Ok ok ok, I know that when we are talking about material sourcing designers have styles pretty much ready to go and start development, but a lot of new designers do not know how to source their goods, which vendors they should reach out to and, mainly, if they should go to local or offshore vendors. Every time I write a new blog about the fashion business I keep repeating the same thing, all of these details (including sourcing) depend on your budget. Sourcing your goods should not be the hardest part of development. All you need is to know what kind of fabric you want and work with the right vendors.
I like to say that there is one way to source fabrics and trims: what you want and what is available. Believe it or not, the fashion industry does not have everything 100% available on the market. You might fall in love with a nice fabric from a Burberry collection, but you will not find that fabric available to buy and use on your own garments. Why? Because it is custom! Depending on what you want (prints? Pantone colors? A brand new fabric never seen before?) you will know if custom materials or in-stock materials are the way to go.
The difference between them is pretty self-explanatory. One is a custom order, where vendors normally require high quantities per order, and the other one is finding something that vendors already have in stock, which depending on the vendor can be very small quantities (like 5 yards). Breaking down the difference between them:
1. Custom fabrics:
To start, do you want to be able to order low quantities, so you can start producing a small batch? Let’s start avoiding custom materials then! Offshore or not, custom fabrics will always take longer to be ready and, as I said, vendors always require high quantities per order. There are two ways of ordering custom goods.
Starting a brand new fabric from scratch:
As I mentioned, you might like a particular fabric you saw on a Burberry collection, but you will not be able to buy that fabric and use it on your garment because that was custom made for Burberry. What you want might not be available for you to buy, but that does not mean it is not doable, and that is one of the reasons why we see all types of fabrics and trims out there. Like people always say, in the fashion industry everything has already been done, but that does not mean everything is available to buy…
When designers are ordering a custom fabric that vendors have to start from scratch, the minimum per order can be anything from 1,100 yards to 3000 yards of fabric. And what does it mean to “start a whole new fabric from scratch”? Well, are you going to copy that fabric from Burberry (I hope that none of my readers ever do that!), or maybe you will give vendors a certain fabric that you like but order it in a little heavier weight, different composition, color, and print? All of these factors can be determined when ordering customs.
Creating custom prints and colors:
Sometimes a vendor might present you with a certain fabric and you might fall in love with that fabric, but the vendor does not have the colors or prints you want. In this case, we also call this a custom order, but what the vendors need to do is to dye the fabric in the color you want or print on it using your prints. There are also higher minimums for this type of order but they tend to be more manageable.
Usually, vendors require about 550 yards minimum per color if it is DTM (dye to match) in any colors you want. When talking about prints it becomes a bit more complicated because it depends on the type of printing (screen printing? Digital printing?). Minimums tend to change depending on the printing method because the machines used are a whole different setup - digital printing is the hardest.
2. Not custom Fabrics:
Ok, the title here says everything. You see what are the available options and you pick something that vendors have in stock. Is this ideal? Will you find the prints and colors you want? Maybe not! But it definitely saves time and money. Delivery time for in-stock materials is usually two weeks and, depending on the vendor, minimums per order can be 5 yards per color/print offered.
Of course, all these numbers can change depending on the vendor and where the fabrics are coming from. If you are ordering custom fabrics and trims, you will always fall into a minimum per order required by each vendor. Designers have to ask themselves if those minimums are coherent to the size of their production (you do not expect to buy 550 yards of fabric to produce only 50 dresses and have more than half of the fabric sitting in stock), how much time will custom fabric add to their timeline, how much the graphic designer who is creating the digital prints will cost and, most importantly, what kind of number they are looking at as an overall budget to be invested.
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