MORE SOURCING-INFO YOU DON'T WANT TO MISS

Now, started this blog, but I know little about blogging, and I truly thought that I was the only one who knew about it or read it. I noticed a comment the other day, however, and when I read it, it appeared to be from the goddess of apparel design and manufacturing, Kathleen Fasanella.

Kathleen wrote a book that is considered the bible of apparel manufacturing. I did not get the book or read it because we do not manufacture apparel. My email buddy, Audra, did not either, until very recently, after she had already gotten her product, a nifty new baby sling, to market. She informed me that we had been missing a great deal of very useful information, even for us, by not having read the book.

Kathleen also maintains a blog and a forum (need to buy the book to get into the forum), and for anyone thinking about manufacturing any sewn product, I highly recommend utilizing all of Kathleen's resources. Her main site is Designer-Entrepreneurs.com, but it's the Fashion Incubator site that is the nuts and bolts.

Kathleen's is the most popular book, blog and forum out there for manufacturing sewn products. Give her a look!

Sourcing Your Materials

This blog devotes itself to a topic that can be utterly depressing, ecstatically exhilarating, and everything else in between. Raising children? Formulating a successful vaccine? No, sourcing your materials! Remember earlier when I talked about the time interval between actually hatching the idea of your product and then coming up with something resembling a workable prototype? Keep that interval in mind when determining what materials you need and where to find them, and learn to let go and find inner peace.

In the beginning, you know approximately what kinds of materials you want to use. You think that it should be pretty easy—after all, you’ve seen the same materials time and time again at Target or True Value or somesuch. Ya, we thought the same thing and soon learned one of our early lessons—you can grow old and die trying to source the materials you want, especially when you need them in very small quantities, and especially if you are trying to find these products in the good old USA.

We utilize recreational fabrics, webbing, etc. in our products—pretty much anything that you can use to make a backpack. and I knew that Seattle Fabrics was the place to get them. So, for the 18 months or so I was playing with prototypes, I was a regular visitor to Seattle Fabrics. I did not think about the future much, when I would need quantities of these materials at a much lower cost for initial domestic production. After all, Seattle Fabrics managed to get them, so it must not be that difficult. Boy, was I ever wrong!

We did eventually find everything we needed initially and in doable quantities. Every time we think up a new product, however, it brings with it some difficulty with sourcing materials. Initially, I found these sources to be the most helpful:

1. Knowledgeable sales people and those who sell handmade products. They often will have the information you want, or have information that will get your closer to your goal. Street fairs and craft fairs are often a good resource for this information..

2. The information our prototype person provided to us. He had been in the sewn product industry for a long time and provided us with our first source of fabrics and contact information that led us to our webbing/buckle distributor. Our second prototype person (RHF Apparel) was also extremely helpful, having previously owned her own commercial shop for many years. I still utilize her as a resource.

3. The Internet. We found this to be of limited value at first, but if you don’t have actual people who can help you, it comes in handy. Plan to spend some time with your computer. You might check out McRae’s Blue Book and ThomasNet for starters. Make sure when you call or email that you encourage the respondent to refer you somewhere else if they can't provide the information you need. These people are on the inside track and a small tidbit from them can rock your world!

4. Friends and family and friends of family and friends of friends. One of them helped us tweak our final design, helps us iron our our current design flaws, helps us source materials, and we can’t say enough good about her. People want to help you, so don’t’ be afraid to broadcast your needs.

5. If there is a specific industry into which you fit, check out industry associations. You might even call them to get some general information about sourcing materials. I find that most people at industry associations are pretty helpful.

6. The Mom Inventors forum. Full of people just like me when I was even more clueless than I am now.

Now that we are up and running, we rely heavily on the following:

1. Our fabric company’s sales rep, our notions company sales rep, our sewing contractor, and our sourcing agent.

2. Forums forums forums! They are loaded with good people wanting to share information. I love this resource. Not only the one or two that I spend time with (check out the Mom Inventors website and join to access the forum), but also the information I retrieve from individual postings when I do google searches (rather like following a trail of breadcrumbs). They are one of the great networking tools of our time. One of my searches recently led me into kite-making forums and then ultimately to what we really needed—a wholesale source for fiberglass rods, something with which the people in number 1 above could not assist us.

The most important thing to remember is that sourcing takes patience and resourcefulness. Think of it as a treasure hunt. I would also advise you to take some time to sit and do nothing, or go for a run, or take a nap, or put a jigsaw puzzle together, or just daydream. You will be amazed at how much information comes your way.

Good luck and have fun!

Product Research

My previous blog concentrated on how I got started. One of the things I did during that time was some initial market research, not to determine who would buy my product, but to determine, before I took giant leap into this process, whether the same product was already on the market. I had never seen it if it was, so I figured initially that I would be okay taking the process further.

So, how do you take the process further? Lots of different methods can be used, and I recommend taking a multi-pronged approach to be as thorough as possible. In a perfect world, I would have been able to fly around the country, visiting every kind of store I could think of to search their aisle. Also in a perfect world, I would have been able to determine with utter certainty that I was indeed alone in the manufacturing universe with my product. Neither of these happened, of course. I was not then independently wealthy I'm still not), nor would it be possible to reach 100% certainty. I have been asked if it was wise to move ahead without that 100% certainty, but, hey, life is mostly uncertain and I am not very risk averse. I think everyone needs to assess their own risk tolerance before moving ahead. I look upon this entire process as a grand adventure, and I am a person who loves a good adventure.

There are a great number of books and online resources that discuss using the public library. The library has so much information and many of its resources are so large (one database resource can have millions of entries) that one can easily be overwhelmed without the help of a good reference librarian and a dose of practicality about collecting and using the information. Reference librarians are great for letting you know what kind of resources are available for business research and guiding you to those that might be most helpful (I think librarians are the universe’s gift to humanity). Overall, I think the public library is great for general knowledge and information, perhaps learning about resources that you might want to utilize initially or down the road.

If the library is good for general knowledge and information, the Internet is great for narrowing the search to specific products that might be similar to or the same as yours. If you are not comfortable using a computer as a search tool or don’t know how, get comfortable and visit your local librarian! They can help you learn how to search for information using a computer and how to tailor your search accordingly. Like everything else, the Internet has some drawbacks. First, if you don’t know the name of a similar product that might be out there, you can easily miss it in your search. Recently, a couple of people have brought companies to our attention that produce similar products to some of ours that I had not found in my computer searches. Second, if you don’t have some kind of defined search plan (patent office first, large product listings next, etc.), you can quickly get overwhelmed and lost in it all. Third, it can be rather time-consuming and a lot of guesswork is involved when formulating search terms. Choosing search terms can be exercise in letting go—you will never know whether the terms you choose are the “best” ones. My business partner is a genius at choosing search terms. I am not. The Internet is the resource we use the most.

Get out there and window shop! Walk the aisles of every relevant retail outlet within 25 miles of your house, Twenty-five miles is completely arbitrary—do whatever you can manage. You will be amazed at what’s out there, and it will either make you feel really good about your idea or really bad. It’s also fun to walk aisles from a research angle instead of a consumer angle. We spend a lot of time in local stores looking at complementary products, color combinations, endcap displays, shelf displays, and any manner of various other things.

I am sure there are other search tools out there, but these are the three we use the most. They are convenient, free, offer lots of good information, and we have learned how to utilize them to best meet our needs. Good luck!