When asked about my job, I tell people I do production in the garment industry, usually I get a blank stare and apologetic response asking what that means. I also had a friend who thought production’s primary job is to examine hangers all day. Before I started in this field, I, too, had no idea. I thought fashion was glamorous; you could combine art with fashion, be creative in everyday wear- making it aesthetically pleasing and functional at the same time. Trends will change- so you will never get bored, there will be fashion shows you could get backstage passes to and you will know the trends before it even hits the market. Sounded very exciting and appealing!
First job interview was on the 27th floor of a building which overlooked times square. Ernest and Young was right across the street, you could see their sign and their spacious office right next door. At the interviewer’s office, who was also the VP of that division, you could see statue of liberty from afar. It really seemed promising; the environment seemed nice and there were promises of growing (I remember the words “we want ambitious candidates who want to grow, we know you just want to get a foot in the door”).
As with moderate wear (synonymous with sportswear or casual wear), there are no fashion shows. Most styles are created through “shopping.” Shopping is a term for visiting stores and buying samples, slightly adjusting the measurements to fit the moderate wear sizes, slightly alternating trims to make the price points more affordable and slightly changing fabrication to reduce cost even further.
Production’s job starts once initial Techpacks are created. Techpacks are sent to different factories for competitive pricing and development. Factories will send samples based on techpacks; the samples are then passed to design and sales so they could comment; if they liked the samples, they would be shown to customer and during market week where customers from all over the country visit the showroom, they would react. It’s not very scientific and there is not a lot of training to be a buyer; most of the times you would hear generic comments like “I think it looks very cute,” or “It’s kinda ugly, I don’t like it.” Those comments determine whether a style is developed or not. They are not the sole determiners since price is very important; sales need to achieve a certain margin (market margin is over 20% which is considered acceptable, but really depends on the company).
Once we get an order from a customer or sales, production places the order with vendors and monitors and takes care of the order until it is delivered to the warehouse. Here are some rough steps of production which is also known as product managing:
1) Production makes sure Time and action (T&A) makes sense from approval dates, to knitting, to fabric dying to cutting, to sewing and packing.
2) We keep track of approvals and make sure they are sent in a timely matter in case they are rejected which may or may not hurt delivery depending on how much time we padded or did not pad (an example is if the cancellation date is 2/13, we need to pad extra time in case something goes wrong, so we would probably want it in our warehouse by 1/20 so we have time for domestic routing and errors). Approvals include trims, lab dips for color, fabric for quality, handfeel & weight, first fit sample (available fabric), Pre production sample (usually in approved fabric and color), TOP (top of production which should be reflective of what is shipped).
3) Packing is important since what we want to do to be cost effective is to ship goods to warehouse and route it domestically and be done with. Production is responsible for telling factory how to pack. Packing includes small details like polybag to warning on polybags, care labels, main labels, price tickets, hangers, sizers to carton marking. It’s a lot of meticulously tedious work but they all need to be monitored through photos and the TOPs that we receive.
4) Packing list and ASN (Advance shipment notice)- We need to make sure the quantities are correct; if not, we would have to tell sales of overages/shortages and reasons for it. It also depends on the company, but at a company I worked at before, we also had to push vendors for correct shipping documents to ensure shipment won’t get stuck at the airport or at the dock.
5) Once it’s in the warehouse, we are done. Except if there is an issue- meaning if it’s packed incorrectly, damaged or mismanaged. Then we would have to audit.
So if I were to explain production job in two sentences, I usually tell people, we have to place an order with factories and make sure it gets to the warehouse on time. In reality, production encompasses a lot, you have to have a good memory and be very organized, track things down and try your best to make sure everything goes smoothly. It can be frustrating at times because you realized no matter how perfectly you try to do your job, things are bounded to go haywire. You also have to be tough skinned because you have to fight with sales and design at times since we all have different objectives. Sales want to sell more and make more money obviously, they want their delivery and hate to hear “no,” Design wants their conceptual idea that are beyond our budgets a lot of times or quality/designs that are not within budgets, and as production, the logical and rational one, we want to be realistic of what our means are and how to maintain delivery or when to ask for extension if needed.
Time is sensitive and time matters. There are times when we shoot out 100 emails a day; I think my job makes me neurotic and sensitive sometimes. Time matters too much; sometimes you have to tell yourself, slow down for a moment even when you’re rushed and pushed, access the situation, don’t give your spontaneous response because that could be the worst answer ever! One thing production has taught me is things will never go as planned but it’s never the end of the world. It is like being pessimistic optimistically.
Happy Wednesday!
nanansa 