A lot of our clients can be start up businesses, or businesses looking to expand into clothing. Often they can be shocked to find out about the realities of manufacturing clothing, especially the differences between production in the UK and abroad. So here’s a blog to shed a little light for anyone who is looking to venture into their own collection, or just anyone who is interested really!
Our clients are often shocked to find we can’t turn their design around within a month. The likes of the fast fashion retailers on the high street don’t help us much on this one. The reality is, whilst the likes of a New Look can spot trends and get them into their shops in the space of 4 weeks, most companies cannot. New Look will have a massive team working on designs and sourcing fabric and liaising with the factory, however these development and set up stages take a lot of time without multiple people working on one project at one time. We find that the set up stages of projects is what takes the most time before production can even begin. This means that we can make sure all of your designs, patterns, grading, tech packs, fabric, and samples are of a good quality and suited to your project.
We also have to go through our database of factories and find the one most suitable for your garments, and schedule in your production depending on the factories availability. High street retailers of fast fashion are able to halt one styles’ production in favour of another that they wish to rush through to make sure they are constantly ahead of the trends. Our UK factories are working on multiple clients’ projects, so cannot stop one in order to produce another one more quickly. This also means that our factories do not rush production, giving your garments the quality denoted by British manufacturing.
In regards to timescales, we would normally allow 6-9 months for the completion of a full first collection, and 3-6 months for the completion of a first small range, although this will vary depending on quantities and the complexity of the garments.
We also find that because of the likes of retailers such as Primark, clients can be shocked to find we are unable to produce a t-shirt for a couple of pounds. The reality of this is that because larger companies put through much larger orders, their production costs reduce dramatically. They often use factories abroad, which can pay unfair wages to their staff and keep their factories in unfair conditions to work in to keep expenditure to a minimum. We use select factories in the UK alone to ensure fair working conditions and wages, along with helping to revive British manufacturing. This along with working with smaller production runs can make your garments more expensive to produce than those you may see on the high-street.
Another misconception we face is minimum order quantities. We work with a minimum of 50 units per style, per colourway, with a total minimum order of 100 units. Our MOQ can be split across a range of sizes. If you are looking to produce fully factored knitwear, the minimums are much higher.
For companies looking at producing smaller quantities, you will need to use stock fabrics and trims. Custom products are more expensive which may not suit the budget of a smaller project. Custom products also have higher minimums, meaning you would have to buy significantly more fabric and trims than required for the amount of garments you are looking to produce. Budget depending, you could buy the larger amount of the custom products and either increase your unit quantities, or Bridge & Stitch can store your products for you to use on repeat production runs, or entirely new styles in the future.
