Manufacturing your product, from concept to production.
One of the hardest parts of ecommerce entrepreneurship is manufacturing your first product, but as retail and technology has changed, it's also become easier than ever. Today we'll pull back the curtain on finding a manufacturer with a man who has decades of experience.
Our guest today, Charles Kaliman, has helped big box retail stores launch new brands and find manufacturing supply chains. He collaborated in launching brands such as I.N.C., Structure, Everlast, and Gant.
You'll hear:
Charles has been in leadership positions holding operational responsibility at major retailers and brands. Charles’ international experience has provided him with a deep understanding of a dynamic and ever-changing global manufacturing base. He developed relationships with leading global vendors and travelled extensively to factories in Asia, India, Bangladesh, Central America and the USA.
Kurt Elster: As a marketer, as a e-commerce professional, as a Shopify partner, as an entrepreneur myself, there’s one thing that has always intimidated me, eluded me, and impressed me, and that’s manufacturing a product. See, it’s one thing to private label something that already existed out in the world, or to create an info product. I’m very comfortable with digital stuff, so I could do that. But actually having an idea in your head, making it a reality, and then mass producing it at scale, that always just blows me away. I’m so impressed by people who are able to do that, and naturally, in my job as an e-commerce consultant, I have worked with so many folks who have done this, and almost universally there are roadblocks. There’s no one who just went, “Yeah, I decided to do it and it was easy.” That’s never happened.
So, I understand where people could be hesitant to move forward with manufacturing something, and at our last Shopify meetup, I met a man who said, “Oh, well, that’s what I do. I help people manufacture things.” Joining me today to talk to about it is Charles Kaliman, who is the founder and president of Kaliman Consulting, and listen to this: He’s an experienced merchandiser in big department store retail. He’s got expertise in everything we need to know about global sourcing, product development, product lifecycle management, vendor management and supply chain, et cetera. But not just as a consultant. He’s had leadership positions with big responsibility at these major retailers, so he’s collaborated in launching brands that I wear. INC, International Concepts, if you’ve ever seen that great brand from Macy’s, Structure, Everlast, and GANT.
His international experience has provided him with a deep understanding of this ever-changing global manufacturing base, and he is going to talk us through it today so you can get comfortable with it, and if you’ve got that big idea, be able to move forward with it and get it out of your head and into the world. So Charles, tell me about yourself. What are you doing here?
Charles Kaliman: Thank you, Kurt. Well, you know, I worked for… As you alluded, I worked for large companies for my entire career, large department stores, and all the way along the process, I learned by trial and error, by experience, by making mistakes, all the ins and outs of sourcing products, predominantly overseas. And to a lot of people, you’re right, it sounds a little bit intimidating, but you have to really have a really good understanding of what is involved in manufacturing, and a lot of times what you see is really not what you get.
Kurt Elster: How so?
Charles Kaliman: Well, I think that a lot of times manufacturers will approach you and show you what great manufacturers they are, they’ll show you what great products they make, and great factories. But in reality, a lot of times that’s not the case, so when I left my last company, which was a large retailer, I decided that why don’t I take all this experience, and instead of working for another manufacturer or another big retailer, try to use my experience to help small brands, startups, small companies that have an e-commerce or brick-and-mortar business, and try to help them along the way on how to develop product and how to find the right vendors and right manufacturers.
Kurt Elster: To give us an idea of your experience, what you’ve done, and why we should care, what do you think your biggest career win is? What’s the one thing that you’re really proud of?
Charles Kaliman: What I’m really proud of is that over my career, I developed great relationships with key manufacturers that make quality product around the world. And that’s very important, because when you source product, you have to look at the short term, and you have to look at the long term, and there’s always a manufacturer that is gonna help you out in the short term, but it’s much more difficult to develop long-term relationships that are going to help your brand and your company, and also the manufacturer itself. And being successful is developing that relationship and that trust.
Kurt Elster: This is phenomenal that this is the thing you opened with unprompted, because everyone I’ve talked to who has manufactured a product, almost universally, when I’ve said, “All right, what would you have done differently?” They say, “I would have gone and met the manufacturer face to face sooner. I would have gone and toured the factory. I would have made that relationship.” And when I talk to people who’ve been successful with manufacturing, that’s just a part of their business is like, “All right, it’s the annual trip to go see the factory, to go meet the people who are actually making these products,” because that seems to make a huge difference in success. Why do you think that is?
Charles Kaliman: I think it’s because you need to have an understanding on who you’re doing business with. When I worked for these large retailers, you had a lot of support groups. You have quality control, you have representatives overseas, you had people that managed your business, and in reality, if you really wanted to, you could place orders and do business overseas without even traveling. But my success, what I thought was very important, is to visit almost all the factories that I’ve done business with. Have a really understanding how the factories work, and dealing with the owners, and walking through the factory floor, and understanding what makes a good product, what does not make a good product, what makes a good factory, what is not a good factory, and why, and I think that’s really the success.
Now, every startup and every entrepreneur doesn’t have the ability to do that or the resources to do that, and that’s really why I started my business, because I have that experience, so they… I may not be able to go to every factory around the world for them, but I know that over the years, I’ve built relationships with key factories that I know are factories that a young entrepreneur, or a young startup, how to connect them with key vendors and key factories that are gonna help them and be partners. And that, to me, that’s very important. There’s a difference between having a manufacturer manufacture your product, and having a manufacturer be a partner to your business, and that’s very, very crucial, because it has to be kind of a two-way street.
Kurt Elster: If it’s a two-way street, the idea is to elevate this from a transactional relationship to more of a business partnership, where you are dependent on each other for success, you are looking out for each other’s success, and that starts with visiting the factory?
Charles Kaliman: It’s visiting the factory. You really, my philosophy is you want the vendor and the factory to be an extension of your brand, okay?
Kurt Elster: Okay.
Charles Kaliman: And that, to me, is very important, meaning that if your brand and your product has some social ethos, environmental ethos, sustainability, you want to work with a vendor that has the same philosophy and the same way of doing business. If you are a young business and you don’t have the organization to develop internally all your products, and hire all your designers, and be able to procure or research fabrics and materials, you want a vendor that is going to be partnered with you and help you do that along the way. But e-commerce brands, emerging brands, a lot of them don’t have the ability to do that, so you want a partner that is able to do that for you.
In essence, they are seeing an opportunity to help you grow the business. As you grow your business, their business will grow, as well.
Kurt Elster: Before I even start looking for the factory, how do I know when I’m ready? I’ve got the idea in my head, something something happens, and then I go out and start trying to find a partner to manufacture this for me. What’s that something something? What’s in between? When do I know that I’m ready to go find that factory?
Charles Kaliman: Well, I think that you know you’re ready when you have done your due diligence, and you’ve already found factories and vendors that are able to make your product. I think, so as you’re developing the product, you have to think as well, what is the supply chain gonna look like, and what are the vendors and factories that are going to be able to take your idea from a concept to an actual production?
Kurt Elster: For the sake of this conversation, give me an example product that we’ll talk through just to illustrate things. Something that you would be comfortable with in your career manufacturing.
Charles Kaliman: Okay, so let’s assume that I want to develop an activewear line. A women’s activewear line, which is very, very hot right now. The whole leisure business, and the entire workout wear, yoga wear. I have an idea. I have great ideas and great designs. How do I go about doing this?
Okay, I would first start going to trade shows that are in the industry. There’s the MAGIC show in Las Vegas twice a year, and you have-
Kurt Elster: What’s it called?
Charles Kaliman: It’s called MAGIC.
Kurt Elster: MAGIC? All right.
Charles Kaliman: Yeah, it’s called MAGIC. It’s men’s-
Kurt Elster: This is not gonna be hard to Google. MAGIC Vegas.
Charles Kaliman: MAGIC Las Vegas is Men’s Apparel Garment International… exactly I don’t know what the last word is, but it’s called MAGIC. You start looking for vendors, and factories, and fabric mills that are going to be able to take your idea and your concept to the next level in production. They’re also, it’s a lot of information, a lot of publications in the industry, trade organizations. One is called the AFAA, which specializes in apparel and footwear, apparel manufacturing. These are all areas that you can do your research and your due diligence, to see who is going to be able to help you along the line, to take you from your concept and an idea for this particular activewear line, and be able to help you along the way and find a way for you to manufacture it.
A lot of times you find a manufacturer and a factory, and you have to do… You have to verify, and to make sure that these are legitimate factories, so you can’t just take it just what’s on the website. You also have agents that, around the world, in Hong Kong, in China, and around the world, they’re gonna be able to help you, that you can hire to help you find the right vendors and the right factories, to help you with the right process. It all depends on whether these vendors and these agents are going to be able to work with you. Depending on your volume, a lot of them have fees that you might able to afford, you might not be able to afford, or they have a lot of restrictions.
The other way is to hire someone like myself, an expert in the industry that’s had a lot of experience, that can help you maneuver through the pathway on how to develop, who to contact, who are the right factories, what are the right vendors, what are the right platforms, the right organizations for you to belong with. There’s a lot of ways that you can find and take you from an idea to production.
Kurt Elster: With Alibaba, in the e-commerce space, the first thing I would do is go on Alibaba and try to find a manufacturer that way. That seemed to be the thing to do, but then I started hearing horror stories for people who had done this and had lost money, or… Eventually they all succeeded, but they spent more than they needed to in advance, and what I learned was when dealing with these representatives remotely, you could be dealing with… Ideally you want to be dealing with the manufacturer directly, but you may not be dealing with them. You could be dealing with an agent that is representing a whole bunch of them. You could be dealing with a distributor. And that seemed to be the three categories, and it was tough to tell.
If you weren’t in this industry, if you didn’t have experience in this space, it would be difficult for you to tell those things apart. That was my understanding.
Charles Kaliman: Yeah. No, it is, it is, and I’ve made those mistakes in my career, as well, even working for large organizations. So, basically you have three different types of factories, and I call factories and vendors synonymously, but there’s a difference. In sites like Alibaba and so forth, you may have a factory. Well, is the factory a vendor? Is the factory a factory that has an organization that can help you with the procurement of materials and fabrics, or is it just a very small manufacturer that basically requires you to give them all the information for them to manufacture your product?
Is it a trading company? A trading company has relationships with different factories around the world, or in China in this case, and the factory is the one that takes the ownership of the financing for the procurement of the fabric, dealing with you one to one, and they will utilize these factories to manufacture the product. Then you have the vendor who is the factory, okay? This is the vendor that owns the factory, that owns the finances, and owns the supply chain, that has the quality control standards, and takes responsibility for the product.
And what most people that make mistakes with Alibaba and comparable platforms is that they may deal with a factory that they really don’t know who they are, and you think you’re placing business with that factory, and reality, they’re moving production to other factories.
Kurt Elster: That seems to be, from talking to e-commerce merchants, the number one issue. The two issues they run into, and you can comment on these of course, is number one, it’s delayed. I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who has contracted a factory and had the stuff show up at the original deadline. It just seems to be a near impossibility. And then number two is you get the sample, the sample looks amazing, and then the actual product shows up and it’s not like the sample. It’s not of the same quality.
Charles Kaliman: Exactly.
Kurt Elster: Those seem to be the two things.
Charles Kaliman: Yes. Yes. That’s very typical of really what happens. Well, in my example, what ended up happening, first thing when I took over the project was to… I wanted to send somebody to that particular factory in China, so we contracted, I contracted someone to go to the factory in China, and what ended up happening was it was really not even a factory. It had a great name, great promotion and so forth, but basically it was a mom and pop workshop, and what they did is they took the orders and they found other little workshops to make their product, and because it was a seasonal garment, and it was peak production when they needed it, so what they ended happening is they started finding factories that had production space, so i.e., you basically lost control of your production schedule on quality, as well as not having the right product made for your e-commerce brand and your e-commerce site.
And that’s a very common problem, so the key is to be able to work with factories and vendors that have a couple of different things. When I look at a factory, I first look at their customer base. And that’s, to answer the… Whether it’s big or small, it doesn’t really make that much difference. You have to look at what is the factory, who do they do business with? Do they do business with Ralph Lauren, or if they do business with Ralph Lauren, they do business with some of the other better-known American brands, then that’ll tell you something. It’ll tell you something, this is a quality factory.
Do they work with clients that are very large? A Walmart, a Target? Or do they work with a lot of small brands? So, that will give you some idea of the type of factory that you’re doing business with. You also have to look at certifications, which is really important. The first thing that I would do when I’m a brand, I would look at are they WRAP certified? WRAP certified is the acronym for World Responsive Production Manufacturing, and that organization will give the factory a certification, and that means they’re producing to world standards in production.
So, if factories don’t have that certification, you’re basically taking a lot of chances, because they are not producing, or they may not be an actual factory. They may be a small subcontractor.
Kurt Elster: So, step one is I have to start finding factories. I gotta build a list of factories to vet, and whether I use a sourcing agent for that to simplify the process, I use Alibaba, I start Googling, or I go to trade shows. It sounds trade shows, at least start there to get a feel for it is the answer.
Charles Kaliman: Yes. That’s really, really where you start.
Kurt Elster: Okay.
Charles Kaliman: It’s important to look at trade shows to get an overall perspective of who’s manufacturing what, and what are the fashion trends, and what factories are doing what products.
Kurt Elster: So then, once I’ve got some potential factories, I first… I want to look at their client list, and if it’s household names, that lends tremendous trust and credibility. If they’re manufacturing things similar in my space, that’s a good sign.
Charles Kaliman: Yes.
Kurt Elster: All right, then I want to check their certifications, which helps us avoid these problems where you have factories really misrepresenting their capabilities. I want to know are they WRP, WRAP certified? I want to know if they’re ISO 9001 certified. And I want to know what are their capabilities? So you could say, “Hey, is this entire process going to be done in house, or to do embroidery you have to send it out? Or to do your printing you have to send it?” Whatever it is, because those are all points of failure.
Charles Kaliman: Yes. Absolutely.
Kurt Elster: Okay.
Charles Kaliman: I would also take a look at, and I’ve always taken a look at in my career is what are the capabilities from a technological perspective of the factory? Are these factories that have invested in technology, in advanced automatic cutting machinery, that they have the ability to do digital printing? Do they have the capabilities to do 3-D rendering? These are the things that’ll show you that a factory is an advanced factory, that is agile, that has moved forward, that has invested in their business, as opposed to a factory that basically does everything manually. That’ll tell you a lot about who you’re doing business with.
Kurt Elster: So, they should be able to do some of the pre-manufacturing planning process.
Charles Kaliman: Yes.
Kurt Elster: Or like I’ve got… I send them, “Hey, here’s my CAD file. Here’s what we’re looking for.” And then they come back to me with what? A 3-D render, a concept? What?
Charles Kaliman: Exactly. Well, when you’re developing the product with them, one of things that you want them to come back with is give you their profile. All factories and all organizations have profile of how they do business, everything about their factory, their revenue stream. Are they a small manufacturer with very little revenue? You have to take a look at how much business they do and who they do business with. A factory and a vendor that has a significant revenue stream is one that’s gonna be able to finance and help you finance your business, and finance material.
Kurt Elster: So, a great factory can actually help, through setting favorable terms, will help me finance my product. Is there anything I’ve missed, that we’re overlooking in doing our due diligence in vetting these factories, or even just in the initial search?
Charles Kaliman: Yeah, I would say one important factor, which I think is a really key factor, is how they price their products. Basically what you want to do is you want to price your products, whether it’s an initial concept or an ongoing business, with various different factories, and have the ability to see what the world price is or a common price is between different vendors, and that’ll give you some idea. So, one thing you have to overlook is how transparent is the vendor and the factory on pricing, and how consistent they are, meaning if you developed a product, a t-shirt, and you have one factory that is charging you $5, another factory is charging you $4, and here you find this great factory, great vendor, everything looks great, and they’re $2.50. I say, “Wow. This is great. I’m gonna place my orders with this factory, because I’m gonna make a lot of money, and this great pricing, and great margins.”
So, what happens is that you continue doing business the following season, and that $2.50 price now jumped to $6.50. Why did it do that? Well, this vendor is really not… was not really too interested in just doing business with you and developing relationship. They were interested in filling a capacity that they probably had, so transparency in how the factory does business with you and costs their product is really an important factor that you have to take a look at in finding the right vendor and the right partner to do business with.
Kurt Elster: So, in a factory, I’ve got essentially a bunch of workers and a bunch of machinery, and I have stuff that just isn’t in use at the moment, it’s an easy win to say, “All right, we’ll just find something. Let’s make sure we never have downtime on this stuff, on our line.” And so, a small e-commerce merchant shows up, says, “Hey, need to manufacture some things.” They say, “All right, sell them that, it’ll fill the void, we can get it done.” You do it, and then you turn around and place your next order, and suddenly the price goes up, because you just are… There’s not a relationship. It was like a one-off thing, you’re low priority.
Charles Kaliman: Exactly. That’s exactly, it’s exactly right. I mean, you have a Target that does business with a… A Target, or any of the major retailers that are doing production with a factory, and for some reason or another, they decide to cancel the order, because maybe that particular product didn’t sell well or whatever. There’s production capacity. You come as a small entrepreneur, a small e-commerce brand, and the factory will be more than happy to give you that production. The following season that production capacity is filled, and you’re out of luck.
Kurt Elster: So, how do I avoid that? How do I make sure I’m working with a factory that is looking at this as an ongoing relationship?
Charles Kaliman: Well, the first thing you have to take a look at is what I alluded before. You have to look at the customer base, so if you’re working, if you’re planning to work with a factory that is predominantly doing business with large retailers, 70% of their production is the major box store retailers, and they’re not doing too much business with brands or small brands, that’s a light bulb to tell you that they’re probably not very interested in working with you, and if they do have capacity, it’s because they just happened to have capacity for that particular time period. So, you want to look at factories that have a good mix of clients. They have some brands, they have some small brands, some larger brands, some smaller retailers, some larger retailers, because that tells you that it’s a factory that is also thinking strategically. They’re just not just wanting to just take a big contract with a big retailer and that’s it.
So, a factory that’s thinking strategically, and working with smaller brands, and upcoming brands, and e-commerce brands, those are the ones that you basically want to focus on.
Kurt Elster: One of the biggest factors, issues with manufacturing, is time to market, and this becomes exceptionally important if I have a fashion brand. You know, if I’m manufacturing jackets, and they say, “Oh yeah, we’ll get those delivered to you in September.” And then it gets delayed, delayed, delayed, and they show up in April, that’s a real problem! I missed the entire selling season. So, knowing that, what’s the best way to ensure we get a reasonable speed to market, and what are some reasonable timelines?
Charles Kaliman: There are a lot of different… There’s no one solution for speed to market, and speed to market is really, really important, because basically, especially for e-commerce brands, because it gives you the ability to react quickly to your customer needs, which a lot of times you may not know. So, there’s a lot of different ways that you can work. One of them is through digitalization, technology. In the old days, everything was done manually, through emails, through Excel spreadsheets, through faxes, and back and forth, and it took forever to get a product developed, and a product manufactured, and samples made. You did everything manually, you worked on spreadsheets, you work on sketching the specs, sending them over to a factory. The factory looked at it, they made one sample, they sent it to you, 9 times out of 10 that particular sample was probably not that great, because they probably didn’t understand exactly what you were doing, so you have to remake it. And you have the logistics of samples going back and forth from China, so at the end of the day, it could take you two to three months to get your final sample correct.
And once you have the final sample correct, you place the order, and the process just keeps dragging and dragging along. When I first started in the business a few years back, it would take you almost I would say eight to nine months from an initial concept until you get the product. With digitalization now, where you can utilize platforms, PLM platforms, product lifecycle management platforms, that everything is done… You can design it digitally. You can procure and you can cost digitally. Now with 3-D rendering, you can actually design a product digitally. You can create a pattern digitally. You can convert it to an avatar, a 3-D avatar. You can maneuver the avatar and maneuver the specs, to make sure that it’s exactly what you’re looking for. You can submit it electronically to a factory, which has to be a factory that has also the technology invested on it, and you can perfect it. And literally, you can go from a concept to production start in just weeks, because everything has been done digitally.
You might want to see the final sample after a lot of rendering, so large companies, the Walmarts, Targets, they’re all working in this process right now to shorten their supply chain, but what has done to small e-commerce brands? Now all these technology platforms, you have access to them. Before, you did not. And you can access into subscription, so a small brand can develop and utilize these technologies to react very, very quickly, and be able to compete with these large manufacturers in the right large brands at smaller scale, but just as quick.
Kurt Elster: This sounds like the future. How common is this now?
Charles Kaliman: It’s becoming more and more and more common, so you have two things. One is on-demand manufacturing, and one is customization. On-demand manufacturing is very, very common now, and is becoming more common in Europe, where fashion houses in Europe and Italy are using on-demand manufacturing in Eastern Europe. You have on-demand manufacturing in the United States and Central America, where everything is done digitally, electronically. You create 2-D patterns, it’s converted into 3-D platforms and avatars. It’s sent digitally to the factory. The factory uploads all the information, they use automatic cutting machines to cut the product, even one at a time, and it’s cut and shipped to the customer in a couple of weeks.
Kurt Elster: That’s so cool.
Charles Kaliman: It’s the coolest thing, and these are the things, when I talked a little bit earlier, and all these things, when you go to shows like MAGIC, like I mentioned before, where you have the fashion industry showing you the brands, and they show you the manufacturers, when you go to these shows, you start seeing all these services that provide all this technology for on-demand manufacturing. And that’s really the future of what’s called micro factories, where they produce in a very small scale on demand.
That’s a great way for a startup brand to manufacture. It’ll be more costly, but you’re basically manufacturing after you’re getting the orders, and that’s really important.
Kurt Elster: So, let’s say I’ve got my idea, I have been to the trade shows, and I don’t want to mess around. I want to help reduce risk for my business as I move into manufacturing my first product, or maybe I’ve been around the block once, and now I’m like, “Okay, I definitely have learned the hard way that I need help.” How can you help me? I saw you’ve got a couple offerings here.
Charles Kaliman: What I can help you is help you through the development process, give you guidance in terms of what are the fastest ways and the most efficient way to develop product? What PLM platforms, what digital platforms are gonna help you be very agile in the whole development process? And I’m gonna help you find the right manufacturers, whether it’s nearshoring, near the U.S. mainland, onshoring, the manufacturers in the United States that can do that for you, or what are the key manufacturers overseas that have the history of partnering with department stores, with brands that have a lot of integrity, and are looking for the new resurgence of e-commerce, and I can help you develop those relationships with them.
Where I can help you the most is help you strategically. I think when a lot of startup brands start, they are very reactionary. They develop the product, and who’s gonna make it for me, how am I gonna do this, but what I can help you is I can help you guide you through the whole process. Thinking strategically how to plan the business, what is the most efficient way to develop your product line? What are the reasonable timelines that are gonna take you? Who should you work with? Should you invest in digital platforms? In this day and age you can subscribe to a lot of digital platforms that are gonna help you work seamlessly through the whole development process. And who are the key vendors around the world that are gonna be able to work with you, and help you with your product, that are willing to take chances? Because a lot of great manufacturers in this day and age that have partnered with the large retailers, or the brick and mortars, who are now struggling, they’re struggling because you just go to the mall and you see all the stores that are closing, whether it’s the large, the Macy’s, the JC Penney’s, the Sears, Forever 21, all these brands that expanded and had huge retail bases, now you have all these manufacturers that depended on this brick and mortar that now are looking for new ways to manufacture. They’re looking for new partners, and what I see is I see the e-commerce world, if it’s done correctly and find the right partners, is a great opportunity for quality factories to be able to expand and diversify their customer base.
Kurt Elster: So, the shifting tide in retail, and new technology and digitization of the product development process, it sounds like it has made manufacturing products more accessible than ever to smaller businesses.
Charles Kaliman: Yes. That’s exactly right. I think it’s a great way to summarize that. It gives you the accessibility to develop and manufacture product like never before. But that accessibility needs to come with strategic thinking, the right direction, and good planning. One of the key things, so basically in order to avoid the mistakes that I have made in my career, I’ve seen other people make the mistakes, is to be able to number one, develop key relationships that we alluded before, develop always the plan B. You always have to have a plan B, because you never know when plan A is gonna fail.
Kurt Elster: So in manufacturing, what’s the backup plan? How do I set up that safety net for myself?
Charles Kaliman: Well, I think that if you have a line of activewear, you have to make sure that you have a good understanding of the entire manufacturing spectrum. Who are the key manufacturers? And you have to be able to shop around, have price with different manufacturers, develop relationships with different manufacturers, and have the ability to be able to move product, and move production where necessary, in case things go wrong. And things always are gonna go wrong in this business.
The other thing that you need to do is develop also relationships with, and have an understanding of the supply chain that provides raw materials and fabrics to your manufacturing base. Develop relationships with fabric mills, with manufacturers that provide components to the factories. Because they’re the ones also that I didn’t allude before, that also gonna provide you with great information of who they do business with, and who they should be doing business with, so if I want to manufacture pants in Central America, I would probably first find out who are the key zipper suppliers? Who do zipper suppliers do business with in Central America?
I would contact the big zipper suppliers, the YKKs of the world, and that’ll give you some indication, and they’ll give you, “I do business with this factory, and that factory, and this country, and that country,” and you start developing your plan B and your plan C.
Kurt Elster: Interesting, so you’d work backwards through this.
Charles Kaliman: I’ve always worked backwards. If I ever wanted to find a factory that would manufacture for me in Sri Lanka activewear, I would start calling and talking to all the fabric suppliers that I know that manufacture activewear. They manufacture, they make fabrics, and polyester, and nylon, and so forth, and who do you do business with? Who do you ship products to? Who are the good ones? They’re gonna tell you who the good manufacturers are, and they also want to develop a relationship with you, because of course they want their fabrics they want to be bought by these factories, and if you can say you can recommend their fabrics to their particular factory.
So, you always have to be constantly doing research, and understanding the market, so a good businessperson will understand what their market is, and who manufactures, you have to have a good understanding of that.
The other thing that I’ve always focused on is it’s the old saying, you trust, no matter how good they are, but you have to verify. It’s a good investment when you start a business, or you’re beginning to grow a business, to bring a partner that are these partners, that are the quality control services. They’re United States and around their world, there’s some really big ones. SGS is one of the big ones around the world. With SGS, there are other ones, Intertek. There are many, many services like that, that specialize in doing factory inspections, and doing production verification, doing sustainability and compliance, and they will charge you, but it’s a great investment, so if you place an order with a very trustful vendor that Charlie Kaliman recommended, and because you trust me, and I’ve known these vendors and factories for a long time, I would still recommend that you still contract a quality control service, the big ones in the industry, to do a due diligence, and give you a factory profile. To do the research on the factory, and give you all the materials that you need to make judgment.
And I would contract them to do a factory final inspection on your product. Maybe do an in-line inspection. You alluded earlier, how come things are late? Well, normally what happens is that… I always told my sourcing managers this: If you go to the train station, and your train is gonna be 30 minutes late, I can guarantee you… Okay, there’s a high probability the train is gonna arrive wherever you want it to be 30 minutes late. So, if you place an order with a factory, and you just wait until production is finished, and you haven’t done anything, and the factory… The first thing you have to do is have the factory give you a production schedule, and what do you do with that production schedule?
You have to do your due diligence to follow up. You may not want to fly to China every other month, to find out whether your production’s on time, but there’s a lot of services that for a fee, that can represent you, that can go to the factory and say, “Yeah, your product started on April 1st and it’s on time, and we’re gonna go to the factory on May 15th, when they’re ready to finish production, and see where you are.” I think part of it is to develop relationships, but no matter how good factories are, how good vendors are, they will always be better knowing you have an eye on them, and to make sure that things work out for the-
Kurt Elster: I’ve got a thought exercise for you, and I don’t know if this will work, so let’s try this. Kim Kardashian launched a line of shapewear called Kimono, and this wildly backfired, because people said, “That’s cultural appropriation.” And she thought about it for a day and said, “Okay, I’m gonna listen to what people are saying, and we’re not gonna launch the brand with this name.” So, they put it on a hiatus, and within only a few months, she was able to relaunch it with a new… under a new brand name. Same product, new brand name. But here’s the interesting part: I watched an interview with her, and to her credit, she seemed an absolutely astute and legitimate businesswoman, and she said the problem they faced was they’d already manufactured the product. It wasn’t a pre-sale, and she didn’t like tags, so the labels were printed into the garment. They weren’t sewn in. And they didn’t want to destroy all of it because they had to replace the brand name, and she said, “So, we figured out a way,” and now they’ve got… were able to save all the garments.
Do you have any idea how they managed this? I saw it and I’m like, “How the heck did they do that?”
Charles Kaliman: Shapewear, a lot of it is done seamless. It’s done through… It’s seamless, okay? Meaning that there’s no cutting, or sewing, or piecing together. When you cut and sew in a piece of a garment, you print it first, and then you make the garment, so it’s done. It’s almost the first step of the process. But in shapewear that is seamless, it’s actually done at the very, very end of the process, so one thing that could have happened is they just didn’t print it yet, okay? Because it’s done at the very end. Or maybe part of it was printed.
The other way to do it is that the suppliers that have the machinery, and the ink, and the whole process that has evolved, so it’s very sophisticated to the manufacturers, they have the ability to be able to override it, maybe to eliminate the ink and do another heating process that overlaps that heating process, so that’s the other way that you can possibly do that.
Kurt Elster: And also, I’m sure it helps to be Kim Kardashian, as well. I’m sure there’s a privilege there.
Charles Kaliman: Yes. There is. There is.
Kurt Elster: Certainly, that celebrity helps. Charles, Charlie, is it Charles or Charlie?
Charles Kaliman: Charlie.
Kurt Elster: Charlie. Okay. Where can we go to learn more about you?
Charles Kaliman: You can go into kalimanconsulting.com. It’s the website. You can go into the website, and you can contact me, and I’d be more than happy to talk about your business, what your needs are, no matter what stage they are. What I like to basically focus on is brands that are in the process of growing, that need more guidance, and need direction, and have growing pains, and need someone to give you the direction of how to do the making of the connections. But maybe more importantly, help you strategically think about your supply chain.
Kurt Elster: Get your free consult at kalimanconslting.com. That’s Kaliman with a K. The link is in the show notes. Charlie, thank you so much. I appreciate it.
Charles Kaliman: You’re welcome.