I recently participated in a fashion startup. There are a number of books you might want to read to get a crash course in the business, one in particular is Fashion for Profit by Frances Harder.
Ask HN: I want to start a clothing company.
21–30 of 43 posts
Re: Ask HN: I want to start a clothing company.
#22> Where can I get the clothes made, for instance? China.
Might want to provide more details than "China." On the phone: Hello China? 在中国的东西 I'd like to use you're limetless labor pool to build a business 在中国的东西 Can you help with that? 在中国的东西 Um, no? 在中国的东西 Ok, um, bye. 在中国的东西
What did you mean that Chinese to say? because it came out along the lines of "at China's stuff."
Re: Ask HN: I want to start a clothing company.
#23I've done this (both designing and manufacturing from scratch, and making t-shirts).
It looks like you mean "I want to design screen prints", rather than design clothes. This is actually pretty easy. Find a local screen-printer, and they'll probably be able to sell you some American Apparel (or Alternative Apparel) blank shirts at wholesale rates, and print your designs onto them. You might make about $10 per garment. It's really, really, really not worth the effort of having tshirts or tanks custom made.
If you want to truly design clothes; each step of this process requires hiring someone, since you probably don't know the skills or industry or have any contacts. Unfortunately, the newer you are at this game, the more people you have to hire, and the less money you can make. In fact, it's almost impossible to make any money at all as a new label unless you do most of the work yourself, and this involves experience and formal schooling, mostly.
You'll need to pay someone to sketch out your designs, and convert those into patterns. You might try doing this yourself, but this is a little like building a house without an architect. Or building a website without knowing HTML.
Next, you will have some samples made up, have the patterns modified so the fit is good (bigger labels actually have people called fit models). You'll need to adjust the pattern for all sizes you want to sell (XS-XXL).
It's best to have your samples made locally so you aren't waiting 6 weeks between revisions. Fit is everything! Once you have a few complete sample lines, you can take them around to local retail buyers and try to sell your line based on these.
You'll have to make sales before you actually have your garments made in bulk, unless you have a bunch of money to throw down the drain. Many people go to the Magic or Project trade shows in Vegas. You rent an (expensive) booth, make appointments with all the buyers, and on the days of the show, they come and make orders. (You don't know the buyers? You'll need to hire an agent) They won't pay you yet.
If you do make orders, now you can get your garments made in bulk in China, or wherever, and hopefully they can be shipped back by the time the orders are due (i.e. in time for the next season).
Something that takes half an hour to make will cost you several dollars in the US or tens of cents in China.
Unless you have a good contact at the other end, the first few runs will be horribly wrong, because people don't pay attention, particularly on new/small clients with low revenue. This happens no matter where you have things made.
Finally, you get your garments shipped, and then you send them off to be dyed, screen-printed, tagged, and packaged.
Then you deliver them to the places you sold to, and then 3 months later they pay you. Note that this is the first time you see any money in this whole process..!
Re: Ask HN: I want to start a clothing company.
#24This is may not be the best advice, but I wanted to share my experience. In the end I just broke even.
When I was in high school, at the age of 16 I decided to start a "clothing company." At the time I already had been working part-time on the weekends, so I had been saving up. When I had about $700 saved up I told my mother I wanted to start this business of my own, she encouraged me and gave me $300, so I now had 1K in funding to launch my "business."
I knew with this small amount it would be limiting as to what I could do. At the time it seemed the cheapest thing to do was to only start with t-shirt prints. I headed to several screenprinting shops around town, but it was costly unless you got a bulk of shirts 100+. I did some online research and found this pretty cool screenprinting shop in Auburn, Alabama (I'm in California). Got in touch with them and I was able to work a great deal.
Next, I had to think of a name for my company. This process took a while, I went through probably hundreds of candidates before I chose one the one I felt was right. I think this was the most tedious yet most important step of the process because it is what represents you.
Once I had the name down. It was time to do some designs. To me this part was the easiest since I've been drawing for years and had recently started using Photoshop/Illustrator enough to manipulate it. I did several designs and showed them to friends and family so that they could give me feedback. I especially paid attention to friend's feedback because they were the targeted age group. I must also add that I would constantly look at clothing companies websites just to get an idea what the current "trend" was.
To start off, I just had 3 t-shirt print designs and got 50 t-shirts of each. So that was 150 shirts to start off, if my memory serves correctly it came out to roughly $4 per t-shirt. What helped a lot was that they cut the design fees since I designed the shirts myself with photoshop/illustrator.
As the shirts were being printed across the country. I started promoting it on MySpace (I should note, this was around 2004) and launched a website for it. Also wrote what was the beliefs and life-style that the company represented.
Several of my friends and acquaintances had bands in high school so I talked to them so that we could cross-promote each other. At the time my website design skills were limited to HTML and graphics so I had no idea how to even put an ecommmerce site together.
Nonetheless, once I had the shirts in my hands I started selling them to friends and family for $10 a pop. So I was making about $5 per shirt. Being promoted by friend's bands really helped since I sold several at local band shows. I sold all 150 and went through a couple more batches, but eventually sales dropped and I didn't want to take the time or effort to try to improve it. I decided it was a good experience and ceased it. In the end I cut even and had about 3 dozen shirts left. I gave many away for free and til this day I still have a couple left in my closet for memories.
Also check out http://shop.johnnycupcakes.com/story/ Johnny's story was really inspirational to me!
Re: Ask HN: I want to start a clothing company.
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
Might want to provide more details than "China." On the phone: Hello China? 在中国的东西 I'd like to use you're limetless labor pool to build a business 在中国的东西 Can you help with that? 在中国的东西 Um, no? 在中国的东西 Ok, um, bye. 在中国的东西
What did you mean that Chinese to say? because it came out along the lines of "at China's stuff."
I inserted "Something in Chinese" into Google translate. It's just supposed to be jibberish because the hypothetical caller doesn't speak Chinese.
Re: Ask HN: I want to start a clothing company.
#26I am a large-ish apparel and textile manufacturer in India, and do the majority of my export to the United States. I am pretty well-versed with the kind of market you want to get into. My email is in my profile--get in touch with me and we'll talk. I doubt that I personally can supply you with what you need--we operate on volume--but I know plenty of people who can get you what you need. A few things to keep in mind,…
After re-reading the question a couple of times, I get the idea that oldmanstan may not know how to sew. There's a step between "sketching the artwork" and "making the garment" -- designing the sloper. As an apparel manufacturer, is this a service you provide, or do most of your customers bring you a set of base patterns?
If not, oldmanstan will probably need someone to take his artwork and turn it into a base pattern. Not that t-shirts and tanks are particularly difficult, but patterns can rapidly become more complicated when elements like pleating, draping, pockets, cuffs, collars, hoods and so forth are part of of the overall design.
To me, this is the absolute most fun part of designing a garment. It's pretty much all I think about -- to me, exciting design is all about clever seam placement. Textiles are a medium. A well-designed garment brings out the best of the fabric. So, oldmanstan, if you want to take a whack at that part, you can email ME, and I'll send you some book recommendations.
Re: Ask HN: I want to start a clothing company.
#27Is this idea inspired by the four hour work week book by any chance?
Re: Ask HN: I want to start a clothing company.
#28I am a large-ish apparel and textile manufacturer in India, and do the majority of my export to the United States. I am pretty well-versed with the kind of market you want to get into. My email is in my profile--get in touch with me and we'll talk. I doubt that I personally can supply you with what you need--we operate on volume--but I know plenty of people who can get you what you need. A few things to keep in mind,…
This is the kind of post that makes HN awesome. A person can ask for help and get a response from someone experienced in that area.
I just wish the questioners would take the time to ask more detailed question and follow-up with replies themselves.
Re: Ask HN: I want to start a clothing company.
#29I am a large-ish apparel and textile manufacturer in India, and do the majority of my export to the United States. I am pretty well-versed with the kind of market you want to get into. My email is in my profile--get in touch with me and we'll talk. I doubt that I personally can supply you with what you need--we operate on volume--but I know plenty of people who can get you what you need. A few things to keep in mind,…
After re-reading the question a couple of times, I get the idea that oldmanstan may not know how to sew. There's a step between "sketching the artwork" and "making the garment" -- designing the sloper. As an apparel manufacturer, is this a service you provide, or do most of your customers bring you a set of base patterns? If not, oldmanstan will probably need someone to take his artwork and turn it into a base patter…
Basic t-shirts (the kind that he wants to print graphics on) are in--basically--two silhouettes. Basic, and fashion. Basic is the boxy fit that you'll find on tees from Cafepress or Woot.Shirt, for example. Fashion fits are a bit slimmer, have smaller sleeves and a different fit on the shoulders.
It's a bit silly to experiment much beyond the cut of the neck. Besides various v-neck and crew styles, I wouldn't venture out too far. The "pattern" (the technical term for the shape of the garment) of a t-shirt is a solved problem. The trick is designing innovative artwork in printing, clever usage of embellishing stitches and garment washes that give a certain look.
If you want to see innovation, then you're right on the mark with clever seaming. Use a saddle stitch over your shoulder and sleeve seams in a colored polyester thread, and then put the garment through a pigment dye treatment. You'll get a beautiful contrast stitch on a washed-look garment.
Re: Ask HN: I want to start a clothing company.
#30I am a large-ish apparel and textile manufacturer in India, and do the majority of my export to the United States. I am pretty well-versed with the kind of market you want to get into. My email is in my profile--get in touch with me and we'll talk. I doubt that I personally can supply you with what you need--we operate on volume--but I know plenty of people who can get you what you need. A few things to keep in mind,…
This is a very good post for me, although I'm not in the clothing business. I'm wondering at just what point will it be cheaper to ship a partial container load to a US storage location and then via USPS to the customer than air shipping from Asia directly to the customer? I'm selling items worth over $80 each and the shipping is typically $30 from Asia via DHL or UPS. If I only had about 1 cubic meter's worth of mer…
1 cubic meter is not worth partial containers. You're definitely better off sending it via air. It's only a few dollars a kilo to air something from Asia to the United States (there are obviously some minimums).
[edit] Talk to shippers for both air and partial containers. Offer them back their quote at 50% and negotiate from there.
There are plenty of boutique garment laundries in LA that air garments from India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh or China and process them in small lots in their laundries and sell them on the LA fashion scene. If you see a washed t-shirt selling for over $75 around there, that is a good indicator that this is what is happening.