My experience in the world of fashion ranges from retail to design. I worked in the activewear industry as a designer/developer. After leaving I started a freelancing career and got involved with fashion technology… which led me to work in start-ups.
The last start-up I worked for had a major fall out with a customer to the tune of 2 million dollars and had to shut down. During my time at this start-up, I built a fully functional small factory unit; so, when it came time to be laid off and look for something new… I decided to purchase what I built with my backpay. I moved it down the street, took on some other employees who were getting laid off, and started a product design agency and small batch factory that integrated with 3D technology.
For a few years I balanced being a factory and building our technology in stealth. But I decided, pre-pandemic, to focus solely on my technology. I gave the factory portion of the business to the employees that worked with me, and they started their own small business. Here I am a year later with our MVP launched last month.
I hate to say it, but every design department I worked for was a total S*** show. Ask anyone else who works in fashion and they will say the same thing. The cost, time and complexity are the biggest pain points in apparel pre-production- which encompasses everything from sourcing to sketching to fittings. When I started my design agency, we offered product design and development consulting. I worked with these amazing brands who had so much potential… and most of them were “losing their shirt” in the product design (PD) process. I had one guy contact us who had spent 30K on contractors for his PD and still did not have a sample. I had another who got over 150K investment in for their plus size brand, and used all of the money in product development-then could not afford to produce.
The thing is – there is a lot of repetition in fashion… Not only do we recycle trends (like the 90’s are now back in style) but most fashion brands follow the same trend research- so essentially, everyone is making the same things. I had five brands in three months ask me to make a motorcycle jacket. Now as an agency- it is a BIG no no to share a brand’s pattern with another brand. So, I charged each brand for their own pattern, and paid my pattern maker for each pattern…. but I know our pattern maker was doing a lot of copy /paste in the backend. What if we could digitize every type of garment in the world, and validate the fit to a set of standards, select materials in multiple countries, and ensure that the design documents needed are prepared? What if we could make the “recipe” for garments accessible the way open-source code is?
To date, there has been no real effort to open-source all the physical “work.” For example: If two different brands design denim jackets- they both are starting from scratch. If you look up denim jackets on google- you will see they look almost the same. Sure, the sizing might be different, the fabrics are slightly different… some might have a detail added here or there. Obviously, the branding is a major differentiator, and drives the price (for instance a Forever21 jacket might cost $45 vs a Balenciaga jacket that would price out at $1500). The point is, they all could have started from the same place and saved time, money and a lot of effort.
Modern Brands is a solution for brands, factories, and apparel design professionals, anyone who wants to make production possible apparel. We want to be to the fashion industry what WordPress was to the internet. WordPress has empowered 42% of the websites on the global internet today-from small bloggers to big businesses…Imagine if 42% of the world’s fashion products started with Modern Brands- how much of an impact could this make on a global scale?
Fashion- on a global scale has “designers’ ‘ and has “factories” who make the products. This is old fashioned… I know first-hand what companies do too small and off-shore manufacturing vendors… they push for the lowest price- driving to the bottom. Factories are pushed further and further-squeezing every 10 or 20 cents out of their margins while taking on all of the product liability. They also end up employing people to quarterback the design process for the product because the brands coming to them either do not have designers, or the designers are not connected to manufacturing realities.
To be honest, most brands who are successful are that way because they know how to sell. It really is the MOST IMPORTANT thing as a brand. Due to this- there are a lot of successful brands who do not have designers…and go directly to a factory. If the order is a large quantity, the factory will make it for them. There are two problems with this… 1. The factory then owns the brand’s intellectual property, and if the brand ever wants to go somewhere else they will not be able to access it. 2. Everything about your garment is designed by someone who is not tied into your business, and they just do not care as much as the brand does.
We also live in a world where you can go to Ali-express and buy wholesale garments that can be made with a brand’s label, and added immediately to your amazon or Shopify store. This kind of “fast fashion” has created horrible social and environmental conditions and has permeated the web like bad marketing content. (It is everywhere we look). The quality is bad, the fit is bad, and you are not able to sell unique products, but it’s available immediately. People are shifting away from this kind of buying, and are demanding unique and sustainable products from mid to high end brands, but they still want the products just as fast.
We target brands of any size (start-up to larger companies), factories (who need help working with their clients) and design professionals (people like us… who help brands get to market). Basically, anyone who is in the industry and needs an easier way to create trend driven apparel products. Our desire to standardize fashion into digital templates is not meant to limit creativity, but to enhance it by taking away the parts of design that are “boring” and giving everyone a base to start from.
We are a SAAS product – with free and professional monthly accounts. When you use our STYLEBLOCKS you get access to a template with everything you need to go to production (from the working design files to placing a production order with the vendor). We also sell consulting packages, and design services for anything you could want in fashion from packaging design to pattern grading from our DESIGN STUDIO.
We believe the future of fashion starts with modernizing the product development cycle.
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