Manufacturing overseas can be extremely rewarding and extremely challenging at the same time. We're going to use this blog to highlight some of the experiences we've had along the way learning how to produce goods overseas. This post will be broken up into a few other posts.
The picture above was the first step we ever took into manufacturing. We had an idea for a dad cap. Specifically: a denim dad cap. So we mocked up a design, and started searching for manufacturers in china. I stayed up for hours, scouring Alibaba for cap manufacturers that would work with our minimum (100 caps) and that was able to make a good cap. After a few nights of fumbling around, I decided to reach out to my first Chinese vendor.
Mistake:
No Tech-Pack
Our first mistake was not having a tech-pack. Most people don't realize the importance of a tech-pack. If you were to rank the level of detail in documents you can send to a manufacturer, tech-pack would come second to an actual pattern for your product. It gives basic ideas like logo placement, fabric color selection and hardware / accessory placement. Not having this left details in the hands of the manufacturer. Why is this a problem? Well, its your baby! The likelihood someone in another country understand exactly what you wanted done is slim to none. Unless you reached an AMAZING supplier in your first shot, you're more than likely going to have to walk them through each step of the production. Fabric swatches, logo placement and size, measurements, bill style, crown style, stitching colors, every last detail. This should be laid out in your tech-pack.
Where can I find a tech-pack? Where can I get references on how to create a tech-pack?
This will be discussed on the next post!
Till next time,
LEO
MSP