Wednesday, May 16, 2012

How to Price

We are really struggling about how to price this product. I imagine every designer goes through this at one time or another. I guess that means we're getting close to selling.
:)
We had one price in mind initially. Then we found out how expensive it really is to do business in this country. We get it - there's a higher standard of living here to support.
So we upped the price a little more.

Now we find out all of our design details incrementally increase the labor cost.

Lets talk about grommets - who knew these little metal circles would be such a pain in the ass.
Not many sewing contractors have the machine to install the grommet into clothing. So its vended out to someone else.

Ok, we can handle that. Oh, there's a minimum quantity requirement? Like everything else in this business, the more you buy, the cheaper it is. Well, the grommets (of which we had 4 per suit) added an extra $1 in labor per suit. We didn't want to pass that along to the consumer. So we changed the design at the last minute to only include one grommet - on the pocket bottom center to drain out the water. Well the vendor upped the labor price since we only had one grommet per suit. Sigh.

Then there's bar tacks - which are in essence sturdy bars of thread that anchor stress points in a garment - ie. a pocket flap. Well, there's not a lot of machines here that do that kind of sewing anymore. Again, we go forth to look for yet another vendor. They charge per bar tack.

So our labor costs look like this:
Sewing contractor + grommet vendor + bar tack vendor = total labor cost

What we've decided to do is split the increase between sizes. Small and Medium sizes will be slightly
less than Large and X-Large. Regardless, this is an Anti Chafe ,Pro comfort swimsuit!

At this point, we make $4 per suit.
Its really the best we can do with the current amount of volume we have as well as what we feel the consumer can bear. If we move 1000 of these suits, then we can start to achieve small scales of volume.

We'll keep you posted.

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

The bumps at the Finish

Who ever said it would be a smooth ride to the finish?  As we waited for  the final shipment to make it to the sewing contractor, unforeseen events really turned up the heat a bit.

This entire process from start to finish has been a roller coaster ride for us newbies. The truck with the last of our materials got stuck at the US / Canadian border. It was delayed by 2 days because of increased border security.  We were totally sweating it since we are on the sewing contractors calendar for only a specific range of days.

Soon after that hurdle was cleared, the same truck found it nearly impossible to navigate it's way through NYC's streets due to the Occupy Wall Street Protesters.  Now 3 days late. Are you kidding me? Ay Carumba. Who would have factored all of this into our plan ?

Final outcome - we missed our spot in the queue on the sewing contractor's calendar.

NoNetz, the first ever Anti Chafe swimwear will be ready to ship its first boys line by June 18, 2012 .

We just have to go with - like everything else . Stay calm and carry on.
We'll keep you posted.