Adventures in Manufacturing your own Line Part 1

My hats off to designers, manufacturers etc. Frankly everyone in the fashion industry, okay everyone with their own business.

I am a retailer who has just begun to manufacture.
I feel like a dog chasing its own tail for the most part.

This is why I have decided to put all my thoughts in one place.

I have decided to manufacture for the obvious reasons. The main reasons being profit margin, promotional and branding opportunities, and consistency of merchandise
(i.e. having more control over what I am able to sell). In exactly that order of importance.

For the most part, I am looking to produce products domestically, but you will get to a point where you feel the need to look towards another country for production.

Let me state that this is not to get the cheapest price, but rather to get access to skill or processes that are impossible to source in Canada. Dont mean to knock Canada, but whatever you need, they dont have it. Yet, the Canadian designers continue to produce amazing fashion

I decided it will be fun (or crazy) , most likely both, to chronicle my experiences with this process. I think it will be interesting, I will learn a lot, and who knows, maybe it will work.

Then again, maybe it won't. But with that I will begin to rant endlessly about this process and how it begun.
I have a book of ideas. I have a name, okay several names:), I often joke that I have more ideas than I have the money or time to pursue.

Everyone tells me I have good ideas, but the way its said, it always comes across as condescending, especially when my sisters say it.
Yeah, you always have good ideas......... Okay, maybe I am a little paranoid.

The ideas I have in my book are actually very good ones, viable product lines that have been well thought through from concept to customer, distribution, marketing and all.

The ideas are in the book because they all have some missing piece of the puzzle.

Either there is an input that needs to be sourced, a process that needs to be worked out, much more money to fund it, whatever.
But they sit in the book because one thing inevitably leads to another and the more I work in the industry the more puzzle pieces I collect.

A book like that is useful because it's often difficult to see one particular idea through from concept to customer, in a linear fashion.
Anyhow, I probably could tell this story without mentioning the book, but I think the book may be of importance later.

See you in a bit.