Ok, after opening up about marketing and production in the last post, nothing is more natural than to keep walking in the same direction. Also, you all asked me to talk more about branding, marketing, and production management lol, but for real! As I mentioned in the previous post, your marketing needs to be coherent to your production size, your branding needs to be coherent to the image and message you are trying to pass to your future clients and your timeline and fabric sourcing need to be coherent to the size of your production. Especially when you are doing prints, dye to match and offshore fabrics.
Brands are launching new collections every quarter. Fast fashion brands even more than that. But that obviously does not happen overnight. Even the biggest brands like Chanel and Fendi prepare their collections at least a year in advance. What makes you think your new brand needs less attention and planning than that? Sure we have great vendors around the world that can make things happen with a fast turnaround time. But never forget that shit happens and when you are working on patterns, samples, and testing fabrics from the scratch.
You have to know that you will need to add time to at least two rounds of samples (sometimes even more), the fabric sourcing, wash and dry testing, and, most importantly, if you are doing custom colors, printing, and dying time. Now, let me tell you, even for China printers, you can add a pretty good six weeks timeline just for the fabrics. Especially now with covid shipment delays. In the US you can count on an eight to ten weeks timeline to get your fabrics. Ok, nowhere is the question “how come producing in the US will take longer than in China?” Labor hand, work hours, machinery, fabric variety, the capacity of accommodating different fabrics, and order one next to the other.
Ok, to be clear, I am not talking about slavery work or crazy hours of work a day. All factories we work with and have built relationships with our legal and at V.Mora we have full disclosure with our clients when it is about who they are working with. But think about it, China's population is way bigger than the US, they have a gigantic rotation when it is about work hours, and, most of it, their factories are big enough to accommodate orders after orders based on thousands of yards. So it makes sense that their operations might take less time, but adding up MOQs required and shipping time - fabrics are based on FOB shipping and depend on sea shipments or FedEx shipments.
The way your fabrics are being shipped is also another factor that explains why China MOQs are high. I mean… it makes sense if you think about it. We work with China vendors that will make your life easier and will let you order lower minimums, but counting that the shipping price will be included on your fabric yardage, shipping an entire container by the sea with different order bulk order at the same time will just make their cost lower. Want to order express shipments with lower minimums, no problem! But keep in mind that this will put your fabric order basically at the same price as ordering in the US.
Regardless of where your fabrics are coming from, your fabric production and product development is something that adds time to your production. That is why most brands plan their collections and launch a year ahead.
A timeline for development is something that is one of the main things discussed with clients when we are building a new brand or collection. Things never happen overnight and, even when they do, you have to add time for “when shit happens”. I have said this before and I am going to repeat it: I learn that product development is where shit happens in the fashion industry, but I learn that this is what I love doing and I love helping clients to achieve their goals! What cannot be ignored here is the fact that nothing, in any business, will happen on the night before and planning, budgeting and organization is the first thing to be done!
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