Underlines welcomes Suzy Haber Wakefield to the Underlines team. Suzy has her own consultancy specialising in design, development and sourcing of lingerie, swim and lounge apparel but she has had an exciting and varied career. We are delighted that she is lending her expertise in a regular advice column ‘Suzy Says’.
Dear Suzy,
I am beginning to talk to manufacturers in my field and I would like to better understand minimums. I want to create a large collection and it seems like it will be hard to do right out of the gate without a lot of investment upfront.
— Brittany
Hi Brittany,
When you believe so strongly in your brand’s vision, it’s very easy to get carried away thinking of all the new creations that you want to put out into the world for your future customer. Then the cold hard reality of production (and sometimes sampling) minimums come into play. The fact is, this is when you need to make some decisions to prioritise different aspects of the brand. On a list of 1-4 rank the importance of:
- Variety of styles
- Variety of colour
- Variety of size
- Sustainability
Begin with the one that is the guiding tenant for your brand and makes you unique. E.g. if size inclusivity is a major component of your brand, you might have to compromise on the number of colours you offer. You also need to establish your target retails. With this information, go into discussions with vendors and be ready to negotiate – there is some give and take in the process and it all tracks back to these priorities.
You need to be ready with an MOQ/MCQ and often a vendor won’t make anywhere less than 1k/style (can be divided into size and colour). Bras are quite intricate with the number of components and materials which goes into the final garment amount, so a credible supplier won’t let you buy less than a few thousand of these. The same goes for seamless, which requires a time-consuming machine set-up.
The rule of thumb is that the more complicated the product, the higher the minimums will be and conversely, the easier it is to make, the lower they can be because they can make your designs faster and it is easier to take them on and off the machines. As counterintuitive as it may seem, it is a sign of credibility that a vendor won’t just tell you what you want to hear in order to get your business.
And this leads to vendors in general. A new brand literally knows nothing to ask upfront that they need to in order to see if the vendor is a good fit: category experience, lead time for sampling and production, charging for greige, development samples, patterns etc. There is so much that goes into it, including showing up as a good partner to them so they can do a great job.
Want to learn more? See our recent post on the blog which talks about how imperative it is to have a team (even if they are contractors) in place to help you work through the fine points of the vendor and product development process.
Please keep your questions coming to us (suzysays@underlinesmagazine.com) – we are here to help…..
