[yuvaraman]

hi hari_sem3. Its a totally original design. Its common for most new cyclewear brands to go to the Far East, pick out a factory OEM design, slap on their logo and start selling.

We did it the painful way by old fashioned sketches, 2D pattern design, fitting sessions and by tweaking over 10 dimensions for every size.

We engaged a manufacturer to help us get preferable prices on fabrics (they buy in bulk) and to stitch together each piece to our Bill of Materials and Specifications. Its why it took us 6 months to develop these.

We manufacture in Eastern Europe with help from our Italian manufacturing partner. Each piece is then shipped back to Italy for a final quality inspection before flow out to us in Singapore for distribution.

[paulftw]

This information makes a lot of sense, and should be on the landing page as (one of) the main selling point(s).

[yuvaraman]

thanks paulftw :). Theres a tonne of information and we didn't want to flood our customers with too much technical detail.

We are releasing a series of technical articles on our website, so stay tuned!!

Do read my super large writeup above. It will be condensed and published with lots of images on our site soon.

[marban]

It'd be great to learn about some details how you got this process started; maybe even some hints on pricing, markup, challenges with OEMs, etc.

[yuvaraman]

Hi Marban, allow me to quickly answer your questions:

1) this link will help explain why we started on BibShorts : http://www.redwhite.cc/whybibshorts/

To summarize, we conceptualized RedWhite in late February 2014, started design work in March and launched in August 2014 :). You're hearing about us now thanks to a large Instagram following and us getting more active in forums to reach out to a wide audience. And we totally need your help to reach an even wider audience.

PRICING : SGD210 (Singapore dollars) including shipping and taxes. We have an online store here on our site :)

OEM Challenges : We searched for a manufacturer for MONTHS until we found him in Italy. It made perfect sense from a supply chain perspective because our fabrics and chamois are made in Europe, so keeping manufacturing there is key to keeping costs low. Our Italian manufacturing partners own factories in Eastern Europe and meet our strict policy on quality.

Every RedWhite BibShort is made in Romania and shipped back to Italy for a final quality inspection before sent to us in Singapore. We keep costs low by piggy backing on larger shipments from our manufacturer, keeping our transportation costs and carbon footprint low.

[Flip-per]

Why don't you distribute directly from Italy?

[yuvaraman]

We don't because we are currently a small company and distribute in South East Asia at the moment.

With scale and a larger US, EU customer base, we will be able to distribute from Italy.

Distribution from within the EU requires a business license, VAT registration and obviously a premises. These cost money and are huge fixed costs that a small firm can't handle right now.

We explored the option of distribution from our manufacturer's facility, but costs go up, because we need to pay fair wages for work done to distribute and handle customers - driving cost up again.

These key decisions are paying off - We now have brought to market (very quickly and with extremely high quality) - a great product at a great price point.