| You make plenty of generalizations here, and a lot of them are misleading. Nothing personal, but I'll point out where our opinions differ. I think you had a rough time. Every factory that I am personally in contact with (it's a fair number across several countries) are significantly more professional in sampling, production and payments than what you describe. Sampling done at the place of production, no matter where in the world, should be measured in days. There are plenty of good agents if you know the right places to look who handle a lot of the details for you. Obviously, the problem is finding the right guy. All your problems of solved issues like fit, patterns etc. are taken care of then. Something like pattern grading can be done in 5 minutes by anybody who has experience to 90% accuracy. To say that a t-shirt takes a half hour to make is a bit naive. The amount of processing and handling that goes between picking cotton and packing a t-shirt is non-trivial. Even if you want to just limit yourself to the garment process, you are talking about fabric handling, cutting, sorting, stitching, checking and packing. This is a complex procedure. > Unless you have a good contact at the other end, the first few runs will be horribly wrong, because people don't pay attention, particularly on new/small clients with low revenue. _This happens no matter where you have things made._ [emphasis mine] This is not true. Again, work with a professional factory, and you should not have this problem. > Finally, you get your garments shipped, and then you send them off to be dyed, screen-printed, tagged, and packaged. Or...use a manufacturer who can do all of that for you. I'll admit that finding a world-class garment laundry outside of California is difficult, but I guarantee you that you can get a lot of the way there for dollars a garment cheaper if you look hard. > Then you deliver them to the places you sold to, and then 3 months later they pay you. Note that this is the first time you see any money in this whole process..! 90 days payment terms is pretty bad. Most of the industry works on 30. Domestic business in a lot of Asia is 10-21 days from delivery. You should look into opening an L/C. The fee is not so bad and you get good security. |