Ask HN: I want to start a clothing company.

I'm glad I can offer the advice. I'm not in a field I would have expected to have seen on here, but it's cool that people are interested.

You make plenty of generalizations here, and a lot of them are misleading. Nothing personal, but I'll point out where our opinions differ.

I think you had a rough time. Every factory that I am personally in contact with (it's a fair number across several countries) are significantly more professional in sampling, production and payments than what you describe. Sampling done at the place of production, no matter where in the world, should be measured in days.

There are plenty of good agents if you know the right places to look who handle a lot of the details for you. Obviously, the problem is finding the right guy. All your problems of solved issues like fit, patterns etc. are taken care of then. Something like pattern grading can be done in 5 minutes by anybody who has experience to 90% accuracy.

To say that a t-shirt takes a half hour to make is a bit naive. The amount of processing and handling that goes between picking cotton and packing a t-shirt is non-trivial. Even if you want to just limit yourself to the garment process, you are talking about fabric handling, cutting, sorting, stitching, checking and packing. This is a complex procedure.

> 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._

[emphasis mine]

This is not true. Again, work with a professional factory, and you should not have this problem.

> Finally, you get your garments shipped, and then you send them off to be dyed, screen-printed, tagged, and packaged.

Or...use a manufacturer who can do all of that for you. I'll admit that finding a world-class garment laundry outside of California is difficult, but I guarantee you that you can get a lot of the way there for dollars a garment cheaper if you look hard.

> 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..!

90 days payment terms is pretty bad. Most of the industry works on 30. Domestic business in a lot of Asia is 10-21 days from delivery. You should look into opening an L/C. The fee is not so bad and you get good security.

Ah. I was wondering why it read like, "Stuff that's in China"

I have a similar, but not the same idea. I found a cool clothing company when I was traveling and I think that their designs would sell here in the states. I've talked with them about importing, but it seems pretty expensive. The bulk discount they would give me on their sticker is only 50% (they sell shirts for about $20 so it would be about US$10 a shirt+shipping). I mean, the quality is good and it is all hand made, but I'm not sure what, if any profit I could make after taking into account shipping and storage (since it is all hand made I assume I'd have large inventory costs to make sure I could handle any unexpected volume). Do you think my idea of bringing the designs here are crazy?

Thank you very much for your lengthy, detailed reply.

A few comments:

I don't know that I would say I am "passionate" about it. I am tall for a woman and have a genetic disorder and happen to know a lot about clothes (which might, actually, indicate I am passionate about clothes :-D ). When I am thin, it is quite hard to find clothes that fit properly. Men have "big and tall" shops. Women get "petite" and "women's" departments -- ie short or fat. Tall women -- especially tall, thin women -- get somewhat left out in the cold. When I am quite heavy, it is actually a bit easier to get clothes that fit me. I had a serious health crisis about 10 years ago which led to a diagnosis of a genetic disorder in my mid-thirties. The diagnosis empowered me to begin getting well for the first time in my life and I have lost several dress sizes. I expect in the near future to be thin enough again to have real difficulty finding clothes that fit well. Additionally, what I wear and how I deal with it plays a very large role in my ability to get well and stay well.

By trial and error, I have found that certain fabrics are tolerable and others are not. For example, I am actually allergic to wool and needed a good deal more medication than normal anytime I wore a lovely wool jacket I owned at one time. I finally got a clue and got rid of the jacket. We also gave up our washer and dryer and wash everything by hand. I considered getting an iron or steamer but decided against it. Every single thing I own has to be kept to a ridiculous standard of germ-free cleanliness in order to keep me well and off medication and I just don't think an iron and ironing board are worth it (at least not right now) when I know I can just get around the need to iron by shopping carefully. I have gotten off 8 or 9 prescription drugs and escaped a personal living hell. It would be difficult to convey how utterly miserable I was while accepting conventional treatments for my condition. Whatever hoops I have to jump through to stay well and off medication are well worth it to me.

But it is quite challenging and this wouldn't work at all if I didn't know a great deal about clothes. I have yet to write anything in particular on my health site about the whole clothing issue. I keep meaning to but I also think explaining to other people what I do with regards to clothes would be just another reason for most people to reject my approach to dealing with this genetic disorder because most people don't have the knowledge I have about clothes. So I have thought that offering a solution rather than just information might be something that would go over better.

I don't own a single jacket or blazer. They are too hard to keep clean. Most are dry clean only and I can't do that. I find that an undershirt works just fine in the cold weather here (it's pretty warm where I live). As a bit of an aside: The dress code at work is "business casual" and most men there show up in slacks and either a polo-style shirt or button down shirt. I can only think of a couple of occasions when I have seen the highest ranking men in my department wear a jacket or suit. In contrast, some of the high ranking women wear jackets and suits on a routine basis. To me, this just screams "I'm a second class citizen and I need to try harder because I was born with the wrong genitals". I don't think I have any realistic hope of climbing the corporate ladder and would rather go do my own thing anyway. But if I were trying to climb the corporate ladder, I would be doing my best to come up with a female equivalent of how the men typically dress and would avoid jackets on principle. As it is, I avoid them just because they are a nightmare to keep adequately clean for my needs. Nonetheless, even if do build a successful e-business and can live in shorts most of the time, I expect there will still be times when I need to dress appropriately for meeting people in a capacity related to my business. And I like dressing nice. So I don't expect this need to ever go away completely.

For a little bit of background related to me and my experience with/interest in clothes:

My mom apprenticed with a tailor for a time when she was young and she learned to sew so her kids would have nice things even though there wasn't much money. I stood for fittings and had most of my clothes custom made as a child. I don't have the money to pay people to custom-make my clothes as an adult. In my teens, I realized how spoiled I was and that I would be moving out soon. I began to toy with the idea of learning to sew or knit or something and making my own clothes. But I never did learn, even though I did try. It just didn't work out. I think my medical condition makes it problematic for me to handle the materials in the production stage. I think that's a factor in my failure in that regard.

I had about 20 books on clothes in my teens/twenties. For a time, I wanted to be an image consultant. I even gave a class on it once and used to help friends go through their wardrobes and taught my ex to dress well. I was a homemaker for many years and I used to think that if I got a job, I would finally be able to dress well because I would have some place to wear nice clothes. Now I have a job and I have found that is not true. Most of the stuff in magazines and on store shelves would violate dress code at my office. I have a tendency to attract attention, often unwanted attention, and have found that although other people seem able to violate dress code right and left and get away with it, I cannot. It gets noticed and I get pulled aside. Anything too tight/revealing or whatever and I'm in hot water. Meanwhile, other women can show up looking like hookers and no one seems to say a word. So I think there is a serious disconnect between what women need to wear for business and what is available and most women probably are less painfully aware of it than I am because dressing "normally, for a woman" doesn't get them into the hot water it would get me into. Women at work mostly either dress too sexy for the office or they wear suits in imitation of "how men dress for work/business" when that isn't, in fact, what the men are wearing at my office. I think women need another option, one that isn't "wearable art" (and to hell with practical concerns or comfort) and also isn't some attempt to imitate men.

But I also don't know that I want to put in the hours this would require. I just want to be able to get dressed in the morning but am frustrated by how challenging that is.