
Ask HN: I want to start a clothing company. - oldmanstan
I can make the website, but don't know where to even begin to get the clothes made well, on the cheap.<p>I'm male, and want to design male clothes. (Think: t-shirts and tanks.) I would design everything myself (probably with photoshop).<p>After that - after I get a site up and sketch out my ideas - where do I go? Where can I get the clothes made, for instance?
======
avinashv
I 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, though. I have just typed these in no particular
order off the top of my head. I'm going to shy away from offering marketing
advice and stick with what I know best.

(1) This is probably the worst time in history to enter this market. Cotton
yarn is at all-time highs (70-80% increase over this time last year), and it's
hard to get deliveries even if you can pay. The average Joe has no idea how
many people between the cotton farmers and the store are struggling to
maintain the shelf price of a garment. A great example of this is the fact
that everybody in this thread is suggesting that you get your t-shirts from
China. This is bad advice--China has increased labor costs and has tremendous
yarn shortages for cotton.

(2) The small-volume t-shirt business is all about logistics. Getting t-shirts
made and printed is extremely easy (getting them made cheaply is a little more
involved). Arranging for the logistics of sizes, colors, styles etc. is
complex and expensive if you don't have access to good storage.

(3) Please, please, _please_ don't use CafePress/Zazzle etc. The quality is
terrible and their prices are pretty outrageous.

(4) I take it you have very little experience in the industry. I suggest you
spend some time doing your homework. I wouldn't worry too much about the
chemistry behind dye science, but you should really be familiar with some
basic knitted structures, your yarn options, dyeing options and you should
have a solid knowledge of your printing options. Look at value-addition
treatments to garments.

(5) Get a firm understanding of getting your t-shirts manufactured. If you are
looking for poorer quality (but better price), Central America is a good bet.
They use cheap dyeing methods and open-ended yarn, but because of some
political help, they have amazing prices for USA importers. If you are happy
to pay more, then import from Asia. You will not get duty-free garments (think
countries like Egypt, Jordan or Kenya if you want duty-free), but you can get
excellent quality. You also need to understand the duty structure of importing
apparel into the United States.

(6) Most people who export to the United States quote prices for putting the
container-packed garments onto the ship. You are then responsible for
shipping, insurance, duty and trucking from the port to your DC. Trucking is
painfully expensive. Take lead times from various countries into account. I
also highly doubt you will be importing even a 20' container's worth of
t-shirts in one go, so you need to investigate the route of partial container
shipments.

I hope I didn't put you off--every industry has challenges. This one is still
really fun and exciting, especially if you are new to it. There's a lot to
learn.

[edit] I should add: I'd be glad to review your sourced costings for you once
you get them from wherever in the world and make sure you aren't getting
ripped off, assuming you are willing to share them.

~~~
elptacek
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.

~~~
luke0x
What books would you recommend to the randomly interested?

~~~
elptacek
Here's a book: [http://www.amazon.com/Patternmaking-Comprehensive-
Reference-...](http://www.amazon.com/Patternmaking-Comprehensive-Reference-
Fashion-Design/dp/0130262439)

And here's a website: <http://vintagesewing.info/>

And a good book on textiles: [http://www.amazon.com/World-Textiles-Visual-
Traditional-Tech...](http://www.amazon.com/World-Textiles-Visual-Traditional-
Techniques/dp/0500282471)

There are some other books I've read over the years (a couple of them very
rare), that I can't seem to find references to. But if you need beyond that,
feel free to email me.

~~~
luke0x
Very cool, thank you. =)

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jokull
Y Combinator startup Fabricly should be able to help you out a lot.
<http://www.fabricly.com/>

I'm curious what kind of clothes you want to design. Are you thinking about
fresh prints or fresh cuts?

~~~
pmjordan
There's also recently-launched Garmz, which lets users vote on designs before
commissioning production. <http://garmz.com/> (disclosure: I personally know
one of the founders)

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diiq
Do you want clothes manufactured, or just printed on?

That is, when you say 'design clothes' do you mean material, cut, and
construction, or jut a picture on any old t-shirt or tank?

What contributes to an item of clothing being 'well made', in your eyes?

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Coomer
If you live near a place that does screenprinting, they can probably print
shirts for you for reasonably cheap. Much cheaper than Cafepress, Zazzle, etc.
Except you have to deal with printers and ship them yourself.

------
davidedicillo
I once started a t-shirt business in Italy with some friends. It was hard and
by the time we were done we made only a little profit. We were doing t-shirts
and sweaters, based on some 70' italian b-movie. You could go to some local
distributor for t-shirts, starting from brands like Hanes, and then take it to
a company who can do the printing and tagging. Basically print or stitch your
graphics on the clothes and then replace the original tag with your own ones
(that of course you need to get printed somewhere else).

------
sahillavingia
Start with Zazzle or Cafe Press. Build a following. Use that to springboard
off of and launch your own eCommerce site (look into Pulley by Indie Labs -
creators of Big Cartel).

Then try to get the word going like crazy.

------
jonathandeamer
Assuming your designs are printable, why not test out some of your designs on
a community like Threadless? Allows you to "launch early and iterate" and get
early "user" feedback with minimal financial risk. It'll allow you to gauge
the popularity of different designs without having to actually have the
clothes made.

As there's already an established community around Threadless, it might also
be a good way to build an initial following for your brand/style.

------
tzury
Man,

Think your designs will capture the public? Cool! Then, why not running a beta
test on threadless.com?

Put your designs online, see if people are actually liking _wearing_ it. If
all goes well, then perhaps you should consider making it all by your own.

If not, then perhaps you would have to understand what was wrong in order to
success at the next round.

------
financegeek
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?

------
shapedbyregret
Might want to check out <http://www.t-shirtforums.com/> Went here when looking
for the best quality blank t-shirts and found a wealth of information.

------
eam
This 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!

------
gallerytungsten
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.

------
garply
I live in China and I have several friends in the clothing business. If you'll
give me your email I can probably get you connected.

------
known
We can directly place orders to Chinese manufacturers at
<http://aliexpress.com>

------
c3
I'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..!

~~~
avinashv
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.

------
chris_l
Is this idea inspired by the four hour work week book by any chance?

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xentronium
> Where can I get the clothes made, for instance?

China.

~~~
astine
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

~~~
arch_hunter
What did you mean that Chinese to say? because it came out along the lines of
"at China's stuff."

~~~
astine
I inserted "Something in Chinese" into Google translate. It's just supposed to
be jibberish because the hypothetical caller doesn't speak Chinese.

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

------
pbhjpbhj
I find it quite crazy that one would ship clothing half-way around the world
when the raw materials and skills /exist reasonably locally. I wonder at what
point fuel/transport costs or increasing labour costs are going to eclipse the
savings made through labour price differences (some of those price differences
are down to immoral practices of course).

Please think of your workforce and make sure they get paid fairly and aren't
deprived of safe working conditions (
<http://www.fairtrade.org.uk/business_services/default.aspx> ).

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Wow, I didn't think that saving non-renewable resources and ensuring people
are paid fairly would be so disliked here.

I am disappoint, as the saying goes.

