and very painful mistakes I made during my first round.
Sharing with you helps keep me on track, and I hope that you will join in the conversation often – I can not tell you how much it helps to hear from you, no matter where you are on your design journey. That means whether you have a question to ask or advice to give – please join in!
And I’ll find out if I can design a collection from scratch better and more efficient this time, knowing what I know now. So, this week we’re going to start planning and exploring potential themes. Come go with me – oh wo oh – have no fear….
4 comments May 14th, 2010
A dear friend of mine has started blogging again and this morning, THIS showed up in my inbox:
What is play and why do I care?
Here’s a part that really struck a cord with me (direct quote):
I have a choice about the attitude that I bring to my art, and that is what determines whether it is play or not. It also is what determines whether I’m available to the flow of inspiration.
If I let my art be about the result, it isn’t play. When I’m focused on the outcome, I’m out of the moment and not available to the spontaneous flow of inspiration that, for me, is a big part of play.
Those two paragraphs hit me like a ton of bricks – I’ve been WAY to focused on the result. I’ve been ignoring my own natural creative process. I blame a lot of it learning!
When I was first discovering that I had a talent for this whole baby clothing design thing, I literally let the fabric speak to me. I would get my hands on it and jumble it around on the table into interesting shapes, until a picture of the perfect little design would emerge in my mind. Then I decided I had a talent for this, a passion for this, I loved it. So I set about learning the process of fashion design and that’s where I chinked my creative process a bit.
The need for technical illustrations and pattern makers has made me sketch first. I don’t think that this is the most natural for me. The lack of fabric availability and minimums hasn’t helped either. I used to just grab any fabric that spoke to me off the shelves, now I have to purchase from suppliers and wait until trade shows – or until samples come in the mail- to see the fabrics.
The post at Reinvention Revolution made me remember how much I love to sit and get lost in creative fun, get my hands on the fabric, let it speak to me, dance for me. I need to get back to that. Doing it my way.
Take a moment to read the whole post at ReinventionRevolution.com, you won’t be sorry. Gorgeous collage and inspiring thoughts…
Add comment February 18th, 2009
I feel like I’ve been taken to the cleaners by a used car mechanic, only it was a pattern grader. The fit for the original sample size is great, it’s as the pattern gets bigger that it has problems. Mainly in the sleeve length. Everything else seems to be graded ok, but by the time the pattern gets up to a size 6x, the sleeves are almost 5 inches short.
This guy has since gone out of business, and thank goodness I only tried him out with one pattern. But it’s still a waste of money and time. It might have been a waste of money and time anyways because of course I want to change the pattern. Just call me never satisfied.
So why didn’t I notice the grading issue sooner? Mainly because we only produced two small sizes for the first production run. At that point, the original size was a good fit and the sleeve issue on the one size up was, I guess, imperceptible. Now I want to produce another run w/ the larger sizes too and just happened to make a sample in my daughter’s size. It was as if the sleeves had shrunk, and I was shocked. I’m happy we didn’t have them made, especially considering I pretty much just assumed the grading was right on.
This really drove home for me how important it is to double-check everything and also how important it is to gain enough knowledge to know what you are double-checking. If anyone knows any tricks for verifying that a pattern has been graded correctly, can you share??
Add comment February 4th, 2009
Ok, here we go ’round the mulberry bush. New regulations, new regulations, new regulations, we…all…fall…down. No, not really, but this stuff will make your head spin and that being the case, I’m not writing any advice about this – except for this one part:
**You must now issue a certificate of conformity with all of your shipments**
That should raise enough questions in your head. Start at fashion-incubator.com and keep your eyes there. I saw her sending out a request for more info from experts, so if we’re lucky, she’ll be posting even more information soon. Here’s the post to start on:
New product safety regulations that affect all manufacturers (fashion-incubator)
This is all due to the passing of the Consumer Products Safety Improvement Act.
Here’s the link to the Consumer Product Safety Commission page that deals with this topic.
Make sure you do your research on this one and that you have all your bases covered. Also note that there are extra special regulations for manufacturer’s of children’s products.
Add comment November 12th, 2008
I’m starting to work through some of the email questions. Since I’ve received a few questions about how to source fabrics and find textile suppliers, I’ll try to give as many tips as I can (and please, everyone jump in with what I miss!).
How to locate suppliers that carry the types of fabrics you are interested in:
Next, call potential suppliers and ask them to send you HEADERS, or swatch cards, and ask if they have a price list and / or website:
Purchase sample cuts before placing a production order:
Before you actually go to market with production samples, make sure that you have verified the availability of the fabric. Just because a lot was available when you ordered the sample cut, doesn’t mean a lot will be available when it’s time to produce the actual garments (Oh, yes, I’ve learned this one the painful way).
Add comment October 7th, 2007
This is an add-on to my last post on Spec Sheets. Ayomide was kind enough to elaborate on her experience with this aspect of the development process in a comment she left on the blog post. I just wanted to highlight what she shared, because she has valuable input from an industry-insider’s view.
She also points out that they called them “Tech Packs”. Here’s what Ayomide had to say on spec sheets:
“I remember doing spec sheets at work. So much information but we called them tech pack, becuase it was like a pack of paper we would send to the manufacture with so much info. We would have the specs, the style #, size range, black and white line drawing, a colored line drawing with the colors called out, art information, with all the colors called out, sometimes send the actual embellishments, and sometimes a swatch of the fabric.”
One of the main things I gather from reading her comment is that if you have a decent enough color illustration, then you don’t need a full prototype. I’m not that good at drawing yet, but creating a prototype works great for me, gives everyone in the process a real picture of the expected outcome. It would be nice to be good enough at drawing to save the time it takes to create a prototype. Practice, practice, practice.
*Also note she refers to the technical sketch as a “line drawing” – I point out these terminology differences because they are useful search terms, industry slang, which we might not think of on our own.
Add comment July 21st, 2007
I have to get the tech sketches and spec sheets together for the pattern maker. If I can get this whole concept to come together by the September tradeshow, I will be very excited. I’m just excited to have a concept. So, fashion design spec sheets tell the pattern maker (and everyone else down the line) all the information he/she needs to know about a style. Here’s the information that I need to get together for the pattern maker:
I’m lucky enough to have a couple of patterns from previous designs that I can tweak to get a decent prototype. I’ll be using the same neckline and armholes anyways – so I think it’ll work. I can tweak it enough to get a decent prototype to my pattern maker.
Every time I look at the list of what still needs to happen by ABC Kids Expo, I freak out. Brochures and photographs and catalogs and posters and a mock display setup – pre-show pr and advertising – and then the design and development of the products we want to launch at the show. It’s better to not say all of that out loud sometimes, better to just chink away at the top item on the to-do list.
Add comment July 19th, 2007
I came across a great book on fashion illustration last week. It’s called Drawing Fashion Models by Lee Hammond. The book is a part of the Discover Drawing Series, copyright 1999.
It’s an excellent tutorial book for those of us who both have no clue about fashion illustration and need a lot of help with it. It is designed to take you from beginner to master, with each excercise building on the last.
One of the things that I really like about the book is the that the author really focuses on fashion. She talks about tweaking proportions and flattering model positions. She also goes into detail on how to draw all different kinds of fabrics and folds and even lace.
I have a long ways to go before I have anywhere near the drawing skills of the author, but it’s a great kick off for learning the skill. If I could be even just a little bit better at illustrating the fashions I’m designing, then it would streamline our development process. Better drawings would communicate my vision better.
Fashion illustrations, which attempt to show the viewer what the apparel looks like on a model, are different than technical sketches, which show the viewer what the article of clothing looks like when laid flat on a table and viewed from above. It is a technical sketch that you hand over to your pattern maker.
Add comment July 16th, 2007
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