HOW I'VE STARTED MY OWN CLOTHING-LINE FROM SCRAP

itsteems (33)in #business • 7 years ago

Let me show you in 5 pictures how I've started my own clothing-line from scrap,
and of course, tell you how I did it.

Actually, it started by accident, I was just having fun with Illustrator.
I came up with this design for the city I'm from, Rotterdam.
I combined the city's coat of arms with the universal logo for dockers, because that was the kind of work I did back then. After finalizing the design, it came out like this:

I first started with making embroid labels, for stitching on beanie hats. They came out very nice, but unfortunately, they were a bit too big for that. So I used it for making vests instead. Take a look:

What do you think? ...I think they suck!
That's why I had to come up with a new plan; I already ordered the beanie hats, so I had to do something with them too.
I found a company that could make smaller labels, and I ordered from them.
After I received the bundle, I went to a tailor who could stitch the labels on the beanies for me.
They came out like this:

Pretty cool, huh!?
That's what I thought too. So at this point, I had two types of clothing to sell: vests & beanies, in black & white.
That gave me the advantage to convince people to buy a matching set. This vest collection wasn't doing so well, to be honest...so that was nice.
But I still wasn't satisfied, business had to be BOOMING in my eyes.
That's when I came up with the next idea, and that was to make real quality crewneck sweaters.
It had to be perfect, so I choose to use silkscreen print for the best quality. I used the crewneck sweaters from Gildan, they are affordable and qualitative. And I knew just the right company to give this order to, the results were great!
But it still wasn't quite finished...it had to look like it was its own brand. I still had a lot of spare labels left that I used for the beanies. So I went back to the tailor and got the labels stitched on the inside in the neck.
Now that I had a good product to sell, I could take it to the stores. And guess what, the first store I walked in, took the offer at once! That made me feel good! Starting from scrap, the whole progress, and success of an idea worked out.