Recently, I have been on social media quite a bit. Much more than I usually am. I have been attempting to do some research into what is going on in fashion and the fashion industry. I’m new to this so I am trying to learn more about it, as often as I can, and expand my knowledge of trends, fabrics, colors, techniques, anything I can that I believe will help us. As it is for probably any subject, if a person has limited knowledge of that subject, it can be difficult to find useful information simply because you may not even know what you are looking for. So lately, I have been doing that on social media, looking for current sources of information that can benefit my knowledge. I have started to find some real good content out there and although I have not been able to focus on one subject related to fashion and dig deep into it, I am finding a lot of content that is getting me to think more about things I may not have considered before or subjects I had zero knowledge of. I’m starting to find it very helpful.
One subject I have found that isn’t really what I am looking for is that there seems to be a fair number of people out there who have started their own clothing brands and been very successful. So successful in fact, that they are now showing others how to do it. This is great. It’s awesome that a resource like that can be available to anyone who wants it and can find it. But it did get me thinking…if this many people sharing their experiences have made a brand and they are teaching others, many others presumably, then how many brands are out there? That could be a lot of competition for my wife and I’s company. I started looking deeper into this and watching some of these videos and finding out what we were up against. It became clear pretty quickly that most of these brands were streetwear focused, in fact, I don’t think I saw anything that wasn’t. Streetwear is very popular right now so I guess that makes sense. This is good for us also, fortunately. We don’t make streetwear and we have no desire to.
I prefer to wear simple, well-made and high-quality clothing. So that is what we make and that is what we sell. Starting with t-shirts and soon to introduce other products. The demand for clothing is massive and it is only expected to grow in the coming years, so the volume of companies really doesn’t worry me, there should be room for everyone. In fact, this large number of clothing brands may actually help us. I would assume the person who would want to purchase one of our premium t-shirts probably isn’t in the market for streetwear t-shirts. So, the preponderance of streetwear brands might motivate our potential customer to do a little more searching, ultimately to find us. This may be wishful thinking but I’d prefer to consider it positive thinking.
There seem to be so many new brands in the market that I have to wonder about the quality of their product. I have found over the past few years that getting a product to market is no easy feat. Particularly if you have no experience and are not sure of what you are doing. We looked for and were fortunate to meet people who know the industry, fabrics and manufacturers and this was a huge help. It still took us nearly three years to launch. This leads me to get the impression that most of these new brands are in this simply to make money. Nothing wrong with that of course, it’s one of the things that motivate us. But our main goal was to bring a t-shirt to the market that I was looking for but was unable to find. With the help of our very experienced Project Manager, we were able to select fabrics, get our pattern made, find a manufacturer and choose colors. This was a serious project that took a lot of time and we only had one product with two fabrics. How do these other companies do it? Is quality even a concern or consideration?
Thinking about all these things over the past few months as well as constantly checking out other companies t-shirts quality while out at the mall makes me think that perhaps the t-shirt is kind of the cash cow of the fashion industry. Pretty easy to manufacture, everyone wears them, you can price it for virtually any customer and the majority of people are never too concerned about quality. For these reasons, I believe it has allowed the quality of t-shirts to fall off over the years or at least, it makes lower quality easier to get away with. A gradual lowering of people’s expectations.
I notice I’ve been rambling a little on my last few blogs. I need to correct that. My hope is that with the products that we have and will be releasing in the future, it will allow people who do care about quality to get something they deserve that they may not have been able to find previously. And along with other companies who are also making quality clothing, hopefully the bar will get raised on people’s expectations of what they deserve for the money they spend. Once you get used to having a high-quality product, it’s difficult to go back to the cheap stuff. You deserve the high-quality product. Have a look at what we have to offer in our premium cotton t-shirts. Once you try them, you may never go back to what you were used to.
