With the launch of the webshop and the mountain of orders to send out (hurray!), it’s been a busy couple of weeks here in the studio. Now that the excitement of being shiny and new is wearing off, it’s about continuing to market the fall/winter 09 collection and going full speed ahead with the spring/summer line.
I’ve learned that it isn’t hard to make one design you like, but to have that piece replicated in multiple colors and sizes for production is where the going gets tough. On the whole, producing my fall/winter 09 collection went relatively smoothy, save for the multiple times that important items were lost (or temporarily) missing in transit (alas, the brown truck people do make mistakes too.) Thankfully, things arrived where they should, though it meant numerous delays. So the one important thing I learned from producing the first season is that you always need more. Send the factory more fabric and notions than you calculate they’ll need (in fact, I’d say 5% more to be safe). More communication to make sure things are being made the way you want (I think I got lucky here, my project manager emailed me almost every day with updates). And much more time, to get the pieces made and to get them shipped to you.
I’m back at the beginning now, sewing my prototypes for the spring/summer. And soon we’ll be starting production again, and I think things will be easier this second time around. I just have to remember, we need more!