Coat Manufacturing Boot Camp Kick Off: July 7, 2015
Above: staff designers for the coat manufacturing project. Left to right: Dara Ambriz, Violet Ahmie, Cindy Murdock, Christin Yingling and Kim Anderson.
So here’s how it went down:
We met at 6:30 PM at the factory, most people were early (!). After a tour of the facilities and introductions, we got down to business. Slave drivers that we are, we started with the homework; each designer needs to complete the following before next Tuesday’s meeting
- Develop a “buyer” profile; the party that will accept and distribute the coats in keeping with our guidelines.
- Develop a consumer profile; who is this child? What are their ages, sex -what are their lives like?
- Product research: come up with 3 key features our coats must have. Come up with 3 features to avoid.
- Come up with suitable fabric suggestions.
- Develop sketches to be presented next session that incorporate all the above.
Call it teaching to the test but we gave the homework first and then filled in the information that would help our designers complete their tasks successfully.
Agenda for our next meeting, July 14, 2015 (you can still sign up):
- We’ll select our buyers.
- We’ll select a design and begin work on the design specs.
- We’ll discuss appropriate fabrics and their associated costs (to include machines etc).
- We’ll order sample fabrics.
- In short, begin the pattern and sewing of the first design that same weekend (July 18-19, time TBD).
We’ll keep you posted as we progress!
So exciting! We are rooting for y’all from Texas.