Friday, September 30, 2016

Fashion Production Standards: My Trip to Macy's

I mentioned in my last blog post that I'm taking the Fashion Industry Essentials online certificate program through Parsons School of Design and Teen Vogue. For an assignment called Production Standards, we were asked to go to a store that carries different brands and try on various articles of clothing, like tops, bottoms, dresses, and jackets. We were asked to pick the item that fit best and try on every "identical" item in the same size to see if there were any differences between them. I decided to go to Macy's for this assignment since it carries a number of different brands. It was fun to look around Macy's and pick out clothes. I found some good stuff!

I tried on a lot of clothes. Including number and letter sizes, four different sizes fit me well: two different number sizes and two different letter sizes, which emphasized to me that it's important to try things on because one single number or letter size doesn't always fit me best. I tried on a Karen Scott three quarter sleeve top in a pretty pool blue, which was a letter size, but it was too big and they didn't have a smaller size. I also tried on International Concepts (INC for short) tops in the same size as the Karen Scott top, and they fit well. So the same size in different brands may not fit the same. The Karen Scott top might have been bigger because Karen Scott seems to target older women, while INC seems to target younger women.


Here's some of the clothes I tried on in the fitting room. I liked the combination of pink, purple, blue, black, and white. I've been looking for something with black and white stripes, so I bought the INC striped top in the front. The Karen Scott top I was talking about is in the back. The picture unfortunately doesn't fully do the pretty color of the top justice.

I picked an INC sleeveless top for the item that fit best and I tried on every identical top in the same size. There seemed to be subtle differences in the overall length of the top and in the size of the armholes: the underarms on some of the tops were slightly lower than on others. I thought this assignment was interesting and valuable because I never thought about the differences between identical items that are the same size. I always assumed that they are the same, but now I realize that isn't always true. I never thought about the fact that there's human error involved in fashion production, even though it can be subtle.


Here's the INC top that fit best. I tried on all of the tops identical to this one in the same size in this color and in different colors and patterns. I bought it in this color (I love hot pink) and in black. I love the mod look of it and the circle zipper pull.

Wednesday, September 28, 2016

Fashion Production Costs

I'm taking an online certificate program called Fashion Industry Essentials through Parsons School of Design and Teen Vogue. One assignment was to design an accessory. I designed earrings made with these beautiful transparent blue paillettes that I connected with jump rings. I used ear posts with cubic zirconia stones to add sparkle. Another assignment was to calculate the cost of making our accessory if we were just selling one or a few of them, and the cost of making it if we were selling a lot of them, or wholesale.

Here are the earrings I made  ^_^

The table below called Transparent Blue Paillette Earrings #1 shows the cost of making the earrings if I was just selling one or a few pairs of them. The assignment said to use a wage that we would expect a local clothing retailer to pay us. I used $9 because that's the minimum wage where I live and I wanted to keep the cost as low as possible, because the costs of the materials made the estimated retail price for the earrings higher than I hoped.

Transparent Blue Paillette Earrings #1
Paillettes
$3.56
Jump rings
$2.68
Earring posts
$6.55
Cubic zirconia stones
$3.12
Earring backs
$2.18
1.667 hours @ $9
$15.00
Total production cost
$33.09
20% profit
$6.62
Total cost plus profit
$39.71
Estimated retail price
$42.00

The table below, Transparent Blue Paillette Earrings #2, shows the cost of making the earrings if I was selling them wholesale. I was able to buy all of the materials in bulk, and the bulk prices for all of the materials was lower. Still, I had to shorten the time it took to make the earrings from 1 hour and 40 minutes to 1 hour so that I could keep the total cost plus profit for selling the earrings wholesale, which was $20.66, under half of the estimated retail price, which was $42.00. I didn't want to shorten the production time any more than I did because I didn't want to sacrifice the quality of the earrings.

Transparent Blue Paillette Earrings #2
Paillettes (in bulk)
$0.69
Jump rings (in bulk)
$1.31
Earring posts (in bulk)
$4.06
Cubic zirconia stones (in bulk)
$1.28
Earring backs (in bulk)
$0.88
1 hour @ $9
$9.00
Total production cost
$17.22
20% profit
$3.44
Total cost plus profit
$20.66
Estimated retail price
$42.00

I never calculated production costs before, so learning how to do it for the earrings I made was very useful. I learned that production costs should reflect the cost of every material needed to make the item, the amount of labor, and a certain amount of profit. Another thing I learned is that the total cost plus profit for selling the earrings wholesale should be less than half of the estimated retail price so that the stores I'm selling the earrings to can also profit and mark down the price of the earrings if necessary. Calculating production costs also showed me that materials cost less in bulk.

I also learned that effective pricing considers production costs and quality with the target customer audience in mind. The estimated retail price for the earrings ended up being higher than I wanted it to be. When I made these earrings, I focused more on quality, and maybe not enough on cost. If I made these earrings again, I would try to balance cost and quality more by looking for materials that cost less without sacrificing quality to lower the estimated retail price.