Everything You Need to Know about Making your First Collection

Guest Blog Post - Viktorija Ceplike

Viktorija is an extremely experienced fashion manufacturer and production consultant and so we are thrilled that she has agreed to share some of her top tips with us. She works with students and also in a factory in Lithuania, teaching supply chain management, clothes production management and organizing systems for successful brand growing. She truly believes that if nobody in a brand understands how supply chain and production works, then the brand won’t sell clothes in a successful way. Without the right systems, the brand and even the best designers will be late with their production, there will be plenty of stress and a lot of disappointment.

So here are Viktorija’s main points that everyone should know, when they start a fashion business:

1. To know what you will produce, you need to MAKE A SYSTEM:

A. Type of clothes (outerwear, dresses, trousers and so on)

B. Type of materials: 1. Jersey, 2. Fur, 3. Leather, 4. Silk…..

Lots of new designers and brands want to make everything in one collection. For example - silk dresses, fur coats, leather trousers and so on. As a start-up brand or designer, one of your first tasks will be for you and your team to find the correct suppliers and manufacturers, not just the clients and the marketing strategist.

As a young designer, if you decide to use lots of different materials, you could face a problem with samples. The main problem would be how to manage various products, made from various material into various places. So you need to focus on what you should make and your fabric selections carefully.

2. ALL producers have the product category that they make BEST. Ask them what they are most skilled at. Don’t trust anyone who says, ‘we are good at working with all materials’. Nobody works with all materials. It would need to be a very big factory to be able to work with several materials, or they could have a few different teams. But first, the brand team should visit the factories and check this is true.

3. What type of SERVICE you need –

CM - cut made – all materials, trims, also logistics are bought/ordered and sent to a manufacturer by the brand.

CMT – cut made trim - all main materials and logistics are bought/ordered and sent to a manufacturer by the brand.

RMG – ready-made garment – The designer designs, sketches and chooses the main materials to send to a company, who are working with the materials and trim suppliers, producers.

4. QUALITY CHECK. Every brand should have a team who knows what good quality means (in terms of sewing). It is really important for a start-up business when they start working with new suppliers and producers, to decide their quality standards and plan quality checks.

5. LABELS!!! Don’t forget the labels! Brand labels, care labels, packing labels. You may think that labels are a small thing and easy to make, but that is wrong! If you are good at production planning, you will know that producers will not start sewing without the labels.

Almost all young brands make this mistake and leave the labels to order last, but then forget about them.

As in every business, there is the system and if you do not know how the system works, you will make mistakes, and mistakes will cost you money.