How To Build a Sustainable Fashion Brand

1. Introduction to Ethical Fashion Room: Hello, future entrepreneur! My name is Edwina and I will be your host in the journeys to construct your own fashion brands. With my 15 years of sales and marketing experience, 6 years of running a sustainable fashion company and being a keynote speaker for multiple international sustainable fashion events, I'm here to help you save times, headache, and mistake for your fashion journey. In this course, you will learn how to build a sustainable fashion brand. This course consists of four modules that will help you to have an introductory understanding of how the fashion industry works. Pre-production and production planning and post-production planning. Each module will have four to six lessons that will break down all the information in a digestible way for you. Some examples of information that you will acquire in this course are: How does the fashion supply chain work? How to plan your production timelines? How to price your products and sustainable packaging? My team and I are very excited to meet with you and help you in the journey to create your own sustainable fashion brands. So without further ado, it's time to get ACTION!!! 2. Fashion Supply Chain: So it's time for us to talk about the fashion supply chain. In this lesson, we will cover what is a fashion supply chain. What is a different stage of the supply chain as well. So when it comes into fashion supply chain, there are a lot of different small stages, small product lifecycle, the actual base out of unpredictable customer demands to form a law of supply, supply chain processes. As you can see here, the cycle is very labour intensive. The clothing supply chain traces from ideas all the way to actual consumer products. Each stage starts out as a raw material supplied to the next stage before become a final product and ready for distributions. What are some of the different stages of the supply chain? So we actually break it down into five stages for you, as you can see here. But I wanted to go and dive down each individual stage for you here just to give you a better understanding, What is it you, as a designer or as a brand designer to actually require you to do. So, Traditional fashion supply chain, the choices are made out of convenience, cost, or specific aesthetics. The majority of today's clothing are actually made out of fast fashion. Trends, you know, inspired by brands like Zara, H&M and these brands, are usually have a fast turnarounds to make similar designs as a designer brand. But this trend is also responsible for crazy amount of clothing end up in landfill. We produce a 111 tons of fibers, but 97 million, 97 million tons of them actually go into landfill and waste. So as a contrast of these fast fashions, we have a new trend is called a slow fashion, which consider material impacts in the supply chain, minimizing the negative effects, during, and at the end of the life cycle. There are a lot of brands are now ready turning away from fast fashion and being more a sustainable approach. So labels are really embracing the credo, credo designs frameworks. These framework is actually responds out, is a philosophy for responsible designs and it complies 2 cycles. The first cycle is biological cycle where the loops is closed by returning the products harmlessly leads back to the nature. The other one is industrial cycle, where the loop is actually closed by recycling non-degradable materials. So as a designer, you really should consider several steps that you really should be working on. For example, you need to start researching a mood board. And in this mood board, it really represents the aesthetics behind the designs. In order to actually create a cohesive design, you really should take time to organize your ideas together. And then once you have the ideas, you then can put them together and start sketching. So step two is the brainstorming where you actually start sketching and drawing a design to actually design your prototype how it looks like. In this stage, usually you will also consider step three, which is finding your material supply. For example, who's going to be cut trim made suppliers, who's going to be a fabric supplier and who's going to be a label and packaging suppliers to put it together. And then, the magic starts happening. You have to put a pattern together. And this pattern is really to put your material. You'll put your material or what we call a twark, which is a basic fabric onto our actual mannequins to actually map out how you would like to cut trim and all the cutting as needed in this one material. And then you tend to actually separate them in a small part and turn it into digital formats. More information about how to turn an idea into products, it will come in Module 2 Lesson 3. So stay tuned with that. The next stage is the material production. And this is where we grow and create raw materials into textile materials by spinning into a fiber, weave into fabric and dye and finish it. And textile production is one of the major contributors of environmental pollutions because of the high, I guess, consumption, or high production in greenhouse gases emissions and also water contamination. So it's very important for you to think about what kind of material you starting to use to actually help to be more sustainable and help the environments. We have highlighted three different types of material here - recycled, organic and natural materials. Hence, when you are designing your garment, you should consider these three types of materials. We will actually show more information in detail with you Module 2 Lesson 1. But what we wanna do here is to highlight these types of materials is the basis for you to consider to build a sustainable fashion brand. Stage three is clothing and garment production. And this is where the magic happens. In this phase, it usually involves multiple factories which do the cut-trim-make and finish the products into final garments. This part of the supply chain for mainstream fashion businesses is about getting the garments to make an exact same as what they want in the final patterns. In this stage, you really should consider doing your prototype and test it out two to three manufacturers. And you see, one gives you the maybe the one that actually give you the best pricing or best acceptable quality is the one that you actually go with. It is important to consider that you revise your first prototype after you give, getting some feedback from your customers and people who are going to wear your designs. Because once you actually revise, when you're revising your prototypes, if you change a material, change your fabrics and change your zippers, it will actually impact the actual final designs. So if you don't test it out properly, it will be a very costly exercise for you. So also you need to consider doing some part of testing as well. And this includes washing and see how it performs and see all these coating or finishing that you apply on the material if they're exactly how you'd like to advertise them as your brand. So be patient in this process and really don't mess it up because at the end of the day, you don't want to create clothing that actually nobody wears and there will be a big waste of money at the end of the day, right? Some of the examples of the testing we have listed here. You can either do some of these simple testings at home by yourself. You can research into the method online. You can actually also do this testing with the external party called SGS as well. But you have to pay for small fee to actually do so. 00:06:51.410 --> 00:06:56.255 The last stage is when all the garment is actually made, is actually there will be shipped out to a brand or designers to sort out how to send it out. And distribution and retail is what we see in our shopping. Right? But different sizes of the company, they usually sort out their own distribution differently. We have, this is some examples here. But however, it depends on how big your brands and you want to build. And the smallest or the easiest way is the best way to actually control your quality delivery. If you're actually starting to work out with warehouse 3PLs, you will have to face issues such as quality control, delivery, error, cost of inventories, returned, orders, handling, etc. And all the small brands are usually partner with local logistics forwarders to help them to deliver the cost or deliver the parcel. The final stage is the consumer phase. This is where you and I make the funds mix-and-match on clothing. But before I go to the end of life cycle and the clothing supply chain is very complex, but we can actually make sure our partners will shift our demands towards. I think as a consumer, we need to shift our demand to companies that actually do good to the environments 00:08:08.120 --> 00:08:12.620 in order for us to actually reward the one that actually tried to do the best. Otherwise, there'll be really out of the game. Now it's quiz time. What are the steps in the fashion supply chain? 3. Sustainable Fashion vs Circular Fashion: So in today's lessons, we're going to talk about difference between sustainable fashion and secular fashions. What we're going to cover is a linear economy, circular economy and designing circularity today. Are you ready? So in, in a linear economy, it is when we mined raw material that we produce into product that we throw away. At the end of the day, raw material are usually collected and then transform into a product that use until they're finally discuss as waste. But value is usually created during the system when we produce and sell as many products as possible. But these follows a patent, what we call a tech mix, this boat. And it enables companies to mass-produce the products. And customers can also purchase the product at the lowest possible price. These models rely on large quantities of easily accessible resources and energy, which becomes more and more unfit it for these reality which we're operating in right now. In a sustainable fashion. If we are only focusing on using sustainable material without planning how the product will end at the end of lifecycle, we are still following a linear production model. While fast fashion is a big business, don't you think it's time for us to really think about it? We still want to continue exploiting our planets right now. Here we have broken down some pros and cons for you to consider in this linear model. And they are very self-explanatory. But what we, what I do wanted to highlight to you is the ecological disadvantage, where we produce good at the expense of the ecosystem. If we use excessive raw material, these give pressure onto the ecosystem and jeopardize for us to actually provide more essential services such as clean air, clean water and cook, and clean soil to grow plant. Looking back at COVID-19 right now it's a good example is the oil. Oil price has been quite volatile during COVID time, COVID COBIT 19. And this impact the raw material supply such as polyester. And that are examples of independency is when we have increased tray in different geopolitical areas where we connect different countries and their supplies, a getter just to create one product. So an example of this is that maybe one garments could be using content from one country, zipper Mei from another country and both of them another country to create one final products. On the flip side, circular economy is a regenerative system which garments curated as long as the value is maximized, and then return back into the bios via safely. When we're actually not using it anymore. The aim to, in, the aim for this system is really to encourage designers and creators to rethink about the designing process and make the designs in a much more circular. And this can create a new norm. In the circular economy models, products are designed and developed with the next US in mind. But unfortunately, we only have less than 1% or clothing of recycled into new clothing right now. So the best way for us to really consider forward is should we buy more shirts, reuse more of these materials at the end of the day, the more we reuse the material, we can have better and more positive impact for the planets. The ultimate goal for circular fashion is really to bring no further social economy, economic and environmental harms. So to start, your company and your business can really mimic this 13 principle that we're highlighting here from the green strategies. And green strategies is actually an agency specifically focused on sustainability and circularity in fashion industry, the support and promote more circular practices in this industry. And here we're highlighting 13 different strategy they, they'd use in these contexts. For circular economy, we have identified some of the pros and cons for you as well. But what we do wanted to highlight here is the con side, specifically on the social and environmental externalities. They are not consider in the price. In prices or privileging, privileging the actual financial market signal instead of people and nature. When the economic decisions are made. Circular economy, business model, a harder to developed as most investors are usually still working in the linear mindsets. And when it comes down to invest in, investment in circular economy is still not as fast as the old traditional model that we have. So what do you think? That the advantages are the circular economies? The idea of design in circularity is creating to help innovators, to create more elegant, effective, creative solution for the, our economy. The decisions and the solutions that are invaluable for, for people and for businesses in a much more competitive edge. And with using these designs regularities, we are able to create a product and surfaces that no longer come into a lifecycle, you know, with a beginning, middle, and an end because we actually closing the whole loop together. Design thinking approach in underpins this guy, allow you to every explore the new way to create a long lasting products. Giving you a chance to really create and redesign the world around you. And using this framework in designing circularity, we're building on a principle to really eliminate waste, pollutions and also keeping the product at the end of a day have the highest value that we can maximize possible the purpose to design the product that can be made to be remade against. These purpose really can result in less waste, more value to be added in the ecosystem. For more information. We also discussed a lot more about designing circularity in Module 1 and less than six in, in the business model here. But we also have halite has some pros and cons for you to understand design and circularity. To transition into design in circularity, there's three things that you need to consider. The first thing is to rethink the product design, how you wanted. The second thing is how you wanted to envisions and announce your brand's missions. And the third thing is really the collaborations in the rethinking on product design sec, sections. Instead of really thinking about the products, absolutely. At the end of life cycle, you should really maximize the use of the product and the material that you're going to use when you're creating this material. The product itself is easy to actually use recycled materials on sustainable material. But however, for brands, for company that you are created is also very important for you to consider and declared a clear intention. What you're going to do to feel a sustainable brand. And next step is that to collaborate. Collaboration here what we're talking about is partnering and learnings new systems so that you can evolve your internal system and incorporate new things in your design into regularities modal. So Quiz 1 at a, what are the advantage of designs in circularity? 4. Sustainable Fashion Certifications: In this lesson, we're going to cover different sustainable fashion certifications with you. Each stage of the supply chain has that independent certificate. Hence, no matter if you are in the yarn making, weaving, in the fabric, garment making or selling or distributing clothing, you should have your own independent certifications. Therefore, we will walk you through different certifications today and what they are and what they use for. Certifications like this usually renew annually throughout the supply chain. And each of these certifications can cause up to 3000 or more than 10 thousand a year depending on the size of your company and the organizations. So to ensure there's a transparency, you will need to consider getting scopes certificates for yourself in order for companies who carry the certification can issue a transfer certification to you to support your transactions. So let's get started! Now first of all, we're going to talk about what GOTS is. So GOTS as what we call it a global organic textile standard is a well-recognized and accepted certification for organic fiber, yarns fabric and dye and clothing. So organic cotton, for example, can excel organic lean. And this is actually used to usually be certified by the certifications. And these certifications ensure products that are made and certified under this certification will be well-recognized and in a stringent organic raw material supply. So usually supplier from different stages all needs to get a certification, from fiber processing, spinning, weaving and knitting, and wet processing. Or maybe, for example, the dying, That's what processing, manufacturing and trading. So if you want to find out more information, we have included a little link below this slide and you can refer to them for more information. Now let's talk about Organic Content Standards, OCS. Now this certification is an international voluntary standard that said, requirement for third party certifications of certified organic input, and the chain of custody. So the goal of OCS is to increase organic agriculture production. Objectives for this certification also provides the industry with a tool to verify the organic growth and contents of the products that they purchase. So providing company with a trusted tool to communicate organically grow and contents claim in the industry. And also these objective also includes that it provides organic fiber farmers with a broad access of global organic markets for their products. Next, we have RCS. So RCS stands for Recycle Claim Standard. And this is actually used to track recycled raw materials. So the objective of RCS are first, alignments of recycled definitions across multiple applications. Second, track and trace recycle inputs materials. Third, provide consumers, both brands and end-consumers with a tool to make informed decisions. And lastly, it provides assurance that materials that are actually recycled in the final product. But of course, the most important one out of all the certificates, certificates that you will have to come across is the GRS. GRS stands for Global Recycling Standard. It is one of the most important certifications for all the recycled materials. And this certification aims to two things. First is reduce harmful impacts of the productions to people and the environment. Second is to drive innovations in addressing quality issues in the use of recycled materials. Now, when it comes down to a OEKO-TEX, OEKO-TEX is one of the most sustainable dye certifications out there. And this certification is to ensure textile dye, is tested and includes no harmful chemicals in them to the Mother Earth. Now, OEKO-TEX is based in Switzerland. And they do work. They do the work to concentrate on your business. So they offer individual solutions for providing processes and product qualities as well as practical, impetus for quality works. The costs of the certification are distributed across the shoulders of all the producers involving in previous steps. So if you are a supplier that has this certification, you don't need to arrange further certifications for the finished products. If OEKO-TEX has already been tested in the components according to, you know, OEKO-TEX, one hundred standard. Now, CCS, CCS is the content claims standard verification. These actual standard actually verifies specific input materials are used in the final products. So it tracks the flows of raw materials from the source to the final products. It also addresses the product flows, documentation, volume, reconciliations and segregations of the materials and products. And it based on the scope of the transactions certificates for maximum levels of verifications and tracking. So three more to go, ready! Now next one we have Bluesign. So Bluesign here is a holistic system that actually assure company the acts responsibly that involve in the, in the manufacturers of the products they will actually certified in Bluesign and Bluesign is a similar to OEKO-TEX in general, but they use the best technology available, use the resources responsibly. And they take, and they also take into consideration of minimum impacts on the people and the planets and the environments. So the Bluesign guarantees a couple of things. First, free of harmful substances. Second, safety for a business, consumer and the environment. Third, lower air emissions. Fourth, reduce water emissions. Fifth, increase resources productivity, and six, more productions, transparency and trust. But in general, when it comes down to comparing Bluesign and OEKO-TEX, there's actually more OEKO-TEX factory available compared to a Bluesign in general. Now, Cradle-to-Cradle, I'm pretty sure that most of you have heard of this term Cradle to Cradle approach. Their mission is led to inspire and enable, all stakeholders across the global economies to create and use innovative products and materials that positively impact people and planets. So an example of a Cradle to Cradle design is to the disposable cups, or bottles or wipers that are may entirely out of biological materials. So the material held category help, helps to ensure products are made using the chemical that actually save for the humans and the environment by leading designers and product developers through the process of innovations. So this approach is actually quite well to be recognized. Now lastly, Fair Trade. I'm pretty sure you also heard of Fair Trade, right? You ever had those fair trade coffee or fair trade chocolate? I have. So when you are seeing a product with a Fair Trade certification, there, you'll be sure that it meets rigorous social, environmental, and economic standards. So that means, you know, safe working environments, environmental protections, sustainable livelihoods, and community development funds. So this is all the goodies right? Now. It's time for some quiz - Quiz Time. Which of Which of the following certifications is actually for recycled material? RCS, GRS, CCS, GOTS There are so many S over there which S? It is now for you to test your knowledge. 5. Sustainability Integration: Today's lesson we're going to cover sustainability integration to your business. In this lesson, we will cover direction, objective, action, result, and measure. Have you thought about in order for you to be a sustainable fashion brand, what your overall direction should be? When it comes to planning your business integration on sustainability, it is important that you think about several key questions. For example, what your overall strategies are? And what is your overall strategy to tackle the end of life cycle products? What is your intention? Can you incorporate sustainable materials and circularity in your designs? What are you doing for repair, remake, and recycle? To be considered for sustainable brand, it's important for you to consider how are you tackling climate change or contributing to reduce CO2 production? What resources are you using or will you actually use chemicals? What sort of chemicals will you use in your fabric productions to claim to be sustainable? Do you monitor your energy consumption? Have you been fair to labour force that supports your business? What is the safety measure for your factory's workers? And have you specified the kind of material that you want to use to support your brands' directions? Next is to set up the objective. Now objectives are different from directions. As directions you set out broad pictures and objectives really narrows down to what you aim to achieve, to reach to you a big picture. In general, there are three key areas that you should set your objectives around - labor, products and planet. In this case, we're going to give you an example of a brand called Reformation from the United States. How they implement these three areas into their businesses. In their framework that actually have four components, people, planets, products, and progress. In the people sections. Social responsibility here refers to how they responsibly, how they work, how they are responsible for ensuring safety, health, and equitable working conditions for all the team members. In the community engagements. and impact sections, it refers to how they use their brands to drive climate actions and environmental justice. Equities, inclusions. It's referring to how they ensure everybody in the Reformation feels to be included and how they've been valued and how they've been heard. In the planet sections that break down into climate actions, resource efficiencies, low impact care. So climate action here refers to how they actually reducing their carbon footprints and invest in solution that actually remove more greenhouse gases in the actual business. Whereas resources efficiency really refers to how they maximize the usage of the resources right now. In low impact care refers to how garments can be cared at the end of life cycle, like how you wash it, whether it's hand wash or machine wash. In the product section, then looking to better material, clean chemistry, traceability. Better material refers to prioritise how to prioritize materials that are sustainably made in a good, good condition for the, for the best of the environments before and also after the product lifecycle. Clean chemistry, really refers to zero hazardous chemical that is being used in the production. So it can be the dye of the fabric or the coating to actually being used in the fabric. Traceability really maintains the rigorous fibers and production standards. So these really refers to where and how the fabric is made, or where and how the products are made in general. And they have a broader picture in terms of understanding how it travels around the world. That lastly, in the progress section, that look into circularity, packaging and sustainable reporting. So circularity here is incorporating innovative circular models in their business. And packaging refers to how they are using less recyclable plastic in their actual products. So that consume less in general, that you can't be packaging or it can be materials that they actually use. And lastly, in the reporting section, it really refers to how they maintain the best practice in the reporting and the governance. So people here really refers to the people who are working in this industry instead of consumers. Based on the objective that you actually set off for your business, it is about time to really think about how you're going to implement it and execute it. When you're considering implementing these elements into your sustainable practice, it is important to set out an internal goal for each of these areas and how you're going to measure and define your action to meet objectives. So you might be able to setting a goal like you know, for sourcing for us to match, maximize the sourcing to sustainable materials, you set out 0 to a 0 to ten. How are you actually working right now and where are you aiming towards 2, to improve your actual scoring? When it comes down to measure your progress from the action plan and the goal that you have set out. It is important for you to have an internal evaluation to understand how your current plan is rate, rate it towards, your big picture. I mean, in this step is really important that you are honest about yourself where your journey is right now. These actual implementation of measuring really should help you to achieve a better sustainable mobility integrations and give you room to grow to a better business. Dale Carnegie used to say, a man who starts, who starts out going nowhere, generally gets there. So it's important that you actually plan where you want to go and actually have action steps. Lastly, in the evaluations, once you have set out this goat and accomplish the task and act on them, you have to consider how far are you away from your target right now. So you, some of the questions you really think about is that what are tasks do I have to do to reach the goal? And is there any room for improvement? If there is, where is it that you can improve? 6. UN Goals in Fashion Industry: In this lesson, we are going to go through what are some of the UN goals in the fashion industry? We will explore what UN 2030 goals are. How does these goals implies to fashion industry and how the industry is actually following these goals. There are 17 UN SDG goals here. And SDG goals here refers to Sustainable Development Goals. These goals have been adopted by all the United Nations Member States in 2015. They provide a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet. From now and into the future. These 17 SDG goals are acting as an urgent call of action by all countries no matter if you're in a developing or developed stage to form a global partnership to tackle these urging issues. They recognized that ending poverty and other deprivations must go hand in hand with strategies that provide help and educations, reduce inequality and spur economic growth. All while tackling, economic and climate changes to work on preserving our ocean and our planet. For more information, you may refer to slides and five to ten for what these goals are aiming to do. Quiz time. How many goals are there in the UN SDG goals? What goal is to 'ensure consumptions and production patterns'? Now, for the fashion industry, there are several goals actually can make the fashion industry better. For example, goals 6, 9, 12, and 13. And we're going to dive down a little bit further why these goals are actually good for the fashion industry. Our industry consumes a lot of waters in dye, processing and even growing the crops. So in Goal 6. The industry is looking at innovations that we need to develop to consider how we can reduce consumption in water and how we can actually recycle the wastewater better and more effectively. In Goal nine, this really targets on building the missing infrastructure to facilitate areas such as reducing CO2 emissions, waste management, and more sustainable production, and how to measure them. In Goal 12, we want to give you some solar examples here. The Global Fashion Agenda is one of the entities that actually leads a lot of fashion brands to change into adopting sustainabilities and circularities in the fashion industry. And they actually entail responsible consumption. Details, for example, implementing design strategies, increasing the volumes of used garments in the footprint collections. Increasing the volumes of used garments and footwear result and increasing the share of garments and footwear made from recycled post-consumer textile fibers. Lastly, the hottest issue that we are all facing right now is how to reduce CO2. Aiming to build your business around carbon negative and carbon-neutral should really be the new aim. As it will be. There will be more and more policies targeting on limiting the CO2 production. Here we give you some examples on how businesses due to follow this goal. So for example, a company called Phoenxt, they focus on recycling textile waste back to raw materials. And these textile waste are basically generates from mixed fibers and turning them and breaking them down back into raw material to make raw textile fiber again. Vivify Textiles, another example here is actually creating sustainable fabrics out of waste such as recycled plastic bottles, fishnet and old cotton. Usually fashion brands are designers like yourself will come to companies to Vivify or Phoenxt, for example. Not only to get more education about how to get more sustainable material and how to make sustainable productions. But more importantly, they use sustainable textiles to build the beginning pictures of their sustainable for stamps. Now, quiz time. How can consumers provide support for all these UN SDG goals? 7. Sustainable Business Models: Now it's time to talk about sustainable business models. In this actual lesson, we're going to talk about upcycling, downcycling, recycling, and design circularity, reuse, remake, recycle, and rental program. And all of them are actually different kinds of sustainable business models. Upcycling. So this is actually a process to transform the by-products, the waste material or use the unwanted product into new materials or new products that actually have perceive higher quality or artistic value. So some of the examples of these products highlight it here. And usually these way of business model has a low entry barrier, is quite easy to do and it's very creative. But the downside of this is actually very hard to scale and have a consistent quality. Downcycling is actually a recycling method that actually focus on taking the waste to make into a lower quality material. And the functionalities of the lower-quality material is not comparable to the original material and often is due to the accumulation of tramp elements in secondary metals, which is usually excluded in the latter or high-quality applications. Some of the examples of a down-cycled product, wall insolation, toy stuffing, and waste shoddy turned into carpets as well. But these methodologies or I guess these business models obviously have its downside because you can, once you actually down, downgraded material, you can not actually reuse it again. So when you recycle it to another live, it actually is very difficult. Recycling. In this case, it has open loops, closed loops, mechanical recycling, and also chemical recycling. So open-loop here is actually when waste comes from one industry and becomes input or raw material for another industry. And for an example of this is like plastic bottles and then you recycle them and then turn into recycled polyester yarns. Close loop in this case is waste from one industry and that it stays in that industry again. So for example, if you have waste material from as textile waste in this regard, once you further process it and you will use it back into textile industry and that will be a closed loop. Mechanical recycling here is usually when you want to recycle, for example, just cotton or just polyester or you don't really care about the output of the processes. Like you use all the textile waste material in this process is just to downgrade it as a purpose. You shred these materials into a very small fiber, and then they will be actually used again into making another material again. For example, like toy stuffing, you've seen previously. And in chemical recycling here is slightly different. Chemical recycling is usually when you need to recycle mixed fiber blended materials. And it will allow separations to mix into the separation of mixed fiber to then make into a new material like recycled polyester. So for example, a technology called Phoenxt that they're able to actually separate textile waste out of polyester or cellulosic and cotton. And then you can have the polyester actually recycled and make into new polyester yarns again and say it looks at fiber is actually use to make into another product again. Some of the examples of a recycle business model includes turning it into a pant, using plastic bottles. Fabrics or mechanical recycled cotton turn into a new, recycle, cotton yarns or regenerated cellulosic fiber made out of waste cotton as well. This business model really enables a large amount of waste to be recycled. But the downside of this business model also is very cost intensive because to build a new technology or new innovations, usually this kind of process takes much longer. And so far, not all the fiber is able to be completely recycled at the moment. Now let's talk about design in circularity. According to the World Economic Forum, design in circularity is really looking at turning into $5 trillion market from a $2.52 trillion market. Because if we actually considering circularity into a fashion industry, it really monetizes the end of life cycle and to recycle this waste material, it can nearly double the actual fashion amount. When you are implementing the design in circularity, it is important to consider a 100 percent mono material like no mix fiber will be best. And you also consider a product that can be actually recycle 100% at the end of the life cycle. You should also consider how you pick the raw material as well. How can you actually create a design and how do you actually use the product? That it's a product that can be reused over and over again so that you can maximize the life cycle of that product. Here are some of the examples of the model material that are able to be developed by recycled polyester. Both the sewing threads and also the zippers are made out of a 100% recycled polyester. From these - although it's made out of a 100% recycled polyester, it comes with a mechanical stretch that you don't need to add any additional spandex to compensate the stretch abilities, which you will have to separate the fiber before recycling. A good example of the brands, it's called Napapapjri, which is an Italian brand based out in Europe. They really took five years to build a fully circular jacket, including the fabric, the zippers, and also the sewing threads, a 100% made out of polyamides. And this process is a very difficult process to develop this also because it hasn't been done before, but they completely use a mono material composition to make into this so that at the end of the lifecycle you can actually create it. So to recycle it completely. Here we actually have highlighted some of the pros and cons of the design in circularity. But obviously, design in circularity is still relatively new in the industry. It does take some time to develop and from the experience looking at some of the previous brands that have done it, it also tends to be a little bit more costly to do as well. But it is one of the best models that actually can build a sustainable sustainability within the actual business. When it comes on to reuse, remake, and recycle business model, I'd like to share with you a case study to really explain what this really, this model is really about. So Eileen Fisher is an American brand that is certified by as B-Corp. And they had developed a take-back scheme where they resell and remake and recycle them. So resale, meaning, all items can be actually so back to the consumer in a good conditions, Remake is when all items, they're actually a little bit broken. You can sold them back or stitch them back, but they still are re-sellable. And recycle is actually when all garments or all items are no longer wearable. So in this case, you really break them down into making a new material again. The pros and cons in these model are really enabled the consumers to be much more thorough in the business model that you can maximize the product lifecycle. But of course, it's really unclear at the moment how profitable this model is, because this is still very novel as a business model in the circular fashion economy. Rental program is something that you've also seen quite often as well. And it usually comes into two formats. One is pay-per-use and one is subscriptions. One good example of these pay for a subscription model is a brand, a Swiss shoe brand called On Shoe that has developed a product called Cyclon, where they have adopted extensive producer's responsibility. And this is actually specifically referred to producers have to give significant responsibility both and financially and physical products to treat the disposal product in a post-consumer stage so that they can actually, I guess processing a sustainable way. So an example of what they did in this particular example is that these actual shoes you're seeing is around 220 France, Swiss francs per pair. And the rental program assumes use your users usually use, take six months to maximize the usage of the shoes. And at the end of the lifecycle, when the shoes are worn out you can actually return the shoes back to the brands and they will send you a new pair of shoes again. And when you send the all pair of shoes back, they will be responsible for recycling of their shoes. The benefit of this approach really enabled where and how to dispose the goods when they're really coming to the end of the life cycle. 8. Sourcing Sustainable Materials: In today's lesson, we will cover how you source sustainable material. So we're going to cover the big questions such as why, how, and what about sustainable materials and things that you need to know about them. So what is sustainable sourcing anyway? Sustainable sourcing is when social and ethical and environmental performance are actually factored into the selection process when purchasing a product or service. But why do we need to do that? This is actually needed because supply chains continue to expand globally into developing countries for lower costs and develop in a larger production capacity. And sustainability might not be integrated well in these countries, which still need any further developments. But on the flip side, by enforcing a sustainable practice, it really forces them to produce without exploiting or harming the environment further. In exchange, they also get to stay competitive for their product offering as well. But how do we do that? How do we source a sustainable material? We have broken down into three steps for you. First of all, choosing the most sustainable fabric that works for your designs and your business involves assessing the information available about different materials. Secondly, when you choosing the supplier that should, the traditional route is to find supplier like legwork, take the legwork that was going through the trade show, searching for internet, and do a networking, so and so forth. But right now you can actually do a lot of sourcing online and you can actually get a lot of really good recommendations in different platforms. The third part is to take the suppliers' sustainability standards and check them if they're actually legit. Assessing and constantly checking suppliers that you're planning to work with actually can help you to understand if they can actually fulfil your sustainable standard. Now that we understand what, how, and why to source sustainable material, it is about time to understand the type of sustainable materials out there. Now is important that you understand fabric manufacturing process is not an artisan process. There will be manufacturing defects and errors. And to a certain degree, within a certain tolerance, they should be acceptable. So nothing can be 100% perfect in a manufacturing production. For more information about fabric defects, please do refer our next lessons in Module 2 Lesson 2. This is where we're going to give you more details about how to do or how to check the fabric defects. Now, let's dive down into how many different types of sustainable materials are there. So first of all, we're going to start out recycled fabric, which is made out of waste material. Now this recycled fabric is actually one of the most popular materials. So for example, we have recycled polyester and recycle nylon, recycled cotton, recycled wool. But we're going to break them down into into different tab just so that you have a brief understanding overall. So recycled polyester, It's actually made out of recycled plastic bottles or post-industrial recycled polyesters. Whereas recycled nylon is actually made from a diverts waste from landfills, such as fishnets or such as post-industrial nylon 6 or we call it polyamides in the actual industry. When it comes down to recycled cotton, they can be recycled using old garments or textile leftovers. And the quality of the cotton maybe slightly lower than the new cotton, but the recycled cotton now they can also bind it with recycled polyester as well. So brands like recover blues, they actually manufactured recycled cotton in that sense. Then we have recycled wool. It saves us a considerable amount of water and reduce land use and avoiding the use of chemical because if you recycle the wool, we don't have to have the ship to grow new one again. The next one is econyl. So econyl is very similar to the recycled nylon that we just mentioned as well. Cupro in this sense it is a biodegradable cellulosic, man-made cellulosic fiber that actually made from linked to cotton or cotton waste. So this is something that you can also consider using in your design. Now, let's talk about organic fabric. So organic fabric can include organic cotton, wool, organic hemp organic flax, organic linen, organic silk. And they are a natural growth and fiber without using toxic and I guess harmful chemicals into the production process. So here organic cotton has the same quality as the conventional cotton, but it doesn't have these negative impacts for the environment because organic, so traditional, conventional cotton has a lot of harmful substances, substance that actually grows in the land. And once you actually grow cotton on it, you cannot actually grow anything else after that, just because of the pesticides that you actually need to use. Whereas organic cotton in this sense is much more environmental because it doesn't need to use all these different harmful fertilizers or harmful substances when you're growing the crops. Organic linen, on the other hand, is made out of a natural organically growing flax fibers, and it's also renewable and biodegradable. Then we have organic silk. Organic silk is a beautiful material, is the same as normal silk. The only different is that it doesn't grow, it doesn't come with pesticides and harmful chemicals again, because organic silk is usually grown in, let's say, an organic farm with organic mulberry leaves, for example. And it's much more labour-intensive in growing them. However, on the other hand, usually to claim to be organic silk, that land needs to be organic for the next, for the past five years to grow these organic leaves to feed the silkworm. Now let's talk about natural fibers. Natural fibers are produced by plants or animals in a geological process. They can be used such as the component, components for composite materials where orientations of the fiber and the impacts of the properties like alternates in the process. So when I'm talking about these, for example, it could be, let's say you have bamboo material and then you don't necessarily just using bamboo, like just the actual bamboo itself, but you have to process it a little bit further with chemical so that you become viscose or maybe rayon your materials that actually is nice and soft. So let's dive a little bit. Oh, there you go. We have bamboo. Bamboo is a natural eco-friendly fabric that is actually made out of the bamboo pulp. And usually when you use bamboo material, they are turning to either bamboo viscose or bamboo rayon. But I'm not gonna go too deep, dive down into these two specific material because those are man-made cellulosic fibers, but you can also have organic bamboo material as well. So hemp on the other hand is one of fast growing fiber bamboo as well. But hemp on the other hand, is actually made out of glass fiber. And this fiber is, I would say, a ton of material that grows so fast without so much water. And you don't need to actually intervene with a lot of fertilizers just to actually have it growing. And so modal is a type of rayon material that actually made out of also mimic cellulosic fiber from the beech tree. And then we have wool is a biodegradable material made out of, obviously from different types of sheep. The quality can vary, depends on the kind of sheep has been growing on. And wool material usually lasts for quite a long time. Silk - we have spoken about silk before. So silk is a fiber that is made out of silkworm cocoons. And then we have linen. Linen is actually derived from flax plants and it's a highly durable material that becomes soft and easy to wear. And this material also have been, I guess in Europe has been used as one of those kinds of luxury materials. For example, in bed or maybe in clothing. And usually linen has a texture that is probably a little bit stiffer to wear, but once you wear it, it is nice and breathable and it gives you this nice, cool, breezy feeling. The next one that we have is lyocell, so lyocell out or maybe you can call it tencel, on the other hand, is also a 100% biodegradable material and is manufacturer in a rayon process, which is similar to what we mentioned modal previously. And this production process is what we actually call a closed-loop production process. Now tencel, on the other hand, is actually a brand that is done by Lenzing from Europe. This company that actually produce lyocell, but they just actually brand as tencel material. And this tencel material also is actually made out of wood pulp and then turn it into mimic cellulosic fiber from eucalyptus trees. So in this case, the actual trees is out not only is actually certifies, but the material is derived directly from the trees. So at the end, quick quiz, what are the three major types of sustainable material that's been used? 9. Fabric Defects - Part 1: Now it's time to talk about fabric defects. In this lesson, we will cover some of the most common fabric defects, how to measure if the defect is very bad, or, if it's acceptable or what is the industry standard? It is important that you educate yourself in this area. So when you work in directly with manufacturers, you are not overthrown by the jargon and that they use, or you don't know how to react when there's a defect situation. And a clear understanding of various types of fabric defects will help you to know how to prevent them. And learning how to identify various fabric defects can help you also to ensure the fabric quality meets your standards. So let's get started. There are 23 common fabric defects out there. And you will come across when you have fabric production or before you make them into garments. In this lesson today, we will briefly go over all of these defects so that you have a high-level understanding of what they are and what they mean. So let's get started. The first one we have is the horizontal line. So as you can see in this image, the horizontal line is defined by the irregular line that runs from side to side. And horizontal lines are generally caused by the faults in bobbin, the barrel used to hold the yarns in place. You know, irregular thread tensions cause all the prevention of the horizontal line. So for example, the tension is like some is loose and some is tight. Next one we have here is shade variation. So one of the most obvious visual defects that can be found in raw material is shade variations and is usually defined by the difference in the types of shade and colours from the roll to roll, or piece to piece. So shade variation in the fabric is usually caused by mixing the fabric used in production. So you know, you have a darker colour and then you have a lighter colour kind of stack together. And then variation in the production process with regards to the timings and speeds in proper cuttings, bundling or numberings or unequal fabric stretching. So cause and prevention of this shade variation is using the same - make sure when you are manufacturing the garments, you can tell your manufacturer, the garment manufacturer, that they use the same base material and set the parameters of each production lot can effectively prevent the shade variation. So when you're visiting the factory that, you know, for example, manufacturers that make the raw materials is critical to ensure the workers are only combining garments of the same colours and not taking shortcuts, when cutting and bundling. So proper numbering of textile types, preventing mistakes by combining cuts that vary in different shades. So next one, really easy. Dirt and stains. So dirt and stains are very so straightforward. I'm not going to speak too much about it, but usually dirt and stains are textiles are never truly saved from stains because, you know, in general, they can cause anytime, during or after the production time if they're not kept in an area that is adequately cleaned. So stains can appear on fabrics from just above any like about any sources. So dirt from the factory floor, the oil from the machines that dyed, you know, from when it dyed, when your fabric is in the dyeing process, stains relatively easy to identify it and prevent, as long as that suppliers are usually quite rigorous in the production quality. So up next, we're going to talk about uneven dyeing. So uneven dyeing here, as you can see in the image, are irregular patches on the surface of a raw material, or on the textiles. And dye marks are generally, are typically result of low quality of base fabric or improper levels of agents, incorrect pH in the production process or dye machine entanglement. Then you have drop stitches. Drop stitch is one of the most common issues found on textiles and drop stitches are usually holes or missing stitches that appear randomly on the fabric and, and is usually caused by incorrectly setup of the yarn carriers, slubs and knots, yarn overfeeding or underfeeding, losing stitches during the production. Then you have misprint. So for those of you who actually like to do digital printing on the textiles, this is something that is very relevant for you. So misprints are usually relevant, usually they are circumstances when your print does not match your specific design. So you know, sometimes the colour is missing or the colour is incorrect or is too big, too small. So this is usually displayed in one of the following ways. For example, the colours and/or the patterns are completely or partially missing. The colour and the patterns are incorrectly positioned relatively to each other, or maybe the colours are not correct. So when you're doing this digital printing on the material is essential that you need to actually have a clear print instruction labelling - What is the print colour? If you have Pantone colour reference, that's the best. If you have CMYK reference, also is good. And then also label how big the print is, which side of the print is facing the soul, which is just really easy that we have neutral ways to communicate between your standard, and also the print factory standard. Crease marks. So crease mark is also one of the very common mistakes. So crease mark is visible of the department is like a deformation of a fabric. A crease mark differ like is different from, let's say for example, a crease streak. This is usually unlikely to appear on the entire row, but rather, these crease mark is usually only on one spot of the fabric. So this is something very different. If the final pressing cannot restore fabrics to the original condition or the crease marks will be left on the final product. So for example, like when you have fabric is a little bit too loose and then when you roll the material too quick on the machine and you have some loose fabric hanging there and that's where you create a crease mark, is not really a big deal. You can actually get rid of it. So this crease mark rectified it. You can use an anti-creasing agent during the scouring process prior to the dye that can actually help to prevent the crease marks. So next one is barre. So a barre is unintentional, repetitive, visual patterns of a continuous bar or stripe. So barre will typically appear on horizontal lines, and that's running from the width of the fabrics that go horizontally like this. The barre, like the bars here must appear in the repetitive patterns to be considered as a barre. So you always see the same thing in a similar spot. And it's typically found parallels to the fillings of the woven material or to the courses of circular knit fabrics. So this is usually not detected until after the process of the fabric is finished. So you can't really see it upfront when you're producing the material, but you can see it at the end. Next one is neps. So on knots. These are usually very small, tightly tangled knot-like masses of unorganized fiber that actually forms a pinhead shape. These knots are generally comprised of deads or maybe immature fibers. So neps, can be usually categorized in three different types. One is biological type, which is found in raw materials. And these neps contains foreign material such as seed coat fragments, leaves, or stems material. And the manufacturer can usually remove them throughout the wet processing, meaning dyeing. The second one is mechanical. Mechanical one is like usually found in ginned lint, card webs, yams, or clothing that's these neps are generally large as a result of the mechanical processing. And the third one is the white speck neps. So this is generally not visible until you're dyeing these white specks. Neps contains immature clusters of fiber and that is considered in the most severe type of neps. Up next we have abrasion marks. So abrasion mark is very easy to spot. It is usually when you have fabric and fabric happened that really strong friction and then you see like this colouring. So in this image here, in the middle part here, this is exactly where you see the colour seems like a little bit off. You know, the rest of the other looks quite even. So. That's where you can see. You see the arrows showing up here. And then you have splicing. Splicing is the overlapping of the cut ends of two fabric kinda like, you know, putting them together to ensure the continuous spreading. So this is necessary in one roll of fabric finishing. And then it tried to kind of continue with the next roll, so it doesn't have some space in between. But this is very common as well. And this kind of overlapping end of the fabric produce a waste material in the manufacturer. So splicing losses can vary up to 5% of the total fabric usage. Importers can ensure greater manufacturing efficiency by minimizing the splicing in-between the fabrics. And generally this splicing, we can use this four-point systems to evaluate how bad it is in the situation which we'll talk about it a little bit later on in this presentation. Upcoming next we have holes. So hole is an imperfect area where you have one or more yarns inefficiently damaged or created an opening of the fabrics. So this one is usually, typically treated as a major defect of the fabrics and usually penalize by point in the 4 points system. During the fabric inspection, depending on the size, how big the hole is measured by centimeters, right? Next, we have defect selvage. So you see this image here. Defect selvage is where you have the edges of the fabrics, it looks too dense. And most of the time when you have woven material, the selvage is supposed to keep the fabric from unraveling and fraying. So the selvage can be defected in a number of ways. So including cut, wave or crease. So cut selvage might also refer to as broken savage, or ripped selvage in this case. The next one you have snags. So snags is at the part of yarn, that you're accidentally kind of pull up our pluck from the surface. Usually these appear on a large loop of yarn above the surface of the material. So if you have it loose, the tangent of the yarn is just too loose, so you kinda pluck it up, right? So this one can sometimes happens, of course in production as well. Thick and thin places here is usually refers to unintentional changes of a fabric appearance as compared to adjacent construction. So meaningfully, I mean, like sometimes when you weave them - it is typical classify as a major defect in the fabric inspection here, like a thick place. You see in this image is a thin place but a thick place usually also appears in a small area of more closely spaced yarns, kinda places together. And a thin place here is an opposite, which is like fabric will usually appear to have loose the spaced yarn and the congregation of thin yarns. But it just doesn't look right here. 10. Fabric Defects - Part 2: In it there, only three more slides, bear with me. So next we have bowing and skewing. So here let me just make the mixture of the image is quite clear that you can see it properly. So as you can see here, usually you have the fabric selvage or maybe like the beginning of this - it is supposed to be really straight here. But when you have bowing and skewing is like when you see the side of the fabric or maybe waves that cutting the 1.5 meter width is kind of in a really round curve or it's not even straight. So let's talk about why these can happen in a fabric. So this kind of, this kind of happening is, is usually happens when the tensions of the, of the fiber needed is not quite right or it's actually tangled in a wrong angle. So this kind of condition is more, mostly happened woven textile where filling yarns displaced from the lines perpendicular to the selvage yarns and this yarn lie where you see this arc kind of shapes. It's actually across the width of the fabric. So as you can see here, this is something that is visually can be seen quite easily, right? Next we have needle lines - it usually appear in weft knit fabrics. So a piece in prominent vertical streaks or like lines of the fabric, as you can see in this image here. Coarse pick. So what is coarse pick? So I hope this image you can see quite clearly for each of you. So coarse pick here is where the filling of the yarn used in the fabric is unusually large in diameters and this defect is also lead no one else course fillings or maybe thick fillings. So coarse pick is usually classified as a major defect as well during the fabric inspection, because you can see, is kind of like it stands out quite hugely. Then we have coarse end. Coarse end appears in the fabrics with yarns. It's also known as a heavy end or this is usually when the warp end is larger than normal yarn in diameters, even sometimes double in size. So the opposite of the fine end is when the warp end is smaller in diameter than normal. So it can be bigger or smaller. It depends. So you can see the line, the diameter of the yarn is too large, irregular or contains foreign material, these can trigger these coarse end lines here. Then we have broken pick. So this defect appears as a broken filling yarn. So broken yarns in the fabrics' weaving. So a piece on the sharp discontinuity in the waving patterns over the pick length. So you can see in this image here Last three - broken end. So broken end appears as a broken untied warp end of the fabric. So the yarn is usually broken during the, you know, the waving or the finishing stage. And broken ends usually appear as horizontal lines along the fabric width. So if you can see this image here is quite fine. It's just right here in this area here. Missing ends or ends out. So this defect usually appear in fabrics as a fine warp-way crack until the weaver rectified it. So a missing end typically appears in the selvage of the fabrics or commonly known as "end out" as well as industry jargon and is typically classified as also a major defect during the fabric inspection. Lastly, filling bars. So filling bar is also commonly known as weft bars. And it is visually as a visual band or visual bar across the whole width of the fabric. And this area contains less than normal number of picks and appears differently from the rest of the fabric. You can see in the line here - it looks a little bit odd, but it's not so visually obvious, but you can see it's a little bit odd. So you'd understand now the different types of fabric defects. But how do you understand, how severe it is like, you know, how many conversations you should ask, you know, how do you know it's right or wrong? So the quality of the garments, it really depends on the quality of the fabric. Now, when it comes down to receiving the fabric in a roll, it's very important for you to have an understanding how to ask a compensation when you're receiving defect materials. So how do you measure it? This is exactly what we're going to cover. But for more information, if you want to understand about quality management, please do stay tuned in our Module 4 Lesson 1. We will talk about quality management. But right now, let's talk about the common defect. How do you measure and how to control it. So most buyers usually require all the production fabrics can be inspected according to this 4 points system. So this four-point system, inspections conducted at the mill, but or maybe at the fabric manufacturer. And also it can be inspected in the cutting and sewing facility as well. So normally, IDFL inspects 10% of the whole roll of the fabrics we receive and evaluates them based on this 4 points system. So no more than 4 penalty points can be assigned for any single defect. So obviously, as you can see here, when you assign a point 1 is actually point 1 is like it's okay that point 4 is the most severe. So it depends on the size of the issue that you actually see. So when it comes down to this 4 points system, no linear yards or meters can contain more than 4 points. So regardless of the number of a defect within the yarns and the meters. Continuous running the defects which exceed 9 inches or 23 centimeters should be assigned to 4 points. So in the event there's an additional defect within the same meter, so same yard, issue also consider as a separate defect and assign defect points accordingly. Any continuous defect that you can see here. So for example, roll to roll shading, or maybe like narrow or irregular width or crease or barre. Any of these issues should be assigned a maximum 4 points for every yards or meters within a shipment. And each full-width defect should also be assigned for 4 points. Obviously, noticeable for severe like defects, they are assigned 4 points for each yarns and meters within which they occur regardless of the size. So therefore, when you are looking at this kind of defect and understand how these points are actually assessed and look at the sizes of it. You know, you shouldn't just say, Oh, this row I cannot use at all. Sometimes if you assess how big the roll or how big the issue is, you can also sometimes go back to your fabric manufacturer and ask them to compensate for additional meterage that you are missing due to these defects. That is actually also one way to compensate the issue that you have in a defect, because in reality, nothing can be really perfect because we are facing these materials are made out of machines and sometimes there are some small issues can happen, but a good manufacturer usually will advise you upfront what are some of the defects because they actually have done the inspections and then they might already compensate you upfront these issues already, but obviously, you have some bad manufacturer - that's all we've done, you know, we send you the roll. But obviously, you have to be stringent enough to make sure the quality of the fabric is meeting your standard. So depending on the size of the fabric production that you have, the more fabric that you produce, the lower the fabric defect because when your machine keep continuously running for the same kind of specification of the fabrics is much easier for it to actually perfect it. Then if you just only produce 100 meters compared to 3000 meters. So according to the industry standards, as you're producing, let's say, 3000 meters above, it is acceptable to have, you know, about 2.5 to 5% fabric tolerance defects. However, if you are only producing 100 or 300 meters per colour of the fabric, the fabric tolerance will be much higher. And you should understand that because you know, most of these machines and factories, they need to gear to making large volumes instead of small volumes. So you might see, you know, 10 to 20% tolerance. And when this happens, you know, you should understand and accept it. Of course, you have to communicate with your manufacturer how to actually compensate for the lost meterage. So therefore, it's very important for you to understand the fabric production is not an artesian production, you know, like I mentioned before, you just need to be realistic about your expectation for production to avoid miscommunication or misunderstanding here. Now, the fun part, quiz time. So what is this defect called? We have an example for you. Just please have a look at this and refer to some of these examples before, Understanding and just see what the effect is this. 11. How To Verify Sustainable Materials: In this lesson, we're going to talk about how to verify sustainable material. We will go through how to verify not only just the sustainable brands, but also the products as well. What certifications that you need to check. So let's dive down without further ado. Previously, in Module 1 Lesson 3, we have shared with you these three sources that you can actually learn and check how to verify sustainable brands. So we're going to give you a bit more information in this lesson. Good On you is an app that actually gives you much more information about sustainable brands and practices. They score fashion brands in order to provide you with information which brands are actually sustainable based on the criteria such as material use, resources, chemical use, labour transparency, factory safety, as well as welfare policies. And they actually did - and then in order for them to actually determined the brand ranking, they consider all of these factors and then they will give them a rating. So for more information, you can actually check out the link below that we have done an interview with them in the Ethical Fashion Room. On the other hand, in the Ethical Fashion Room, this is where we can get information that specifically coming from different brands, CEOs, what they actually learned in the process of building a sustainable fashion brand, what are their challenges and how they can actually become fully sustainable. You can get the full knowledge in the sense from how to create your own sustainable brand, and also understanding what sort of certifications and industry trends, industry changes in these episodes here. The next way that you can actually check whether a brand or whether factory is actually sustainable, is actually checking the certifications. So this, in this example, we have going to Textile Exchange. So usually a company if, they have a sustainable material and also they produce GRS certified material, for example, you can copy and paste the actual certification number into Textile Exchange. And then in the Textile Exchange, it will actually show you the certification number, whether they are certified as, you know, GRS or COS, which country they are, you know, who actually certified it and what sort of product that they certify for. So all this information is already displayed in Textile Exchange quite vividly. Now, on the other hand, if you actually check the certification number and it doesn't share anything, there's nothing is actually there. That means the certification has a problem itself. So you should actually go back to the brand and double-check with them or the factory double-check with them whether or not the actual products that they actually certify in the certifications is actually valid or not, or whether the certification itself is actually valid because Textile Exchange has been very transparently to share with you different certifications that you can find. So for more information, definitely you can actually check out the Vivify Textiles blogs here - we have a link inserted below here. You can click there and check out a video that we have actually done over here. So now let's move on. In Module 1 Lesson 3, we previously also have gone through different types of certification with you already in detail in terms of how you can check and verify the company you work with, whether they actually have certain certifications. But what we do want to highlight is that when you are verifying a specific company, If there are sustainable or not, the key major for certification that you should look for is GRS, for example, GOTS, OEKO-TEX, and also OCS. So these are some of the main ones that we want to point out. Now is quiz time. Are you ready for it? Let's check how much you actually have learned. So where do you verify sustainable certification? Which has spoke about it, and I'm pretty sure is very straightforward. 12. How To Turn Design Into A Product - Part 1: In our today's lesson, we will go through how to turn your ideas into products. These are some of the topics that we're going to cover and let's go tackle it one by one. So first of all, to start off with, we need to actually work on identifying the issue so you need to understand what the problem is, does issue the challenges that is currently in the sustainable world and to have, and you have to do some research and development and just to understand what sort of issue you are addressing when you are creating this product. Find your ideal market and your target audience whom you want to follow and you want to address to. These include understanding some of the following points. For example, in the occasion and seasonality, this is where you have the awareness of which seasons you are designing the products in and how you will, how these actual seasons will impact you to choose a different kind of material and colour combinations. Next one is muse. Many designers are inspired by the historical and modern muse. This will base on their research and also the styles of friends or celebrities. And in general, this is actually a basis of where the inspiration coming from. When it comes down to customers, if you have compiled a target audience profile like you know who you want to sell to., you can consider elements such as background, lifestyle, work and income and this individual element will help you to design, was sort of the pricing you're going to sell this product to. And what are some of the things that these groups of customers usually like? For example, if we're targeting female, female always put light dress with the pocket. Target market. Here is important for you to consider it. What sort of market sectors that you are talking to? So for example, are you targeting high-end income earners, mid-income earners or low-end income earners. These different elements will help you to determine the direction of your product designing process, because you will tend to source material according to the budget that your target audience is able to afford. Material and fabric. And this is exactly what we just touch base a little bit. So you have to consider, does your brands actually focus on using the sustainable materials? If so, how are you able to source a material to actually meet your target audience budgets? So what sort of material can actually meet those budgets, timeline, I guess, bottom lines, because at the end of a day, they are the ones that going to buy the product from you. Costing here, really should be the consideration when it comes down to material accessories, cut-trim-make, any costing associates for you to actually create this garments. And this actually will have an impact ultimately on your final designs. So you know what sort of suppliers that you're going to choose, how you're going to choose them, what element you're going to choose them. That's where you get actually play a role in terms of designing the cost of the product. At the end of the day. Final thing, the final outcome here is, is something that you have to consider what sort of practicalities that you need to actually include. So will your design be separated in terms of lingerie, suiting? For example, when you have any accessory that needed in your designer - what sort of a bra strap that you actually need. So how this process is actually design is all the way come in the front or is it just only coming in the back? How practical is this outcome going to be? You also have to consider that. The idea for designing new collections can come from many different directions and sources. The key is, the more you know, who would, how to address this issue of your audience, the better you are and that the more prepared you are when you're selling the product to them. So it's important that you actually gather materials which forms the tangible practical elements of your collections, such as the trims, the fabrics, you know, the fastenings, etc. And you set the actual concept, which is actually based on your visual inspirations when you are in your designing process. And this will help you to identify your creative work in the actual visual sense in, at the end of the day, this is actually something that coming into fruition is real, is not only in your head anymore. If you want to become a sustainable brand, you need to find a trusted factory. And the factory must provide you a basic human right to pay fairly for their workers to have a safe environment. And this is something that you need to definitely consider. Finding a correct material and choosing the right sustainable material would previously already be discussed in our last lesson. But you need to actively seek sustainable fabric providers. This is where you're going to have your first step to being a sustainable brand. But not only it is the product itself needs to be sustainable, you also have to consider conscious buyers also cares about the brand behind it. So you want to, they want to see, okay, if your brand is sustainable, including sustainability in the packaging, how are your working environment and all these other aspects? So. 13. How To Turn Design Into A Product - Part 2: Now, the key for our lesson today is really the process of turning your idea into a product. So we're going to focus more time in terms of how you are actually going into the prototyping stage and the steps actually got involved with it. So first of all, we have, the first step here is determine the size and the measurements. And in this case here specs contain vital information necessarily for creating your samples. So this actual specification that you need to include here will actually give you the right cut and the right basis. So the specs should really clearly outline the measurements of the garments, the products that actual layouts in an easy-to-read chart. Second step is really creating flat concept sketches. So this is something that a lot of people are very good at doing. So based on your mood board, your creations, inspirations when you gather together, it is time for you to really start drawing them on the paper. And just to see how it looks like. Step number three is really creating a virtual prototype. So virtual prototype here is before you actually put it into a garment, how does it look on the computers? So for example, some of them you do a sketch online. Once you have done that, you will need to develop what we call a tech pack, all technical sketches. So the technical sketch is a blueprint for your designs. And this is important for the sketch to reflects the correct construction of your garments. The sketch, the technical sketch. Sketch information here will then be used to create what we call tech pack or technical package for the garments. The technical designers will use the silhouettes and the design to determine a construction detail and the specifications. So they will work on the designs with the sourcing agent developed what a material you're going to need, trim and cut and accessories that is coming, you know, zippers, coming for your garments. And once the detail has been finalized, the tack pad is then to be sent to a factory for construction. To avoid mistakes is essential for you to really provide a sample room with some supplier details when you're putting these garments together. And this actually allows them to actually follow your instruction quite easily. So by this point, you really need to gather some of the following information that we have listed here to present for the factory in terms of creating a product type. So in tech pack, for example, fabric that you have sold some sample of the fabrics, what sort of accessory that you have in mind, the grading of the sizes of the garments, or maybe even better if you already have a sample, you can send them a copy of a sample. Step number 4 here is to build a physical prototype. So now that you're ready to build a physical prototype, if you have the skills, you can obviously do it yourself at home. We've seen a lot of designers are very talented doing the cutting, sewing, everything by themselves. But if you need help, you can get a professional prototype designer, all a design studio or garment factory to help you to build a first prototype. And if you are really cash-strapped, you might really seek maybe a local sewer that actually be able to help you to put the whole garment together. When it comes out to refining your prototypes, in this point, you might find some flaws or you might find some areas of improvement that you need to make before you do your bulk production. Because what you don't want is that when you producing a bulk and all these faults also refer to your final pieces and you're not able to sell it. And that's really money flushed down straight away to the drain. So typically in the early working prototypes, these are built with less expensive materials to reflect the actual look and feel of the product. But once you're able to identify this process, you should really work on improving the design. Even though, you know, you can, for example, potentially make another prototypes based on developed versions to reflect where consumers actually want. Lastly, is really to locate your manufacturers. So where are you going to find this manufacturer to actually manufacture for you? Is it going to be local? Is it going to be offshore? So once you have a working prototype, you are technically ready to supply this ready for production essentially, however, you might want to take an extra step to really consider where you want to locate these manufacturers based on the expectation that you wanted to deliver in terms of timing, shipping and everything. Moreover, specification or tech pad is produced to provide essential details such as sizing, grading, cut, trim, fabric, accessory, quantity, etc. These will enable the factory and the production staff to really know exactly what it's supposed to happen with the construction and trim for each different style that you have. So some of the things that you need to watch out when it comes to designing, specifically when it comes to grading in sizes and quantities here. So when you are grading is important for you to understand, hey, what size am I going to grade? Is it going to be an Asian size because Asian sizes are usually much more petite? And then you have the US size and European size, or Australian size, which is an even larger size. So what are you going to actually base? Have your actual sizes based on every sizing is a little bit different? MOQ here we also previously has discussed some of the MOQ basic learning here for you. But MOQ here is essentially you will need to consider not only just the fabric MOQ, but also the accessories MOQ, that garment MOQ. If you're going to solve them independently, ideally, you would like to have all of these MOQ kinda aligned. But in reality is very difficult unless you work directly with the factory that they will actually source it for you. And they might already have access to negotiate in terms of small quantity or larger quantity. So here is best really, for you to really find a way to align your production MOQ when you actually start out. Here are some of the tips that you need to consider when it comes down to, you know, moving towards from prototyping and forward. For more information about how to scale your production, how to work with MOQ, please stay tuned in our Module 3, we're going to discuss more here. So once all the hard work, physical production is all done, now the next step is really to tell your story. So at the end of a day in marketing, at the bottom line is really to tell a story about your brand, who you are, which is actually a reflection or extension of yourself. So this story, or maybe, you know, how you'd want to highlight your brand is really should be consistent to create trust for your customers and you really should be authentic. In this way, your audience will continue to expand and make your brand or your branding much more stronger to attract others, in terms of when you're going to partner with them or collaborate with them. So what are the things do you need to consider when creating a sustainable and ethical product? For example, limited sourcing options. And there are hundreds of high-quality companies that prioritize the values out there. But they are also few of them only make very unique, I guess, specifications. So when you are finding a factory that matches your value, that also able to build a sustainable relationship with you, please do make sure you do your research thoroughly because there are some factories that actually can align with you. But however, it's sometimes, this is still relatively new in terms of practice. So you need to make sure you do your homework here. We have spoken about certification previously, so we're not going to dive down too much in the certification sense. But when it comes down to the supply chain side, even if a company sign a contract with you, they might have the certifications, or the compliances to meet environmental sustainable practice. It does not always mean that's entirely of the supply chain, does the same. So maybe their suppliers, suppliers might not even do the same. So this is something that you need to be mindful of. And you do have an impact when it comes to inspecting the product. Just checking, make sure your suppliers, suppliers also understand you are complying with a sustainable model. So lastly, we come to the fun side, which is the quiz side. How many steps are there in building prototypes and what are they? And also, how do you make your prototype more profitable? 14. How To Plan Your Production Timeline: So now let's talk about how to plan your production timeline. In this lesson, we will cover who's actually part of your team, the general timeline in each different stage, and also the overall timeline. And we will give you a case study for you to actually understand how this would work. So, who's in your team? Who should be part of your team? Who you will need when it comes down to garment production? So we include designers, pattern makers, cutters and trimmers, garment sewers, sampling studio, garment manufacturers. So these are very straightforward, right? But designers, as per what we actually discussed in Module 2 Lesson 3, designers are usually the ones actually have created or draw or sketch the actual design into these, right? Pattern makers. We know that is the one that actually turns your 2D designs into a tech pack because he or she will need to deconstruct the design into smaller pieces to define where they're going to have to trim How many cuts is that per garment? What is the size or grading of a design, etc. So cutter and trimers are usually at a factory that actually transforms your fabric into smaller pieces and ready for them to actually sew. But depending on where a setup, you have chosen. For example, in Australia, the cutters are separated from the sewers, but in China or in some other factories or in some other countries, they might have cut-trim-make all in one house, right? And usually, the way that they charge is by how many cuts or how many hours that it takes them to actually do your job. And so they charge you by pieces. Sewers are clearly the ones who actually put your garments together. But the way that they actually work is by how complicated your sewing, yes. So for example, whether you are actually having, let's say very simple stitches or maybe have over log, or double over log. They charge you by how complicated the way you want to sew it, and by per pieces. Alternatively, you can also do the sampling studio if you have the budget for it. So usually they charge you as per project, which they outsource cut-trim-make for you. And they will do a tech pack as well. So they can be a bit more of an expensive way for you to do the prototyping. But if you also already got your prototype, you may also consider to work with a garment manufacturer who can, can do the project. I guess the project managed for you part of your production essentially. Of course, there are cases that the garment manufacturers do tech advantage of newcomers because they don't know about the industry. But this is a very rare case and there are also very good ones who plan out your production and do a lot of work for you as well as the legwork. So timeline for each stage. So in a rule of thumb, usually for the designers to come up with a design, it usually doesn't take that much time for them. But sometimes you might need to revise your design and that's where it takes more time. Whereas comes to pattern makers, usually for them. if it's an experienced pattern maker to mockup design, it really should take about one or two weeks. But again, if your design has to be revised again and then they have to make the pattern, they have to remake the pattern for you and remake the new tech pack for you, this will take more time as well. If you communicate well with the cutters in advance, usually, this goes really quick. One or two weeks they will be able to cut it for you, but you make sure you need to let them know and scheduled, okay, this is when your factory is going to come by and please have this cup and done by. Depending on how many pieces that you are actually manufacturing in total, the sewers can take really generally two to four weeks to put it all together for you. But when it comes down to the design studio, sometimes designs studio, you are the one that we mentioned, you know, they will do the outsourcing and project management for you. So when they actually combine a tech pack the cut-trim-make together and make a prototype for you, this process takes about six months and design is actually separate from what we had discussed before is just somebody that you go into outsource, somebody had more experience to do this all for you instead of you project manage yourself. So if you are experiencing this way, like maybe using a design studio doesn't take you so much time because they can actually turn around the prototype for you quite quickly. But if you're not experienced, that's when you take more time here. Sometimes you also have to consider natural events like COVID. These usually drag out your process even longer, just due to the lockdown in general. So finally, the best, the best is to really find a garment manufacturer once you have already got a prototype and tech pack information together. In this way, you are able to directly quote, they usually would directly quote you how much it costs per pieces of garments with or without the fabric. So they can just charge it without the fabric, you buy the fabric elsewhere, we'll just charge you the cut-trim-make. This is going to be how much it is per piece. Or if you want them to actually sew the fabric for you, they will be like okay, including the fabric and including cut-trim-make, which is all the value-added they do, then they will actually charge you in this price. But one thing that you need to consider is that how would you like to trim it and how would you like to make it? Because usually garment factories, the way they charge you is also the same as how many cuts you need to make, whether this cut is necessary. So a good manufacturer usually can give you really good recommendation in terms of how to make your garment in a more cost-effective sense. They usually calculate the, the garment cost per pieces by how many cuts, how many trims, what types of trims and what accessories or you need to do, you need to have, how much are the accessories costs, etc. Assuming that you are ready for the right prototype, then the production timeline will really be around a month with them. But if you are updating your prototype again back and forth, easily just go three months time, just go away. So in sum up, if you're looking at this project managing yourself, the whole process really does takes about 6 to 12 months depending on how experienced you are. So if you're a newcomer, do expect that you need a bit more time to actually project, manage the whole process. So this is just give you a high level. Now, let's get into a case study together. So assuming that you have a great idea, you want to start a t-Shirt startup, and assuming that you want to manage the whole process yourself on your side. You're making this sustainable t-shirt and you do customized prints for your customers. So this is just a small example that we're putting out. Now we mock up a timetable. So we assuming that you're already using an existing tech peck of a t-shirt because t-shirt is not very complicated. So a tech pack is relatively easy, but if you have a very customized design, that's a different timeline. So in this way, you have no revisions of the product that is needed - assuming. If you already came up with the new design or the tech pack, is one of the most important stages that you can gather the feedback about a design from your customers. So if you're looking at out that whole production timeline, if you're experiencing really, you can manage between my six months from July to December that you can, you know, just already get it done. But obviously, you have to - each of the steps, you have the project timeline. Can they get it done in this time? Can they actually make sure they give you the prototype within a month? You know, what if lockdown comes by, which is exactly what we experienced right now or in the past. And what about any fabric delays? So this is something that you have the project manager each step of the way. So like I said before, prototyping and sampling is one of the most, most important stage that you really should not miss. You change your design, you should really update your actual tech pack. If you change your fabric, you have to try to make another prototype again. So it's very important to get the final design that you're very completely satisfied before you actually do the manufacturing. So quiz time. If you are the first fashion entrepreneur, like it is your first time to actually do it. How much time should you really budget for the entire production? 15. How To Finance Your Brand - Part 1: Today we're going to cover a topic on how to finance your brand. So in order to finance your brand, you really need to understand a rough understanding on how much do you actually need to finance your brand? What are the options are there to finance your brand like self-investing, getting money from friends and family, if we can actually acquire for any public fundings. Can you do crowdfunding? Can you actually apply for competitions? Or can you actually get money from investors? So let's begin, how much do you really need to actually start out your brand? So we're gonna go through some basic cost calculations and going to give you a case study here. So for you to understand in general, to run a business, you have fixed costs and you also have variable costs. So fixed costs here are something that is fixed. It doesn't change so much. For example, your costs or maybe your COGS - cost of goods sold, that's what you called here, shipping costs. They're mostly one-off. For example, import tax, rent, subscriptions, marketing costs. So this is if you have a one-off transaction that's usually fixed. Now, you have labour costs here is variable because you might hire one person, two persons depending on how much you pay for them, hourly rates, and how long you hire them for. Legal cost. It also depends on what you need, for example, your registration of the company or for example, you specific beneath the lawyer to actually drive out and contract for you. That actually is variable. So for the simplicity of setting up the business, I will assume that you are only a startup and you wanted to set up the business in your garage with a basic setting. So manual recording of your own system like, you know, inventory coming in and out. For example, how much, like how much the customer, who or which customers pay for what. So this is a manual recording and you are also testing out an idea and yet have cooperated with the business. So you have a really simple basic, basic setting after all. Just to be a disclaimer, these might only be an example that I'm going to highlight here in a case study in mind not be 100% reflecting the costs are actually going to involve in your business. So, and also in the next module, we will give you more information about what cost of goods sold is. An example of how to calculate cost of goods sold. But for the time being, let's assume cost of goods sold here is $3,750. That's how much you actually need to spend for the raw material to create your t-shirts. Subscription here assume that you have a Shopify shop, which is an online platform that you actually run and sell your goods. For marketing, to start out, most startups will not have a budget for this, but I do recommend you to have a rough budget to work with. You know, for example, influencers or running some single ad or social media channels yourself, just to get someone to do SEO for you. Labour cost here, assume that you're paying yourself $100 USD. This is really nothing, It's actually below the threshold. But in most cases, startups would really ignore the cost here as they are, really setting it up as a side project. So it's up to you how much you want to put in here as the labour cost. Legal cost here refers to a business setup cost. So it might be, for example, you need a high accountant or a lawyer to actually set up the business, or you need to test out your ideas so you assume that you haven't registered your business, but the moment that you start registering a business, is that costing something. So in total, you see here approximately to starts out just a t-shirt startup here, it's approximately cost about 6 thousand, 600 thousand to 18000. Now, let's go into options. What are the options that you can actually get your actual funding to finance your actual brands. So the first one we're going to talk about is self-interest. So self-invest here is really when it comes down, so it's really referred to you putting money down the line, right? So there are some questions here that you really should ask yourself before you start. Like, do I have the savings for myself to do this? Do I want to partner with someone to do a project? How much savings do I have and how much extra do I need? How long is it going to take me to save this money, or should I actually get a loan? If so, can I obtain a loan? Obviously, when it comes under self-investing, there are some pros and cons. So it's really easy for you to actually make decisions to arrange it - there's no agreement that you need to make for yourself. But obviously, the risks are all on you here. So hence, once you consider all these questions here, you really should note business, in general, are quite risky. The next option is family and friends. So when it comes down to raising funds with family and friends, you might be one of the most trusted tribes. Like I mean, they usually know you. So they are the trustful try for you because they actually get to be in a relationship with you in advance. So they are much more likely to put the money for your venture. Some of the questions that you really should consider are if I wanted to partner with somebody who can I do this with? Is this person really reliable or business savvy? Does this person even have that experience or complimentary experience of skills that I don't have? So this is very important for you to understand. And who can never really ask in the family to really invest in my business? Mom, dad, uncles, cousins, or how many friends and family should I ask? How much do I need from them, and how much can they actually contribute? Of course, there's no perfect solution to get money from friends and family, you know, risks are you will risk your relationship with them if things go out. So on top of that, they are more, but on the flip side, they are more flexible in terms of managing the progress and relationships only when you clear out what exactly needed to be agreed when it comes down to involvement, decision making, and who gets to make the ultimate decisions. But at the end of the day, you will need to negotiate with them in some of these, in your agreement. Public funding is also one of the best funding options if you can get your hands on it, because they are generally equity-free, you don't have to give away any of your company at all. Meaning no one can really get your own part of your company at all. At the end of the day, you will still be able to finance a brand. So where can you get them? You get this money. There are generally 4 levels that you can seek public funding from. So you have city council, state government, federal government, and supernational organisation. So for example, the City Council in Australia, City of Sydney, have several funding portals which allow you to apply for, to get funding that really matches exactly what they need as a development in that sense. You are best to check your independent countries for more information about different levels of public funding is available. But in this case, for example, supernational organisation and something like EU. You can apply for funding from EU as well to actually fund your project, should these also as be aligned with their ultimate goal to achieve. Public funding is good and bad as well. That's super high in competitions and is quite hard to actually get funding too. But of course, once you get it, you don't have to give away your company and it lowers risks for you to start out. So this is also a very good option to consider. Crowdfunding or Pre-sell. So crowdfunding, there are several different platforms you can do crowdfunding for. Kickstarter, Indiegogo, Causes, Patreon and GoFundMe, CircleUp, LendingClub. So overall, all these platforms they give you, I guess, start out leverage for you to launch your project. You have to go inside to actually understand what you need to do. And in order for you to launch these campaigns, to do the pre-sell, you need to consider what sort of content video you need, what is your unique selling point. You know, what sort of reward you want to give to people who fund your project and how you're going to deliver the products, etc. But it's important that you really do highlight how your project is different from whatever is already launched in the platform here already. And when you do deliver the products, you can also leverage off what we call 3PL. So third-party logistics to deliver it for you. So you can actually solve this locally or internationally depending on where the product is actually made. 16. How To Finance Your Brand - Part 2: So when it comes down to pre-sell, is a little bit different from crowdfunding. But also similar in a sense, pre-sell that you really need to consider building an audience upfront first because you've got nobody to sell to, otherwise, right? And your idea itself really needs to reflect the benefit for the audience as well. So if you can document how you create a product, your journey in general, people are very interested in terms of how you come up with these ideas. So it also can draw some attention for your brand at the same time. And usually, pre-sell, you have to really be clearly communicating with the customers or the audience when are you going to deliver the products and what are you going to deliver at what time. So you have to be really upfront with your communication strategies here. Obviously, when it comes down to launching a crowdfunding, or pre-sell is a highest skill requirement in these sections. You need to have a good photographer or videographer to produce a good-quality content, write really good compelling copies for your crowdfunding campaign to persuade people. Why they should really put money in your pockets right now? Now, let's talk about competition. So competition, this is what we usually talk about, there're three levels, you can run the local competition, national competition or international competition. So competition you usually generally can find online directly, you know, so and so companies are doing this kind of competition. So local competition can be done via local city or in a private organization that actually runs the competition in a certain area. Like for example, St. George bank in Australia used to just run a competition directly with people who are in Sydney, for example. Now, national competition could be pitching the competition organized by a private company such as incubators or accelerators. An example of this kind of accelerator would be, for example, in the University of Queensland Technology. So QUT, they have a department called CEA Design Lab that you can actually go and pitch them for your fashion ideas. International competition is also a type of pitching competition as well. And you will need to win the national pitching first as a prerequisite. An example of this can be, for example, OTEC. So, OTEC is a competition run overseas in China, which they organize a local pitching in Australia, Singapore, Berlin, so and so forth. And then there will be a finale that actually will bring you to the actual host country. In this case, could be China, and then they would do a final, I guess, country champions. And in this case, the winners were when so and so money, which may be also equity-free or maybe sometimes it takes a bit of your equity from your company. The pros and cons of running competition again if you can get money out of this, a super low-risk for you to run the business right? Free money, right? But at the end of a day, competition, it's usually very high. Also tough for you to win. And you have to be very good at picking your skills, pitching your company, and highlighting the overall strategy of your company. Why are you so special, right? Last part is the most exciting part. This is the VCs money, the investors. So you'll be like, Oh, the fashion industry cannot actually get money from VCs, would they be even interested, right? So I'm just going to dive into several different sections when it comes down to working with investors. So working with investors, we call them private equities. So they can be angel investors or venture capitalists. So angel investors are usually the individual who are retired executive or CEOs experience in professionals of people who have family offices that look over the investment fund from their family. And they might have some really niche market experience, but usually, they will need to check with other people before they really invest in you because they, they need to run the divergence of your company and your idea if it's actually sound. And with these groups, there are also angel groups out there as well. So multiple angel groups that actually group several angels together. And they actually provide you a term sheet for that. That's also valid as well. VCs, on the other hand, they raise money from other people. So can be from institutions, can be from hedge funds. They're really acting as a fund manager where they can charge a fund management fee with a multiple X return in terms of expectations. When it comes down to a VCs, they are usually different tiers. So they can be formed in several experienced founders, CEOs, I guess, limited partner or what we call LPs, or in mixed industry experts, founders, and also fund managers to form a large VC company to manage funds. And there are quite a difference, there's quite a bit of difference between a small VC fund versus a big VC fund. When you're looking at small VC funds, they usually run and pick the deals themselves. And they might have limited capacity to actually do any diligence to offer you any deals. But with the big VCs, they actually have associates to source the deal and go through the sales funnel or maybe the deal funnel to really filter out the best deals ever for them to actually invest it. So different investors tend to invest in different stages as well in different companies. So you can see when you're looking at investors, there will be VCs fund that is only two people, three people and there's a VCs fund and there're 20 people then, you know, it's quite different in terms of how they run diligence and how complicated it is, is to make a decision. In generally, angels are usually writing a check size between $5,000 to $100,000. And accelerators, they usually write a little bit larger, maybe about a $100K to $250K. For VCs, they can invest anything from $250K up. Sometimes they will call themselves early VCs or late-stage VCs. So late stage VCs, they tend to invest maybe like $25M and up all, right? And then early-stage VCs usually would be pre-seed, maybe seed or maybe series A, for example. And when the VCs themselves, they also mentioned which stage that they invest, just like what I said before, right? And for those who really invest in from seed round to series A, they check size is usually around $500K, to $1.5M and larger VCs who invested in series A onward, like I said, is $2M to $5M. And lastly, you have institutional and corporate VCs. They can really invest all the way to $10M to $25M, just per check size. Things you should consider when you, before you really pitch to investors, like do you really have a clear go-to-market strategy for your products? And how are you going to sell the products, will you're going to have any re-occurring revenue over there? Do you have a pitch deck? Do you have a financial budget already? And how are you going to compete with your competitors? What is your unique selling point? And what is also your unit of economics? So unit of economics, it could have been, for example, I sell a t-shirt, you know, and this t-shirt will be $30. So for examples, and how you're going to, you're going to have people selling it for maybe corporates. Unit of economics is $30 per unit, right? So some of the tips that I would like to give to you is that when you are pitching to investors, you need to consider pre-money valuation and post-money valuation and also some of how much funding you need to raise essentially. I'm not going to go to deep down what post-money valuation and pre-money valuation is, because we highlighted here already. But essentially, I do want to recommend a couple of really good book that I came across personally to actually recommend you. And they are absolutely the go-to, to understand how to raise money with investors. But I do want it to warn you the pros and cons as well. As a disclaimer for myself, based on my experience in the industry, usually, VCs really like to invest in technology instead of fashion brands. And it's really - they want to invest in something that is easy to scale. Whatever is really hard to scale with a lot of competitions that are something that is a no-go for them. So unless your brands really have some groundbreaking ideas on technology, VCs, they usually are not a suggestible way that I would personally recommend you. But you can indeed think about investors that would like to invest in fashion brands. So there are investors like that out there. So for examples, LV, H&M, like the Louis Vuitton brand, they just specifically invest in fashion brands. There were also companies specifically investing in, let's say, Victoria's Secret as well. So a key ring, for example, but these are all really big fashion brands out there or fashion investors. So that is also possible. So that it's for us today and it's a little bit longer. But I hope you enjoyed understanding how you actually raise funds for your own brand. 17. How To Price Your Products: It's time to talk about how you price your product. In this lesson, we will go over what cost of goods sold is, example of price calculations, how competitive your price is compared to your competitors, how do you do a competitor analysis and what kind of pricing promotion you can have. So let's get started. Cost of goods sold, what is it? We're going to talk about what cost of goods sold is, what's included. And I'll give you a case study over here. So to start out with cost of goods sold. Cost of goods sold is usually also referred to as COGS. And this is actually a direct cost of producing the goods sold by the company. So the amount includes the cost of material or the direct cost of labour that is used to create a good. So, but it also excludes some indirect expenses such as distribution costs, like you're shipping per shipping, shipping price, or maybe salesforce cause like you know, the person who was selling the good for these products that is excluded. So cost of goods sold can include fabric price, cut, trim, make - we call CMT in the industry. So CMT price, accessories cost, packaging. So fabric cost is usually calculated in the price per yard or price per meter. What is important to work out here is for the fabric that you're going to make. What is the yield of the fabric meanings? If you are, let's say produce a t-shirt. It might take 1.2 meters to make one t-shirt. So 1.2 meters here is your yield per garment. So if you were, let's say, oh, I'm going to make that 200 t-shirt that it will be like 200 times 1.2, then you know, oh okay, I actually need 240 meters of fabric to make these 200 t-shirts. And for you to understand the pricing of the fabric, it would have been the price per meter times the yield of the fabric, okay? Now, CMT costs here often refers to the labour cost for cutting, trimming and making a garment. So when you usually work with a garment manufacturer, manufacturer, they would either quote you the price, including the fabrics and the CMT price, or they will usually just give you the price, let's say just the CMT, and then assuming that you buy up fabric somewhere else, okay. And usually, the MOQ is around 200 pieces in different sizes. So this cost is usually calculated based on how complicated your garment is when it comes down to how many trims, how long take to sew it, how complicated the sewing, technically you need, what quality you want, etc. So the simpler the design usually is the cheaper. Accessories cost really refers to it like the additional zippers, buttons, the sewing, maybe the hangers or maybe like, you know, the handle that you need as an additional component. So it's very straightforward and packaging against, you know, if you're looking at how to you, whether you use a plastic bag to package it or sustainable packaging, etc. So in Module 4 Lesson 2, we'll talk a bit more about sustainable packaging for you to understand how you can incorporate that into a sustainable business. Now please note, I'm going to give you a case study here, but this calculation does not include sampling cost of freight charges associate to a sampling, okay? So when it comes down to the productions is always good to practice, to produce, let's say 10% additional to what you really need just in case it is going to be defects, going to be the issue of the products. So if you're, if you're ordering 10% more, meaning, let's say if you need 100 meters, you own 110 meters or even order, let's say toward, for example, 200 garments you order just on 220, just in case something can go wrong because something can always go wrong in production, okay? The pricing here really excludes the additional shipping and transportation prices from the factory to your own. So if you see the example here, we have calculated if you are purchasing a fabric that actually needs to make this t-shirt right here, like I said to you before, the use 1.2 to the cost of fabric. Maybe if it's $6, if you're making, let's say 300 meters, at the end of the day, you can actually make about 200 pieces. So looking at the cost of the whole t-shirt, including the packaging, you'll be looking at roughly about, you know, $15, right? So at the end of a day, if we're looking at the whole bulk of 200 pieces, we have calculated the price for you here. So when it comes down to calculating the price for you to sell to your customer will ask them of the rule of thumb. Let's give you some case studies so that you can actually use it straight away in your, in your products. So generally we usually add an additional 50 percents mockups to cover the additional labour cost, marketing costs, shipping, freight charge, etc. From your factory to your own warehouse, up to your storing locations. So in this case, in our last slide - in our last example, we said that the t-shirt, which we assume that is going to be $15 to make it, then you really should consider selling it around $30 or $37 dollars really depends on the margin that you adding, whether it's 40% or 50% here. So you, you should also consider when sending the goods from you to your customers. There's going to be a freight charge. So you need to understand how are you going to give your customer free shipping? Or is it the charges of freight charge like gonna be separated? Because sometimes you might need to consider absorbing the freight charge cost when you calculate your actual sell price. Competitor analysis. So we're gonna go through some very basic competitor analysis that you can understand straight away. That includes SWOT analysis and Pricing analysis. So a SWOT analysis is designed to facilitate a realistic, fact-based, data-driven look. And we look closely into your strengths, your weaknesses of an organization or initiative within the industry. So the organization really needs to keep the analysis really accurately by avoiding, preconceived beliefs or grey areas that instead of focusing on the real-life contest, a company really usually should use this as a guideline and not necessarily as a prescription here. So when it comes down to a SWOT analysis, we're going to do a quick exercise just so that you understand your own strengths, your own weaknesses. So SWOT really stands for strengths, witnesses, advantages and threats. So what you need to do is we're going to do a quick exercise here. You need to understand what is your own strength of your brand, What is your weakness? What are some of the advantages that you have that you see, you think other people might not have. And we'll ask some of the potential threats that you have. So quickly fill up a table here just so that you can understand what you, what your position is. You might consider put the video on pause and complete this exercise before you move forward. Pricing analysis. When it comes down to analysing the product price, it is important for you to consider some of these questions. So for example, like - Who are your competitors? How are they pricings a similar product if it's a T-shirt, How are the people selling the T-shirt for? What is the product price? What is your USP? So USP here is the unique selling point. So think about what you do. What do you do to have like something that is different from other people that don't have? Which justifies why the price is more expensive, all these expensive, for example. Or is there a way that you can streamline your cost in cost of production in the future? So if, if so, where you're going to cut the costs, etc. Lastly, promotions. What are some of the ways that you can actually do promotions? So we summarize several different ways here for you. You can consider like buy X, get Y. So for example, let's say you have buy two, get one for free, you know, something like that. Or buy A get B here is like buy a product A and get the product B for free. Or you can give like, you know, X% of a 10% off or maybe like $20 off of free shipping or a free sample. So these are some of the ideas that you can have for your promotions. 18. How To Scale In Production: Hi there. In this lesson, we will actually cover how to scale in production. So what we will cover today is specifically on talking about what is the scale in production? What is the production system? Difference in making different quantities in production and grading in the fashion and garment industries. So let's get started! Now, scaling in sustainable fashions can be very effective. Particularly if you're, if it's done using a closed-loop model. We have discussed this previously. The more a brand wishes to produce, the more waste in will have to collect, and then the fewer natural resources it will require. So considering the fact that the fashion industry produces so much waste, upscaling closed-loop systems will enable more of this discarded textiles to be put back into the cycle. So decisions on scaling of the production is in usually influenced by the volume or the quantity actually that requires sort of type of materials that use make the products and the type of products that're being manufactured. But how about the production system? What is it exactly? As a business grows in sizes and produce more units of output, then it will aim to experience falling average costs of productions. So unit of economics, that's what we're talking about here. The business is becoming a more efficient in its use of the inputs to produce a given level of output. But what is the different type of production system over there? Let's discuss this. So in general, there are three types of different production systems. The first one is craft production. So craft production is usually a small-scale production process that centre by manual skills or maybe other skills, then you have the mechanized production. So this is actually a volume production process, involve machine control by humans. Then you have the automation production, and it's a volume production process again. But it involved machine controlling by the production computers. As you go and as you grow as a brand, you may also consider how to scale your brand up. So it's important for you to understand the difference between making various quantities in production. First of all, the first thing that you have to face in the production is MOQ. MOQ refers to Minimum Order Quantities. So it usually also refers to the lowest requirements of a factory to produce a certain product. And these can apply for fabric, accessories, zippers, buttons, etc. So the manufacturer's minimum order quantities usually require to reflect on MOQ that is set by their materials and components subcontractors as far as the efficiency of the operations of the cost purposes. So in most cases, the small production is really around 200 pieces of garments and including any sizes. So for example, if your MOQ for the fabric is around 300 meters and your MCQ, like Minimum Colour Quantity is 100 meters, meaning you can order three colours of this fabric, for example. Now, let's give a much more solar example for you to compare the difference in cost. So in this example here, if you are making one t-shirt and you are buying a sample meterage which your sample meterage cost will be around 31. It will be around $31.20 because you're nearby 1.2 meters to actually produce a T-shirt. However, if you are actually producing 200 t-Shirt again, so each t-shirt, again, on average, it takes about 1.2 meters fabrics, you can immediately pivot your material costs from $26 per meter as a sample meterage to only $7.05 per meter. So this is a huge difference. So as you can see that the higher MOQ, the lower the cost of cost of goods sold of the t-shirt. In this example here, it's more likely for customer to buy a $27 t-shirt as a sale price than a $60 to $70 t-shirt in reality, right? So therefore, to be scalable, you should really consider making a slightly higher MOQ. It doesn't mean like, you know, smaller amount of pieces that actually, you know, it costs less for you. It doesn't necessarily mean that way sometimes. Now let's talk about grading. So grading or pattern grading is a process of creating a range of sizes for a single style. The purpose of grading is to properly fit the pattern to a range of sizes. But when it comes down to grading, you may also need to consider about the garment that is produced for which market. So the size usually is different. If it's a US market, European market, Asian markets, the sizes are all different here. So there's no such a thing called international or universal sizing just so you know. So for grading that generally three types of methods. The first one is cut and spread. This is really the manual method is considered also to be an easy method is usually performed by cutting the patterns and spreading out the pieces by certain amount and then to grade up and grade it down. The only two that you really need is a pencil or a chalk, ruler, scissors, just to measure it up. Pattern shifting, on the other hand, is a method that is done by moving a pattern around at a consistent distance. So the designer redraws the outlines in order to produce the same result as the previous cuts and spread methods. Now you have the computer grading. This is what you actually are mostly used by what we call our pattern makers, right? A computer grading has a method that actually developed with much more advanced technologies and is usually considered the fastest method. It basically uses the same process as cut and spread and pattern shifting methods. But you digitize it and this digitization makes it much easier for you to transfer between factory to factory, manufacturer to manufacturers. Now. So overall, grading can also affect the scale of your production just so you know, because different sizes in different countries will actually make a different yield of the garments. So you know, if it's the same top like we're making right now, for Asian size is much compared to, you know, maybe Western size. So therefore at the end of the day, the size or the meters of fabric that you Need, it might also change depends on the market that you're serving. Now is time for some homework. Do your own. Do your own calculation in the production for 100 garments and 1000 garments. And then you see the difference in grading and also the difference in scaling up in cost. So do your own homework and just try to compare and you will see the difference. 19. MOQ Challenges - Part 1: In Module 3 Lesson 2, We have We have already discussed what MOQ really means. In this lesson, we'll go over some of the benefits and challenges about MOQ and the dilemma between what you want as a brand versus what the manufacturer wants. So in the topic today, we will cover the benefits and challenges of MOQ. Why do so many clothing manufacturers require a high MOQ while the small businesses want a small MOQ? And what is a dilemma in-between? So first, let's talk about the benefits and the challenges. On a benefit side. Let's dive down this four-point here. So first of all, company can balance their production needs by implementing MOQ. The benefits of having a MOQ is, as mentioned, is that a manufacturer will often have their own minimums on MOQ to balance when they, when they make your orders. So they also need to follow their vendors or their suppliers MOQ in order for them to get the supply to make your products. So by setting a MOQ, a garment manufacturer can ensure order costs are covered under the MOQs material cost, labour cost, and cost for certifications as well. And these can also ensure that they can provide you a consistent production quality. Now, on the other hand, lower inventories/ Because most of the manufacturers make more than one type of products are one type of product category, having a MOQ can have them to lower the inventory or lower the stock that a required to produce for you. By having a low MOQ, companies can suddenly, can maintain lower finished goods of raw materials over overall, these reduced inventory levels, freeing up cash and free up space, or the storage cost, etc. Another benefit is that it can also reduce freight charges. Why our finished goods shipping is often recoverable. Raw material ordering frequently may result in higher freight charges. It may trigger a special handling, alternative method of transportations, etc. So if the MOQ is actually set at the optimal level, the freight charge can also be lower while still capturing the best shipping rates for suppliers. Lastly, consistent profit. So since MOQ is tied up to the demands, this means that even though a company may set up a relatively low MOQ, they know that in the production, they will be able to match the volume within the production cycles. So these require balancing the demands and the inventory holding costs so that the lower viable price can be offered to a smaller require customers or smaller brands. By finding this balance and then producing a larger quantity within the cycle, the surface, the production cycles due to known demand and forecasting, the manufacturers can also easily satisfy a lower MOQ in general. On the flip side, the MOQ also can create some challenges where manufacturers need to have a higher MOQ and smaller businesses wanted lower MOQ. So we will talk about some of these challenges. On the other hand. So why do manufacturers want higher MOQ? Here we narrow down to six reasons why. To keep the cash flowing, a minimum amount of stock materials and components are held by the manufacturer. The garment manufacturer, this is what I'm referring to. Or it can be even a textile manufacturer. You have to hold the yarn to make the fabric, right? If you make the garment, you have to hold up the stock for zippers, buttons, and sewing thread, etc. So when they receive an order from you, or from a small brand, they will have to purchase these items on an order to order basis. Factories usually require to satisfy specific MOQ from their own supplier as well. So lowing the MOQ in a high yield when you having overseen productions, it's very difficult for suppliers because they have really limited room to reduce their MOQ from their supplier as well. So they meant might not be able to offer you a very low MOQ to make 50, for example, without taking, without making a loss or being forced to take a bigger risk to buy too much - supply the zippers upfront just to make your small MOQ. So this is sometimes, it just doesn't really work out that way. On the other hand, also we have the size of the bill of materials. So a produce of bill of material can have hundreds of components that each of them needs to be purchased, delivered to the manufacturing facility. So you know, if you have a very complicated design that you need a lot of components like, you know, logos and like parts and zippers and anything. They have to manage this. Like it's not something that is just okay - one from one supply, one from the other supply. So managing and organizing all of these components required times of the manufacturers on your behalf and the time that takes to review all of these different pieces also affect the MOQ. So the efforts to assemble the final products, each product, actually, each individual product pieces that need to be put together to make the actual final products. We need to understand that, to set out the assembly lines, the manufacturers need to plan how to do that. So these include reserving the floor space within the factories for the assemble processing, training the operators and the supervisors on how to do each individual assembly steps and set up the equipment and the machinery so that they can actually fulfill your product needs. So more complex of these assembly lines really required to lead to a higher MOQ. Because if you only make 50, they don't want it to change the assembly line every single time. just for such a small MOQ It's just not worth it at the end of the day. On the other hand, if you're making my 200 pieces, this is setup is relatively similar to what they needed to, then they can have that flexibility. Now, the amount of testing required in the productions really depends. So inspecting each individual unit usually is helping you or ensuring your products when it delivered to you are meeting your level of standard. So there are a variety of ways to test and inspect the products. And these include visual inspections, electrical integration, circuit testings. Maybe, you know, if you're testing, for example, have some components. Let's say like, you know, eliminate lights on your beautiful dress then that need to be tested as well. The amount of tests that really require along the custom testings specifically to your products - really what influences the MOQ. So the manufacturer usually need to provide specific accreditations, such as ethical production standards. This is also because these certifications, you should recover costs for ethical production management and monitoring specific, labour requirements or maybe labour working conditions. So for them to cover costs in such a certifications, I mean, certification like this usually cost several thousand dollars a year. So for them to really cover the cost of these certifications, they need to require higher MOQ, or higher a unit of economics, meaning like, you know, this, a t-shirt per unit costs so much so that they, not only they can actually, not only like small brands can also use their certifications, but at the same time, the price that you are paying as a small brand will also cover the ethical production that you can also advertise for yourself as well. Now some suppliers may consider offering buying for lower MOQ now in return for a higher price because they still have to cover certain costs, right? So working with suppliers quantity requirements structures is often very, very much more efficient. So by doing so, you can decide your products and then use the material and the component from the supplier that they're able to procure in a lower volume. But you have to discuss this with them first. You know. However, clothing manufacturers with a lower MOQ often get some hidden gems. So because sometimes when you are producing your garment, it's not very easy to find. Where do you find low MOQ manufacturers? You know, you have all these big brands manufacturing for H&M, Zara, these global giants are ready. You can Google it easily like who their manufacturers are. But there're also small MOQs. Sometimes it's not that easy to be found. So at the end of the day, it's extremely disheartening for new designers or maybe designers wanted to scaling up for their production just to find where on earth these low MOQ suppliers are. 20. MOQ Challenges - Part 2: Now here we have listed some pros and cons for you to read through about high MOQ. Now, you may pause this video and read them through properly and continue when you're ready. Now, let's talk about you. So what do you want as a small business? Very often, a small business like yourself, don't have a lot of cash and you know, to make a lot of profits. So they only really want, or you only really want to purchase a very small quantity to test the ideas of the creation with a worse with your customers or not. And you sometimes don't really even want to order hundreds or even thousands of meters or maybe thousands of productions just to meet the MOQ requirements. You know, what, if you can't sell them. So, but we have to also be realistic, right? No one in this world, one of being a business to make a loss. So now that you have been doing our course for a while now, you should understand that MOQ for manufacturers, most of the time, usually around 200 pieces. This is already the lowest MOQ that you can possibly find in a reasonably sized and setup ethically accredited manufacturers. It is not realistic to look for garment manufacturers with a cheaper price and a lower MOQ. Just to expect that they have, they will give you a great quality with the ethical credits, accredited productions, you know, you really pay for what you get. It's important for you to align your expectations as to what a brand's, what kind of brands you want to build, and what pricing you wanted to support to ensure you trade fairly for people who support your brands. We have now also listed some pros and cons for having small or low MOQ, 'cause you might again pause this video and read through all of them and then continue when you're ready. So now that we understand how and why manufacturers want different MOQ than you, what are the other possible dilemmas? Here, we're going to show you some other possible obstacles that you might see through the journey of building your own brand. Now for early stage designers who are looking for a small test runs before they make a big order. Or some of you, you might not have t the capitals that actually can reach the MOQ requirements. These volumes producing factories are unlikely to do business with you just to be realistic. However, factories that have slightly low MOQ, would probably considered reaching out an agreement with you to produce a smaller quantity in exchange of a higher price. So for a brand business, if a brand business model is to scale the productions up to season by seasons, it is worth negotiating with these manufacturers. or factory is if you see your brand's going to continuously grow. Obviously, if you wanted just to test it out, perhaps, maybe you should just find some local sold-ers. that are able to do some kind of partition work. But you just have to expect that the price per piece is going to be more expensive because of your volume. Therefore, you should consider what, to what extent you want to be sustainable versus ethical. Can you be completely 100% sustainable? Yes. But it has a strange attached, you know, if you want to be completely ethical, most of all, so it comes at a cost at the same time. So here are some possibility that you have to face and choose either a small MOQ, but no ethical accreditations. MOQ with an ethical accreditation, or a small MOQ with a higher price per unit, or high MOQ with a lower price per unit. These are all the possible situations that you might face. So low, minimum at a higher price usually is driven by the factory, but they offer to increase the price. So let us let the factory get back to you and figure out what they can actually offer you. You may also have a gradual production run. It's worth negotiating with the factory if your intention is to scale up your productions on a monthly basis by seasons. This will only work once you start growing and increasing the volume of your productions. Or finding an alternative, like another alternative that you can consider is if you are not able to convince the supplier or the garment manufacturers to lower at the MOQ. The next option is just to find an alternative product or material that we will not differ too much of what you need, but can also satisfy what you want. But obviously you need to find a compromise here within yourself as a brand. Therefore, finding a right manufacturer sometimes can be extremely difficult for new starters and can be also quite frustrating. You will need to have the right network and the connection to help you to reduce the chance of failure. So these create a gap between brands and manufacturers as they are hard to work with a small MOQ. Now, it's time for some homework. So really revise your MOQ now and think about how many MOQ you should really make, Like how many pieces that you should make in your productions that is realistic for the manufacturers and also realistic for your budget. 21. Potential Obstacles Ahead: In this lesson, we'll cover some of the potential obstacles that you might come across when building a brand. There are several misconceptions in your sustainable journey that you should be aware of, such as saving costs, cutting corners, and also skipping steps. Instead of making your brand fast to launch, they might actually end up hurting your brand instead. It is a common case or, I would say even a human nature that's, you know, we wanna save costs from here and there. When you only have limited resources, resources to play with. But there are certain costs in the business that you really should not save as a consequence of it might jeopardise your brand value, and also the integrity of your actual company. So when it comes to saving costs, you should really consider where and if it is actually really appropriate for you to save in that specific departments. Let's say if you're saving costs on marketing, you should take into consideration how fast you would like to grow. First of all, because your marketing budgets have a high correlation on your growth speed and also the quality of the marketing materials that you make, aka, how good the quality of your marketing message is. Credibility and brands recognition are usually created by a consistent visual image of visual language, providing that you have a consistent connection, you know, with the service offering that you are actually providing to your customer. So for today's design-savvy audiences, a good design is not an option for us. It is very important for the success of your brand. So every touch that you have to your audience, like your websites, the brochures, the ads, the trade show, the graphics, etc. It actually gives an impression and ends memories for your customers about your company. What if you wanted to cut costs in production? You need to bear in mind that the cost that you're cutting here not compensate by the quality of your products and again would correlate to the perceived values that you are providing to your customers. A common misconception here is that, oh, I want to increase profits, so I did cut some production costs or labour costs. But you know, usually in reality, if you cut costs in labour costs of production costs, it is usually caused by the poor product quality because the working condition there might not be very good. Or maybe the payments or maybe the workers who are working, they might not be very happy to make your products. So some of the consequences of cutting costs including low paying wages for workers, productions and unnecessary chemical and water waste. So did you know that in Bangladesh, the minimum wage, the legal minimum wage that we're talking about for the worker in the fashion industry is usually about €16 per month. That is around 50 cents a day for bloody 14 to 16 hours a day that they work. So the actual living wage in Bangladesh for a single person is about €72 per month. 168 millions of children's in the world, unfortunately, they're forced to work because the fashion industry requires low skill labour, some of them. The second misconception here is cutting corners. So fashion businesses have a misconception of easy in, easy out perceptions industry. So when you can create your business easily, maybe you can disrupt easily. That's in case most of the small businesses and maybe startups, that's what, exactly what they think. But the very opposite is true here. In fact, when you launch your own fashion brands, you should not consider cutting corners. So cutting corners here we're referring to cutting costs in size and materials. So remember those days that you might buy clothes or shoes, they did just simply too small for you, but then the size that you actually want is the usual size that you wear. So in this case, your factory or your patterns geared towards a slightly smaller size to maximize the yield, then you should also expect that your customer will not return if the size is wrong, Maybe you can offer them a larger size, but what have your stockists doesn't have a larger size available for them. I personally had a bad experience on online shopping with a beautiful looking product. But after I brought it, the material of the garments is nothing close to what I perceived. In this case, what do you think, if, you know for your customers is their likelihood to that we'll come back to buy a product again if they see your product is actually used or made out of cheap fabrics, you know, a wrong around fabric for the products. The third misconception here is to make your product quick, skip some steps so that you can launch really fast. So do you ever have the pressure of launching a product you so that you can be a specific seasonality at that line, Valentine's Day, Christmas, so and so forth? So if so, this misconception is highly related to you. Previously in Module 1 and Module 2, we have already shared with you how the fashion supply chain looks like in the process involved in the production. But still, although you are familiar with the process by now and use and they're still a tendency for you to skip some steps in the process flow. But there are some of the steps that you really should not skip at all. We previously had worked with some customers skipping fabric testing as a textile supply ourselves In the early stage of their product development. For example, during the prototypes and making the samples. But due to Chinese New Year, they wanted to have this urgency to make their product or fabric quick enough so that they can launch. And they had a very small change in the fabric specification, meaning the fabric to the same fabric, but they wanted the drape, or the texture of the fabric is slightly little bit different, but bear in mind once you change, slightly change the actual material if you don't test it and go ahead and place a bulk order, the final production of the fabric, if it doesn't meet your actual requirements, you know, your money and your investments down the drain because you haven't tested it before and then you keep the go-ahead. So in this case, like you should never skip any products sampling at all. And to maximize the return on your investments, you should not also miss any quality check on both your fabric as well as your garment production. You should check it manually if you're close to the factory or yourself, or maybe pay a third party to actually do some product audits for you. The reason why the step should not be skipped is because if you're ordering 200 items and you receive 200 of them, let's say in a good-quality to sell. But at the end of it, they, once you've already checked it, there's only 108 of them that you can sell because the other 20 is just bullshit. Very often, if you communicate upfront with a garment manufacturer, they will be able to compensate you the difference. If these 20 of them is not good, then they will make another 20 for you. But if you receive the good and then you communicate later, it's very likely that you will lose your investments and with those bad quality products. So lastly, you need to fully understand the process and have the right expectations so that you can maximize the return on your brand. And I think this is something that we really would like to emphasize with you when you're building your actual sustainable fashion. You know, it's not sometimes, sometimes it's just timing - it's also about the detail that you put in your brand as well. 22. Quality Management - Part 1: In this lesson, we will cover an important topic of quality management. Here we are actually sharing some of our hard experience with you ever since we started out as a fabric manufacturer. We have so many mistakes that we learned from before. And we have concluded, no matter what product that you are making, quality is king. So at the end of the day, if the product that you are manufacturing or producing, the quality is good, the product can sell itself, and it can also help you to attract more customers. So in this lesson, we will cover what is quality management system, what is included quality planning, quality assurance, quality control, and actions. So when it comes down to quality management system, it really highlights the policies, the goals, and it describes the quality management systems of a manufacturing factory producing the products, the internal quality management systems, the roles and the responsibilities are a whole bunch of things, right? But it's important for you to actually understand this is because it might be tedious in this content. But however, having an understanding in these areas will actually help you to control your product quality much better down the track. So just, you know, take the hard work right now and then you will pay off eventually. So the quality management system covers three sections, quality planning, quality assurance, and quality control. So we're going to break it down into each individual section here and give you a bit more insights as to how you actually fit into the process as a brand. Quality planning will go through what are the quality criteria are, what are the goals and targets and how you plan for your pre-planning production timelines. So there are usually 10 quality criteria that you need to consider that we have listed in this slide here. The first one I'm just going to go through with them, go through it with you. So the conformance, it really refers to the measure on how well the product or the surface is meeting the targets and tolerance determined by the designers. Fitness for use is usually focused on how well the product is performing as to its intended use, the intended functions. Value for price paid is defined as a definition of quality that consumers often use for product or services usefulness. So this is the only definition that combines economics and consumer criteria. And it assumes that the definitions of the quality is price-sensitive here. Support service is really referring to how the quality of the product and the surfaces is actually judged for brands. So quality doesn't usually only applied on the products or services itself, it can also apply to the people who involved in both the business, the processes and the organisational of environment, that associate with this business. So for example, you have qualities of a university is being judged not only by the staff or by the course, but how efficient for it to process paperwork to apply for courses, etc., is also judge as well. The psychological criteria here is a subjective definition that focuses on the judgment, evaluation of what constitutes a product or service quality. So different factors contribute to the evaluation, such as the atmosphere of the environments or the perceived value of the product can also be triggered into the quality criteria here. Now talk about the method of quality control. So, you know, you heard about the 4 points system, but there's also 2.5 systems, 4 points system, 6 points system and 10 points system there. But of course, the most commonly used one in the textile or fashion industry is the 4 points system. So on the receipt of fabrics in the warehouse, at least 10% of the fabric, for example, will be inspected according to the 4 points system. Quality control in cutting. It's really ensuring the two stages. So the spreading quality control, following the points that are checked during the spreading, after cutting quality control. So this is when you cut the materials and actually check them in a bundle. In process quality control here is mostly referred to the sewing stage. So in sewing stage, sewing stage is usually done in the line of quality control through 7 pieces of the inspection system. Quality control in the washing section is really referring to, you know, that how the garment has been handled, the washing standards and the thorough after-wash inspections. When it comes down to the quality goals and targets, there are four points that we have highlighted here for you. To achieve the compliance rates of 2.5 Acceptance Quality Limit, all associated with the employees work towards international quality standards of improving products or services quality, as well as improving the procedures of the product production. So previously we have discussed fabric defects in our Module 2 Lesson 2. So like I said, if you are producing a large amount of fabrics, they might say more than 3 thousand meters. So 2.5% of tolerance is actually expected. But if you're producing lower MOQ like 100 meters, then you should also adjust your compliance rates for your fabric as well. And these also apply for with CMT, if you have a small production compared to larger production. Here we have shared with you a template of how You do a pre-planning production timelines. So this is where you put a plan out what to do at which stage. So an experienced textile manufacturer will usually control and manage this for you. However, there's also one that is not very diligent and you might have to project manage yourself to make sure you chase them and check where the production is at from time to time. In the quality assurance section, we'll go over this Process flow chart with you and the plan to start the act process. So in this flow chart, it highlights when it comes down to the, to make, when it comes down to making garments, what are the backend steps that are being undertaken in order for you to receive your beautiful fabrics to go on and make your garment production. Now that you understand the steps and the processes that have taken place in the production. It is important for you to also continuously revise your operation internally. So a plan to do act steps here will help you to improve your product quality as you grow as a company. So planning here is the first step, is where the managers must evaluate the current processes and make plans based on the problem that they have found. Collect data, identify the issues. And this information will then be studied and developed a plan for how you can improve and how you can evaluate later on. Doing here really means for the next step of a cycle, how you implement your plans. So during implementation, the manager usually will gather all the documents together, collect the information, and do the evaluations. The study step here is really referring to when you collect the data, how you analyze the data so that you can understand where you're at and how you can actually achieve your goal. What is the gap in-between? The last phase in the acting stage is really referring to the basis of the result, how you actually interpret them, and how you're actually improving as an act on. So the best way to accomplish this is to communicate the results with your team members and then implement the new procedure so that you can be successful again. 23. Quality Management - Part 2: In quality control, we will talk about the production process, quality control objectives, matrix control procedures and control standards. The objectives of the quality controls are, for sure, maximizing the production of goods within a specific tolerance, at the first time when you're making it. But also really to achieve a satisfactory designs of the fabric or the garments so that, you know, when you're making that the product itself, is really meeting the market standard. And it's also fit for use. When it comes down to the quality matrix will look at three components. AQL, failure rates and the available goods and services. So AQL, AQL here really represents the maximum number of units beyond which as an inspection is marked as fail. So really what it means is that let's say you have 100 pieces, the AQL standard is 2.5%. So when you are doing spot check, maybe 10% of these 100 pieces, then you only have 10 pieces and then you should not have more than, let's say 3 garments is actually not meeting your standards. Now let's talk about the quality control procedures. So the first step here you should understand is the pre-production planning. And here you must select the supplier that meets your stringent quality standard. And based on the research of your selected suppliers in the production control stage, you can monitor their customer service, the product, the product qualities before you increase your purchasing volume. So next step is post-production. So to prevent you from let's say, having goods that you reject because the quality doesn't meet your standards, it is important that your supplier can actually ensure the quality is maintained by inspecting the goods before they ship the goods to you. Now, as we previously also cover some of the information about fabric defects and the four-point system. We will also revise some of the information about sampling methods and different inspection levels with you, just so that you can understand how you do a better quality check of your garment that you're producing. I'm not gonna go too much in-depth on the fabric defects again, because we have already gone through these in Module 2 Lesson 2. If you want, you can go back to that to that lesson to look into all this jargon and what it really means and how it looks like in the real-life fabrics. So in quality control standards, we, I'm going to give you a bit more information about this four-point checking system, this four-point system that we've always talked about. So in the four-point checking system, each greige, or maybe what we call processed fabric rolls is feed into the inspection machine for visual inspections and the roll over of the speed is no more than 15 yards per minute against the lights, usually in daylight standard of 65. So the defect should be captured as a standard, what we call an AST-D5430 standard is a four-point is a four-point standard. But you don't have to worry too much about it. And it defines each individual defect in a classification list. If the results of the inspections are found within acceptable range in that 4 points, let's say you know that the size is not too big or is very small, and then the fabric batch will be a proof. The results of the inspections are not found within the acceptable range. So for example, if the hole is too big, the line is too big, then these meters of fabric or this yard of fabric would then be rejected. The fabric repaired or mended would then need to be re-inspected again before it gets approval. So which means that by the end, if you have one yard that you have defect issues and the fabric manufacturers said, okay, we're going to give you another extra yard to cover the issues and that extra yard is also needed to be inspected as well. So as you can see in the table on this presentation slide, the larger the defect in sizes, the larger the points. So the more that the fabrics, and more of the fabric would need to be compensated for the loss of the fabric defects. Colour approval here is when you check the shading and the colour consistency at the beginning, the middle, and the end of the fabrics. So that you can see if it's actually against or go along with the approval standards. Previously we also mentioned in the lesson, the industry standard for accepting a quality level, the AQL is around 2.5%. So as you can see in these second table here. If you are producing let's say, 300 meters of fabric, you will check 50 meters and you are only allowed to have less than 4 meters that have issues. And then if it's less than 4 meters, the whole patch is okay. But if it's more than 4 meters, then it's not okay. When you are checking your garment production, how do you suppose to know if your batch of garments is meeting the industry standard? Because you know, when you offer as time designers, you might not know what is the industry standard. This is where we use a sample method to check and there are generally three sampling techniques that we use in the industry. The first one is a single sampling plan. Second one is a double sampling plan, and the third one is a multiple sampling plan. So as you see in this table over here, the single sampling plan is where you only do one round of random check and then you see whether the acceptance is actually meeting the standards. Now the double sampling plan is where you do two rounds and a multiple sampling plan. which is way you maybe do one round of a single track and then you do two rounds of single check so you kind of mix and match. Last but not least, if you have implemented your quality control standards. and now, and you found that, oh, the product quality is, you know, either above or maybe below your acceptance level, here is where you might have to decide whether you want to loosen or maybe tighten up your inspection level. So for example, let's say, your production the first time you produce your garment manufacturer, from a normal level, if you need a change to a Thailand level, this is when the batch is not met your standards or it has been rejected. Let's say two out of five times batches have issues out of it. So you will want it to tighten up your inspection from if you actually check from a normal level change to a reduced level, this is when you have consecutive 10 batches that have been inspected under a normal inspection, and then they have been passed or accepted, and the inspection level would then be reduced. So the desired outcome is to achieve with a steady rate without delay or maybe interruptions. You may also have a tightened stage and change it back to the normal stage as well. So a tighten. This is where, let's say you have five consecutive batches of clothing that you have made. Then they're inspected under a tighten inspection level, and then they all have been accepted and they have all been passed. Then you see the performance is good. Then you want to change it back to a normal level inspection. From a reduced to normal is actually usually happen when a lot of batches have been rejected under a reduced inspection standard or the production becomes irregular, always getting delayed. So normal inspection would then take place to maintain product quality as a frequent check. So there you go, you have done it. You now have learned about quality management system. Give yourself a bit of thumbs up. 24. Sustainable Packaging: In this lesson, let's talk about sustainable packaging. If you consider to build a sustainable brand, you've really should not miss the step of having sustainable packaging. Otherwise, what is the point of being sustainable from the first place when you are still generating plastic waste, right? Therefore, in this lesson, we will cover what is sustainable packaging, benefit of offering sustainable packaging, the tips, and also how to transition into sustainable packaging. As consumers become more and more conscious about shopping. for sustainable habit, they're not only looking for the product itself that is sustainable, but also how the business is conducting themselves, making sure that they are also environmentally friendly in their operations. So shipping is also - so packaging is one part, shipping is another part. So both shipping and packaging are the essential parts of online businesses, especially when you're working for a global market right now. So the way these purchases are packaged and how you ship is essentially highlights the key message that you want to deliver to your customers and also what they will perceive your product as and your company as well. Sustainable packaging refers to an eco-friendly material that you use for shipping and storing goods. So these materials are meant either to reduce the depletion of unnatural resources like PET, or in minimize the contribution of depletion. So an example of this kind of packaging, are usually made out of paper or biodegradable product like biodegradable plastic bags for example. So what are some of the benefits of using sustainable packaging? We have really dived down into 5 benefits for you. First, it really saves your money for your company in a long run. Second, it produces fewer emissions. Third, it's a better company image. Fourth, it's really easy to make the switch because right now we have so many choices for biodegradable materials packaging as well. And for fifth is really a new trend that is coming up and that's you need to pay attention to. Here are some of the tips that we have come across for what it comes down to using sustainable packaging and shipping. To switch to sustainable packaging, you need to understand how to minimize waste or use materials that can be repurposed again. So really you can actually have looking into like for example, using shipping such as lower carbon emission or carbon-neutral shipping options. Considering shipping more like bulk product together is save you costs at the same time, it lowers the missions. If you have small packages all the time, then go back and forth, back and forth, right? So and also offer a return program to the customers and recycle on behalf of your supplier like for example, previously we discussed the responsible producers' responsibilities, right? So this is something that you can consider or work for wholesalers that reduces individual shipments and limits return shipping. Reduce the size of the packages and also use compostable mailers. Now that we know both of the why and what it is about time for us to talk about how to make the change and how to make the switch. So we have really breakdown into some tips for you, how you can transition into sustainable packaging. You can read through it here. You might pause the videos and then I believe they're all very self-explanatory for you, but this is really the start for you to get into sustainable journeys. Now question, what are the benefits of sustainable packaging? If you have came up more, share with us as well. 25. Other Things To Do To Be More Sustainable: In this lesson, we will cover what other things that you can use to make your brand more sustainable. We will talk about traceability, transparency, and circularity. Now, traceability for a company really means knowing its supply from the start to finish. So from the moment that you start tracking each of the components of your products to all the way from raw material and finished product and anything in between. This is what traceability really is. So what you need to do is really to understand that by keeping a record of the entire production distribution history. So suppliers usually can really act quickly if there's any issue happened in between. So for example, if the product has a recall, suppliers can also determine the source of the problem and tell their vendors to fix the problem in-between. And these really protects the vendors from any legal actions and potentially releasing a product that might be dangerous for consumers. Now, traceability can also be used to prove certain attributes of a product, such as its ethical credential or a country of origins. So as a consumer becoming more aware of how the products are made and issues surrounding on other manufacturing, transparency is really value right now in the consumer space. So what are some of the advantages of having traceability in place in your brand? Here we have listed some of the advantages for you to consider adopting traceability. You might pause the video and read this through and resume when you're ready. Now a quick check. If you are learning from our lesson, why is traceability important for sustainable fashion brands? Now let's talk about transparency. Transparency, on the other hand, is a practice of openly sharing information from how, where and by whom a product was made. Being transparent really means publishing all the information about every actors involved in the production process, from start to finish, from the field to the store on shelves. Here are some of the questions usually that people will ask about transparency in the fashion industry. So they will ask about areas and aspects of planets. For example, what are the materials used if they are taking care of their waste? And they will also ask questions about the people. What the people working condition is safe, if they have a living wage, if there're any working worker rights. And they will also consider about, you know, how's the animal welfare, so if the products are actually made out of animal skins, etc. Transparency allows shoppers to really make a better decision. It is the reason why it's so important is also because it helps brands to hold the brand, it helps the brands to hold themselves being more countable. So knowing themselves to do exactly what they have to do and target what they have to do and they can keep track of it. This actually re-ensure that brands are not only just doing greenwashing. Unions and civil society organization cannot do their job properly to make sure workers are in a safe condition, they have the rights are respected and all the environments are protected. If a company or a brand haven't clarified exactly where, how, and by whom producing the product for the consumers. So by holding the brands being countable, the whole industry is pushing to be a better space. It is impossible for a company to make sure human rights are respected, working conditions are adequate, and environment is safeguards without knowing where their products are being made exactly. That is why transparency is so essential. And the first step is holding the brands to account for the human rights and environmental impacts and their practices. Transparency is also a stepping stone toward a more ethical and sustainable fashion industry. Knowing and understanding how things are clear, the path for improvement, innovations, business models change that can radically affect how the brand is operating and it directly impacts the consumer world. Now circularity, we briefly have spoken about circularity in our Module 1. So circularity, if we refined and refreshed some of our memory, it is a principle that uses for the scarring products as a raw material for producing a new product again. Now, by participating in a circular economy as a company, you focus on preserving the value of raw material, components and the products. So circularity really means that the product can be used as a raw material and made into a new product again. Now, the goal is really obviously the world without waste. But how do we really achieve that? And that really comes back down into the original part, which is the producing and the designing stage. So circularity really pushes the development process should be re-establish away from the linear model. The product will be actually producing in such a way that each component or element will become a raw material at the end of the life cycle. What used to be waste back in a day in a linear model, it's now to turn back into raw material again Circularity is very important for our modern societies because it strives for a sustainable environment for the future. By closing loops, less waste, less waste will exist, which is important for the preservation of earth. It also reduces the pressure on environments, improves the securities of the supply of raw materials. It increases the competitiveness of innovations and it boosts economic growth, creates jobs. So, I mean for sure, this information we already covered in Module 1 Lesson 2, if you're not sure, you can go back to the lesson to revise some of the knowledge that we have shared with you in our lessons. Now, quiz time. What are the important aspects of circularity? Choose any of them in the following table, is it A - creating a sustainable environment? B - increase sustainable supply chain visibility? C - reducing waste? And D, improving the security of the supply of raw material. 26. Innovations That Help You Become More Sustainable: Congratulations! You have now made it to the last lesson. And the fact that you're still here taking the course that means that you had not been scared off during a sustainable fashion business, right? Well, well done. And it is time to keep yourself a pad out of the shoulders that you have done such a great job. Now, jokes aside, we know that building a business is not easy and that's why we have made this course for you to make the journey a bit easier for you. And you know that we are giving you insights of the industry, what to do and watch, watch helpful. So in this last lesson we'd love to share with you that businesses and innovations that can help you further in your sustainable journey. Now disclaimer here, we are not receiving any referral from these companies or innovations at all, which simply thinking that they are cool to share with you. So without further ado, in no particular orders, here are some of the sustainable businesses and innovations that you should keep in mind when you grow. I don't think we have properly introduced ourselves to you. So Vivify Textiles is actually an Australian award-winning sustainable textile company. And we manufacture a lot of sustainable fabric like recycled, organic and natural fabrics that fall into different categories like bridal, casual wear, activewear, uniform, outerwear and accessories. So our vision is really to have a world without textile waste, where culture and, technology advancement can reduce environmental and social impact for every aspect of human consumptions. Now Haelixa, on the other hand, is a Swiss company that they aim to build traceability in the supply chain. So recently there have done a really cool project where they actually trace, where the cotton or organic cotton comes from, all the way from farms, all the way to the consumer's hand. So I think the app is pretty cool and the technology is pretty cool. Evrnu, on the other hand, has a mission to create a circular system that builds its process called NuCycl invented by Evrnu to enable eliminating waste and create new products out of discarded clothing. And similar to Evrnu, we have Renewcell here. Also be a process to reuse old cotton and other natural fiber into a closed-loop system. So they also build this circular process which allows them to produce high-quality or virgin quality equivalents to viscose and lyocell for the market to make new fiber. Then we have Worn Again, is an English company. They extract polyester and cellulose from cotton and also non-reusable textiles so that they can actually replace the use of virgin material instead of increasing the capture of raw material in the production. Then we have our sister company, Phoenxt. So Phoenxt, instead of allowing the garment going up to landfill or textile waste, what they tried to do is to introduce a circular economy so that the waste can actually go back into raw material production again. So at Phoenxt, they committed to achieve a circular economy and a closed-loop process through the textile to textile recycling chemical technology. Now, the technology itself is really enabling the separations so that this fiber can be repurposed. The waste fiber into the landfill can be repurposed into making new garments again, ultimately. Then we have Good On You. The app Good On You is a mobile app that provides consumers with the knowledge necessary to make an informed consumption decision. So Good On You app seems to serve as a one-stop-shop, full credible topics on sustainable fashion. Now that you have done all the lessons from us, we thank you so much for taking the course. And if you have anything that is unclear for this online course or any questions, you can simply get in touch with us. And here is how you can find us from our social media channel as well. If you're looking for sustainable textiles, or if you're seeking for additional consultations, you may contact us directly in the contact. So thank you so much for all of your time!