“Did we just receive 5,000 damaged shirts?” – “Um…Yup.”
It was 2012 and I had recently started freelancing for larger more established brands. While I had a full-time day job working for Ralph Lauren at the time, the salary wasn’t enough to survive and thrive, so my side hustle game had to remain strong.
Walking New York fast down Broadway, weaving my way through tourists, taxis, and traffic, I darted across midtown on my lunch break to meet with a potential new client. After stopping at the Starbucks in the lobby, I popped a stopper in the top of my second tea of the day and sprinted to catch the elevator. Thankfully one of the two guys already inside saw me coming and politely held the door. Ironically, they had already hit button 10 for the 10th floor.
I stood quietly, staring down at my shoes. One of the guys pulled out his Blackberry and started rambling about a laundry list of issues with product that had just arrived from a new factory. I thought…are these guys my 12 o’clock?
Once we hit the 10th floor and the doors parted, they charged off the elevator, heading straight down the hallway. I stood to look at the directory outside the elevator and noticed a bathroom. After a quick refresh I made my way down the same hallway to find one solitary set of frosted glass doors, buzzed for entry, and waited patiently. Sure enough, one of the two guys from the elevator came to greet me. “You again!” he said as he extended his hand.
After pleasant introductions to his business partner, personal assistant, and his design team we made our way to the tiny conference room at the back corner of their office space. Piled high with marked cartons, the table was buried. A typical sight in the industry. I always find it funny when people think fashion is all glitz and glamour. Meanwhile it’s an utter disaster. Organized chaos at best. Any and every surface you see is covered with samples, or paperwork or both. There are pins and needles all over the floors, paper and fabric cuttings sprinkled about. Binders upon binders of trims. Bags and rolls of fabric. Just a total mess.
They apologized as they cleared a space for me to sit and told me their back story. They were growing rapidly. Mostly due to their early adoption of social media advertising and excessive networking through sponsoring small music festivals and events. They weren’t making enough to hire a Sourcing Manager or a Technical Designer but had finally started selling enough off the shelf t-shirts that it made sense for them to transition over to SMU (special make up), find a factory, and start producing their own. They were excited to show me their first run with their first factory and popped open one of the boxes they had moved to the floor.
They pulled one shirt out of the box without looking and held it up to me like a present on Christmas morning. I paused for a long moment before I cautiously said, “Did you intend for your logo to be upside down?”
We spent the remainder of our meeting pulling as many shirts out of every box in that room as quickly as we could. Finally, they collapsed on the floor. Breathing heavily. One said to the other, “Man did we just receive 5,000 damaged shirts?” “Um…yup”, his partner said in reply. I felt nauseous. They both looked down at their hands. I didn’t know what to say, so I waited. After a few moments of silence (RIP to those shirts), he looked up at me and said, “Well, this is why we asked to meet with you, I guess. We have no idea wtf we’re doing!” We all laughed.
I came back the next day for an onboarding session, to hear the back story as to how they ended up with 5,000 upside-down logo t-shirts. They said they had used a website called Alibaba. Something I had admittedly never heard of at the time. They showed me the site and the functionality, much more basic at that time than it is today. I was astounded. I was very new to sourcing at that time, so I was cautious about talking trash on a service I’d never even heard of before. But the more I heard about their overall experience, the more I realized they really needed help and there were probably a hundred other brand owners just like them across the city that needed it too.
Over the years, I’ve heard countless stories from brand owners, large and small, just like this. About Alibaba or going down some similarly dark internet rabbit hole to find a factory overseas that would make their product. Sending hundreds of emails into the abyss, often never hearing back. If they did hear back, communication was poor and 9x out of 10, in the end they either never received their product after having paid for it, or they received it damaged.
Nothing makes me more upset than waste. Wasting time, wasting fabric, wasting trims, wasting money. It’s for this reason, I’m deeply passionate about helping smaller brands grow thoughtfully and safely. It’s an honor and a privilege to be able to protect my clients from such negative, wasteful, and sometimes damaging experiences.
I worked with the guy’s down Broadway for 3 years until they grew large enough to hire their own Sourcing team and Technical Designers. I was thrilled the day they told me. It’s never my goal to keep my clients for eternity but rather my greatest joy to help them learn to stand strong on their own.
With love and light – Stay safe, stay stylish, stay humble…
XO
Erin
Founder
Product Haus
