Finding the Right Vendors for Your Fashion Startup
Marketplaces like Maker’s Row, Pietra, and Foursource are great resources for finding apparel manufacturers. They can also lead you to other vendors for help with design, branding, packaging, photography, e-commerce web development, and other essential pieces you need executed if you are launching a fashion business. However, piecing together and managing all of these vendors simultaneously presents a number of challenges. Here are a few:
1. SELECTING GOOD VENDORS THAT ARE RIGHT FOR YOUR SPECIFIC NEEDS
Most factories have specialties (e.g. categories such as childrenswear, or working with materials like denim). However, many will still claim to be able to create any kind of product. If you don’t have significant experience in the fashion industry, it can be hard to evaluate what manufacturers are right for your specific products. Some lines might require several vendors to meet your specific vision and target price point. Setting up the right supply chain is key to the success of your business, but this setup process can be complex. Selecting the wrong vendors can end up wasting a LOT of time and money. The last thing you want is to spend 12+ months developing and producing products, only for the bulk inventory to arrive with a multitude of significant mistakes that make the products impossible to sell. These kinds of horrors happen WAY more often than they should.
2. FINDING THE TIME TO MANAGE MULTIPLE VENDORS
Even with marketplaces like Pietra and Maker’s Row making it a bit easier, the process of exploring, interviewing, and deciding on vendors can still eat up a lot of your time. Once all of your vendors are selected, streamlining communication is challenging - especially if you’re working a full-time job to pay the bills while you get your business off the ground. Clearly communicating your vision is crucial to ensure creative cohesion across everyone working on your product line, packaging, website, etc. Also, factories operate on strict schedules, so prompt responses are imperative. You want to avoid issues like your desired materials going out of stock, and you want to make sure you catch any mistakes before they escalate and become irreversible.
3. DEVELOPING AN EFFECTIVE OVERALL BUSINESS STRATEGY
All of your vendors will be looking to you for specific direction. If you are new to the fashion industry, you can offer a fresh perspective and brilliant ideas, but you might not know exactly how all of the pieces need to be executed to come together to form your vision. Or you might need help fleshing out your vision and long-term plan with details and strategies that only a seasoned industry expert would be able to offer. Individual vendors will execute and care about their piece, but they are not invested in or capable of seeing the full puzzle and putting together all of the pieces with you.
With a fashion consulting firm like Stateless, all of the above challenges are taken care of. Stateless will help you form and execute your vision. Under one roof, we will be your dedicated team of brand strategists, fashion designers, technical designers, production managers, graphic designers, writers, photographers, and web developers. We will utilize our global network of trusted manufacturers and suppliers to set up your supply chain based on your specific needs and objectives, and then we will use our decades of experience to expertly manage the production process for you. As a result, we will save you time, stress, and money. We will help bring your products to market with the level of professionalism your vision deserves.
