I bucketed it into "year-long lead process" and sample management.
> Chinese factories “bury” the cost of development when providing prices
My last company manufactured original designs in Italy, and quality aside still had all the same logistical and operational overhead as working in China. Factories still hide a lot of the technical details of product design, such as grading or digitization. And even if you have that sophistication, each factory uses different equipment and processes so vendor-delivered digital artifacts can rarely be used as-is (and many vendors are working with multiple factories).
> Chinese production is not a guaranteed money saver
Sourcing material is hard work. Finding suppliers, implementing internal IT software and processes, coordinating with factories, storage, and changes to COGs accounting. There's a lot of risk to own this process and managing it's impact on the supply chain. Everything is fun and games until you run out of buttons.
My wife specializes in US domestic dev/production, and uses separate contractors for each step, and all her contractors are down the street (figuratively). The factories are only putting the final thing together. And she sources fabric and buttons and stuff herself. She’s a designer, not a production developer, yet the companies she freelances with lately never seem to understand that they need to hire prod-dev people, so she ends up doing it. To the business owners, it probably seems crazy complicated vs just going to a (more expensive) “full package” factory where you neither understand nor own the process, but they bust it out. But the benefit of her method is that she can more easily switch to different contractors and factories. Full package places sometimes don’t even release patterns to you if you ask!
The “button problems” usually arise a couple years later when they say “hey let’s use our leftover buttons from the previous season. We should have x of them left.” Then someone forgets to count them and some months later it’s discovered that there aren’t enough, nor enough time to place another order.
Are the products you have experience with garments/shoes or something else?
> yet the companies she freelances with lately never seem to understand that they need to hire prod-dev people, so she ends up doing it
Absolutely. This seems to be a trend, and a lot of fashion designers I know have learned how to work with a factory or factory agents to get technical product design details communicated. Full-stack fashion.
It's also great to have a technical designer in the process so you don't end up with surprises like 20% margins because of exotic materials or three-month delays because of accessory availability issues. You end up with one person that knows how to create and design appealing products, and another that anchors them in the reality of the business and "steers" them towards options with better margin outcomes (who in turn is probably working with people in procurement and delivering technical specs to factories).
> But the benefit of her method is that she can more easily switch to different contractors and factories
Every businesses dream. I live in Los Angeles where this happens a lot in "smaller" batches downtown, which is always cool to see. It's a shame we've lost this ability on a state or national level.
> Are the products you have experience with garments/shoes or something else?
Almost exclusively shoes, and a little bit of everything else (handbags, some apparel and jewellery). It was a very humbling experience, learning how little I knew about design and manufacturing and that software was just an enabling force (not necessarily a driving force). Supply chain problems are hard.
We’re in LA, too. Lots of the contractors are in NoHo. And also downtown and City of Industry, etc. I work remote but we can’t move out of here because of her work! And yeah, she works in smaller batches.
She’s very resourceful: of her strategies for finding new contractors is to listen for the sounds of sewing machines in buildings and then knock on the door. It’s like a weird hidden economy. And they basically didn’t shut down at all during the pandemic.
She made shoes for fun recently with a guy in North Hollywood. One person operation, decades of experience, and his skills are absolutely incredible. He should be a star, but instead he’s just laboring alone in a little box way out in the valley.
I bucketed it into "year-long lead process" and sample management.
> Chinese factories “bury” the cost of development when providing prices
My last company manufactured original designs in Italy, and quality aside still had all the same logistical and operational overhead as working in China. Factories still hide a lot of the technical details of product design, such as grading or digitization. And even if you have that sophistication, each factory uses different equipment and processes so vendor-delivered digital artifacts can rarely be used as-is (and many vendors are working with multiple factories).
> Chinese production is not a guaranteed money saver
Sourcing material is hard work. Finding suppliers, implementing internal IT software and processes, coordinating with factories, storage, and changes to COGs accounting. There's a lot of risk to own this process and managing it's impact on the supply chain. Everything is fun and games until you run out of buttons.