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At Clothly, we set a new global standard for apparel production. We connect brands with…
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Daan Koster heeft dit gedeeldYou offer XS to XXL on your first order. You just destroyed your own margin before you made a single sale. This is one of the most common mistakes we see at Clothly from brands that are launching for the first time. A six-size run sounds inclusive. It is also six times the complexity. Every size needs its own pattern grade. Every size takes up a slot in the factory's cutting schedule. Every size adds to your minimum order calculation. And when your XXL sells out and your XS sits untouched, you have dead stock in a size you never had demand data for. You did not serve more customers. You diluted your capital across a size curve you invented. The brands that launch smart start with three sizes. The middle of the bell curve. The sizes with the highest statistical demand in their target market. They sell out faster. They reorder with data. They add sizes on round two when they know exactly which ones to add. A size range is not a statement about your brand values. It is a production decision with direct margin consequences. Inclusive sizing is a worthy goal. It is a round three goal. Not a round one goal. Launch in the sizes you can sell. Not the sizes you hope to sell. #sourcing #fashionbusiness #manufacturing #supplychain #clothly #apparelproduction #fashionproduction
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Daan Koster heeft dit gedeeldYour first collection has 12 styles. That is not a launch strategy. That is a bankruptcy plan. We see this every month at Clothly. A new brand comes in with a full collection. Tops, bottoms, outerwear, accessories. Different fabrics, different constructions, different factories. They want to launch everything at once because they are afraid of having too little. The fear is understandable. The math is fatal. 12 styles means 12 minimum orders. 12 fabric sourcing processes. 12 sets of samples. 12 chances for a quality failure before you have sold a single unit. And when three of those styles sell out and nine sit in a warehouse, you do not have a business. You have a very expensive lesson in demand forecasting. The brands we have seen scale fastest started with three styles maximum. They ordered deep on those three. They understood the construction inside out. They built a factory relationship on volume that actually meant something. And when they reordered, they had data. A focused collection is not a limitation. It is leverage. One style at 500 units teaches you more about your customer than twelve styles at 50 units each. And it costs you half the capital to find out. Launch less. Learn faster. Scale what works. #sourcing #fashionbusiness #manufacturing #supplychain #clothly #apparelproduction #fashionproduction
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Daan Koster heeft dit gedeeldA question for the factories. You have the machines. You have the capacity. You have 15 years of production experience for Western brands. But the brand still found your competitor first. Not because they are better. Because they showed up on Google. Because they had a website in English. Because they ran Meta ads that reached the buyer before you did. Marketing in Western markets from Asia is a different game. The platforms are unfamiliar. The language is a barrier. The ad accounts get flagged. The payment infrastructure does not cooperate. So here is a genuine question I have been thinking about. If a factory could get guaranteed, direct access to serious Western clothing brands, not leads, not inquiries, but qualified brands actively looking for production, what would that be worth per month? Not a theoretical number. A real one. Because I am trying to understand where the gap actually sits between what factories would invest and what it costs to build that pipeline from the Western side. Factories: what would you pay for direct access to qualified brand conversations per month? #manufacturing #sourcing #fashionbusiness #supplychain #apparelmanufacturing #factories #clothly
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Daan Koster heeft dit gedeeld"Can we make a small change?" Six words that cost more than the original order. The fabric is already cut. The production line is set up. The operators are three days into your run. And the brand wants to move the chest pocket 2cm to the left. There is no such thing as a small change in bulk production. A 2cm pocket adjustment means stopping the line, pulling the pattern, recalibrating the marker, and recutting the affected panels. On a 500-unit order, that is not an afternoon. That is a three-day delay, a fabric yield recalculation, and a cost your original quote did not include. Every factory we work with at Clothly has a version of this story. And the brands that make mid-production changes are rarely aware of what they just triggered. The moment bulk cutting starts, the design is closed. That is not a factory rule. That is the physics of manufacturing. A production line is not a sample room. It does not pause and restart without a cost. The brands that never pay for mid-production changes are the ones who make every decision before the order is placed. They review the final sample against the spec. They approve every detail in writing. They treat the production sign-off as the last moment to change anything, because it is. A change before production is a decision. A change during production is an invoice. #sourcing #manufacturing #fashionproduction #supplychain #clothly #fashionbusiness #apparelproduction
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Daan Koster heeft dit gedeeldSample round one: the collar is 1cm too wide. Sample round two: the collar is fixed, but now the hem is wrong. Sample round three: the hem is fixed, but the fabric feels different from round one. By round four, nobody remembers what the original approved reference was. This is the most expensive loop in fashion production. And it almost always starts with the same root cause: the brand did not have a complete specification before the first sample was ordered. A sample revision is not a design process. It is a cost. Every round adds two to four weeks to your timeline. Every round costs the factory material, labor, and machine time. Every round increases the chance that the final bulk no longer matches the reference anyone actually agreed on. At Clothly we do not start sampling without a locked specification. Not because we are rigid. Because we have seen what happens to budgets and relationships when a brand tries to design through the sampling process. A sample should confirm a spec. It should not replace one. Factories that work with brief-first brands produce better samples, faster, and with fewer rounds. Brands that lock their spec before sampling get to market earlier and with a product they actually intended to build. The brands paying for five sample rounds are not being thorough. They are paying for the specification they should have written in week one. #sourcing #manufacturing #fashionproduction #supplychain #clothly #fashionbusiness #apparelproduction
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Daan Koster heeft dit gedeeldThe brand takes 3 weeks to approve a sample. Then asks the factory to deliver in 4 weeks. Every factory we work with has this story. And every brand that tells us about their "unreliable supplier" is usually the one who caused the delay. Production planning is a two-way contract. When a brand sits on a sample approval for three weeks, they do not pause the factory's calendar. The factory fills that slot with another client. Your production window moves. Your delivery date moves with it. And when you finally approve, you are no longer in the schedule you were quoted for. The factory did not fail you. You failed the timeline. At Clothly we enforce approval deadlines with our clients the same way factories enforce production deadlines with us. Because we have seen what happens on both sides when that discipline breaks down. A factory that respects your deadline needs a brand that respects theirs. The brands that get the best output from their factories are not the ones with the biggest orders. They are the ones who respond in 24 hours, approve on time, and treat the production schedule like the business-critical document it is. Reliability is not something you demand from a supplier. It is something you build together. #sourcing #manufacturing #supplychain #fashionbusiness #clothly #fashionproduction #apparelmanufacturing
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Daan Koster heeft dit gedeeldShein can put a new product live in 7 days. Their customers are returning 30% of it. Speed without specification is just fast failure. We have had three brands come to Clothly in the last six months with the same story. They tried to compete on price and turnaround. They found a cheap supplier. They moved fast. And they ended up with a return rate that wiped their margin on the entire collection. Here is what Shein actually taught the market: consumers will order fast. They will also return fast. And the brand absorbs every cent of that. The race to the bottom on price and speed has a finishing line. It is called dead stock and a closed Shopify store. The brands that are winning right now are not faster than Shein. They are better than Shein. They compete on fit consistency, material integrity, and a product that does not fall apart after four washes. That is not a sourcing trend. That is the only defensible position left for independent brands. At Clothly we work exclusively with brands that want to build something that lasts. Not the fastest product. Not the cheapest product. The one that comes back for a reorder because the customer kept it. The brands that survive the Shein era will not be the ones who copied the model. They will be the ones who made it irrelevant. #sourcing #fashionbusiness #manufacturing #supplychain #clothly #shein #fashionproduction
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Daan Koster heeft dit gedeeldYour best-selling hoodie is sold out. Your slow-moving jacket is in 400 units in a warehouse. That is not bad luck. That is a planning failure that started before production. Most startup brands do not order what the market needs. They order what the factory's MOQ allows. The factory says 300 units minimum. The brand has demand for 180. So they order 300, spread the extra across sizes they are not sure about, and hope the market fills the gap. It rarely does. We see this pattern constantly at Clothly. Brands come to us with dead stock problems. But the dead stock is not the problem. It is the outcome. The problem is that MOQ became the production plan. A minimum order quantity is a factory constraint. It is not a demand forecast. The brands that get this right do three things differently. They validate demand before they place an order. They size their curve based on historical sales data, not gut feeling. And they find factories whose MOQ aligns with their actual volume, not the volume they hope to reach someday. Overstock does not kill brands slowly. It kills them fast, through cash flow. The most expensive units you will ever produce are the ones sitting in a warehouse six months after your launch. #sourcing #fashionbusiness #manufacturing #supplychain #clothly #apparelproduction #fashionproduction
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Daan Koster heeft dit gedeeld"We split the order across two factories to reduce our risk." That is not risk management. That is risk multiplication. We hear this reasoning from brands regularly. One factory feels like a single point of failure. Two factories feels like a safety net. The logic makes sense until you are six weeks into production. Factory A is running your tops. Factory B is running your bottoms. They sourced fabric from different suppliers. The dye lots do not match. The hand-feel is different. The sizing runs 1cm apart because they each interpreted your Tech Pack slightly differently. You now have two half-collections that do not belong together. Splitting production does not eliminate the risk of one factory failing. It guarantees that you are managing two production floors, two quality standards, two communication lines, and two sets of problems simultaneously. The brands that scale do the opposite. They consolidate volume into fewer factories and go deeper with each one. The factory learns your standards. Your spec becomes their default. Quality becomes a habit, not a checkpoint. A factory that makes 3,000 units for you per season has a reason to protect that relationship. A factory making 500 units of a split order has nothing to lose. Concentration builds leverage. Splitting destroys it. #sourcing #manufacturing #supplychain #fashionbusiness #clothly #apparelproduction #fashionproduction
Daan Koster heeft gereageerd op commentaar
8 u
Sanjita Prasad Staging raw materials is operationally superior to financing finished dead stock, but claiming "money tied up is not lost" is a dangerous complacency.
Daan Koster heeft gereageerd op commentaar
8 u
agung tetelepta Exactly. Attempting to "delight" a hypothetical customer with a broad size curve is an expensive illusion. Without rigorous, upfront market research, inclusive sizing is just unhedged speculation.
Daan Koster heeft gereageerd op commentaar
9 u
Sumit Chhabra Exactly. Prematurely scaling a size curve under the guise of inclusivity is a direct threat to early-stage liquidity.
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