What It Takes to Bring a Fashion Collection to Market - WWD

So, you’ve meticulously designed a stunning fashion collection. And your virtual runway show was the toast of social media. Everyone loved it. Now, what do you do?

While designing an apparel line is challenging, it is a creative process that requires a certain set of skills. Bringing that product or collection to market, though, requires an entirely different set of skills. The process also has a lot of pain points for emerging designers and entrepreneurs who don’t typically have experience or knowledge in sourcing, manufacturing and shipping.

To fill that knowledge gap, Parsons and WWD are offering Fashion Business Essentials, which is powered by Yellowbrick and includes insights from Parsons’ faculty as well as industry experts. The course, which can be found here, is online and consists of five modules.

The second module, titled, “Managing Fashion Production” is composed of 35 lessons that cover all aspects of producing a collection. From digital design and ethical sourcing to choosing a manufacturer and creating tech packs, the course unpacks the entire production process, including how products are sourced, made and shipped.

[To learn more about Fashion Business Essentials, visit the site here.]

In the course, Elle Mambet, fashion designer, author and activist, shares her perspective on the production process by tackling a question she often gets from aspiring designers: Should you source everything from a single factory? Mambet is quick with her response: “No.”

“It’s better for you to price out and source out all of the pieces,” Mambet said in the lesson. She then explained how brands that send products to a single manufacturer often lose control of choosing the fabrics as well as losing control over product pricing.

Elle Mambet Courtesy image.

In another course segment, Joshua Williams, director of the fashion management program at Parsons, discussed the process of pricing a product. Williams said building a collection is a creative process, and requires asking, “How do you put together a collection that might look good on a runway or look good in a store, and tell a story or fit a customer’s lifestyle?” But you also have to consider producing a collection that has the right markup to make it profitable.

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