Expansion
When you first got started, you probably didn't think about what shape your business would take as it grew. You were happy to have some clients, happy to be making the rent. Now is the time to update your business plan. Now is the time to project your success into the future. You can shape your growth to suit your lifestyle and your ambitions.What do I mean? I'll tell you what I did, and then you can do the opposite. I've already shared with you how I fell into sewing clothes for other people, and how it grew without any real intention or action from me. People told people. I said yes to whoever walked in the door. I didn't choose my price point. I didn't choose my clientele. I took whatever I could get and thereby let the universe plot my course.
If this sounds good to you, if you are a go-with-the-flow kind of person, then you can do what I did. Just say yes and stay in the now. But if you don't like where you end up, you will have only yourself to blame. In my defense, I will say I didn't have the foresight to predict what would happen with my laissez-faire management style. I was too busy trying to survive to strategize the future of my business. But you are forewarned, thus forearmed, as they say. No excuse. You can plan the growth of your business, even before you grow. Novel concept! If you have an idea of where you want to go, the choices you make along the way will help you get there.
Do you want to keep it small and exclusive? Picture this: You have one shop or studio, and people come from far and wide, because you are the one and only. Your prices are high, but the amazing quality and fabulous customer service keeps them coming back and bringing their friends. You have a waiting list! You are working long hours, raking in the dough (and loving every minute, I hope).
What if, on the other hand, you want to grow yourself an empire? What if you want to hand off the production work to others, so you can manage operations, work with clients, and take a vacation once in a while? Maybe you want more than one location. How about opening a few locations around town, or in a nearby town? Wow, how about a franchise?
Do you see what I'm getting at? Do you want to be small, exclusive, and expensive? Or do you want to take over the world? Or somewhere in between? Design your future now, while you are growing, so you can grow toward your vision of your future.
Size
|
Sales
|
Employees
|
|
Year
1
|
One
location
|
$100,000
|
0
|
Year
2
|
One
location
|
$150,000
|
1
|
Year
3
|
Two
locations
|
$200,000
|
3
|
Year
4
|
Three
locations
|
$500,000
|
10
|
Year
5
|
Four
locations
|
$800,000
|
15
|
Make a plan. A five-year plan is not outrageous. A Japanese electronics mogul once made a 250-year plan, so five years is nothing. Here's a little chart. I just made up the sales numbers. But you can see there is a plan. When you have a plan, you will know what actions to take.
Ask yourself (and answer) the following questions:
- Where do you want your business to be in five year?
- What personal income would you like to generate?
- How much sales revenue would it take to generate that level of personal income?
- How many hours would you have to work to earn that level of sales revenue?
- How many hours do you actually want to work a week? A month? A year?
- How many years do you want to work?
Can you see that the answers to these questions will form the basis for your plan? Your plan will lead to your strategy. For example, if you only want to work ten hours a week, how much do you have to charge your clients to earn the income level you want to earn? (Maybe more than most clients are willing to pay!) If you can't (or won't) work enough hours to generate the level of revenue you want, then maybe it is time to consider hiring some help. Read on for some insight into hiring and outsourcing.
Hiring and outsourcing
By now your business is going gangbusters. You may be starting to panic at the looming deadlines. At this point, you need help. What kind of help do you need? Where do you find help? And how on earth will you make sure everything is done to your satisfaction if you aren't the one doing it?
You might need help sewing. You might need help with patternmaking and cutting. Or you might need a general assistant who can answer phones, go shopping, organize your inventory, and generally keep you from losing your mind. I had all three at different points in my custom sewing adventure. The first person I hired to help with patternmaking and sewing was a student who was studying at FIDM. FIDM is the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising, a Los Angeles trade school that I believe is still going strong. I think it has grown to a four-year college now.
I found FIDM students to be an excellent resource. Students need part-time jobs. My first assistant was Eileen, a young, blonde, energetic girl from somewhere in the Valley. She was a smart girl, way smarter than me; plus she could sing. What a wonderful combination, to be able to sew and sing. I knew she would go on to better things. I think she designs swimsuits for a company in California. Believe it or not, we are still connected... via LinkedIn. If you don't know what that is, you might want to Google it. And sign up. My second assistant, Deneen, was gleaned from Los Angeles Trade & Technical College, which at the time was the poor man's FIDM. She was a talented patternmaker. I couldn't afford to keep her very long.
I needed more help sewing. I found Inez through a friend in the styling business. Inez had her own dark little shop over near Virgil. Not a great area for me to be trundling around in my beat up 1974 Toyota wagon. I brought cut pieces to Inez. Inez sewed them quickly and efficiently. I picked them up. Later on, Inez came to work in my shop. That was heaven for me. I don't know how she felt about it. I have a photo somewhere of her wrestling a mountain of lavender tulle that would become a fantasy costume for a commercial. After Inez retired I found Luz. Luz was a student at FIDM who commuted from her home in Arizona once a week. She was a go-getter. Luz's specialty was tailoring. I learned a lot about working with horsehair and wool.
The hardest part for me was learning how to let go of control so that other people could help me. I used to have panic attacks as I was driving from store to store. I imagined my employees hard at work back at the studio, fouling everything up, destroying irreplaceable fabrics, sewing everything inside out, stealing my buttons. I was a wreck. Finally I realized that it wasn't possible to control everything. I realized I would have to relinquish my stranglehold on my business and let others have input. It was a learning, growing time for me.
My best friend Molly became my assistant. Indefatigable, always the cheerful antidote to my chronic gloomy gus, relentlessly organized, Molly was more than my right-hand, she was my rescuer. Molly whipped everything into shape, and when I saw my notions department labeled and color-coded, buttons in drawers, elastic in little bins, rickrack—no, I never had rickrack! Did I?—lots of zippers in various sizes and colors... she organized the heck out of every tiny little hook and eye, and when I saw it, I was able to accept that I really didn't want to be in the business of custom sewing anymore. Molly gave me permission to stop when I couldn't do that for myself.
It was an orderly retreat. More about that on another page. In the meantime, is it time for you to start thinking about hiring some help? People don't like the word outsourcing, because it smacks of sending jobs overseas, but outsourcing just means hiring someone else, a person, a firm, to do some of your work for you. Your bookkeeping and taxes might be outsourced to a professional accountant, unless you are like me, a control freak, which in that case you are determined to do it all yourself. You can outsource your patternmaking. You can outsource your sewing, some or all of it. This may be your chance to develop or hone your management skills.
Do you live near a trade college that offers a garment industry degree or certificate? Do you have friends in the garment or costume business? Here in the Pacific Northwest, there aren't so many folks who sew for money, as far as I can tell. But I know there are some who would, if they only knew their skills were in demand. You can place a flyer on a church bulletin board. You can run an ad in the classifieds. You can post a notice on craigslist, although be warned: you may have to screen out some wackjobs. If you are ready to be a boss, read on.
You might need help sewing. You might need help with patternmaking and cutting. Or you might need a general assistant who can answer phones, go shopping, organize your inventory, and generally keep you from losing your mind. I had all three at different points in my custom sewing adventure. The first person I hired to help with patternmaking and sewing was a student who was studying at FIDM. FIDM is the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising, a Los Angeles trade school that I believe is still going strong. I think it has grown to a four-year college now.
I found FIDM students to be an excellent resource. Students need part-time jobs. My first assistant was Eileen, a young, blonde, energetic girl from somewhere in the Valley. She was a smart girl, way smarter than me; plus she could sing. What a wonderful combination, to be able to sew and sing. I knew she would go on to better things. I think she designs swimsuits for a company in California. Believe it or not, we are still connected... via LinkedIn. If you don't know what that is, you might want to Google it. And sign up. My second assistant, Deneen, was gleaned from Los Angeles Trade & Technical College, which at the time was the poor man's FIDM. She was a talented patternmaker. I couldn't afford to keep her very long.
I needed more help sewing. I found Inez through a friend in the styling business. Inez had her own dark little shop over near Virgil. Not a great area for me to be trundling around in my beat up 1974 Toyota wagon. I brought cut pieces to Inez. Inez sewed them quickly and efficiently. I picked them up. Later on, Inez came to work in my shop. That was heaven for me. I don't know how she felt about it. I have a photo somewhere of her wrestling a mountain of lavender tulle that would become a fantasy costume for a commercial. After Inez retired I found Luz. Luz was a student at FIDM who commuted from her home in Arizona once a week. She was a go-getter. Luz's specialty was tailoring. I learned a lot about working with horsehair and wool.
The hardest part for me was learning how to let go of control so that other people could help me. I used to have panic attacks as I was driving from store to store. I imagined my employees hard at work back at the studio, fouling everything up, destroying irreplaceable fabrics, sewing everything inside out, stealing my buttons. I was a wreck. Finally I realized that it wasn't possible to control everything. I realized I would have to relinquish my stranglehold on my business and let others have input. It was a learning, growing time for me.
My best friend Molly became my assistant. Indefatigable, always the cheerful antidote to my chronic gloomy gus, relentlessly organized, Molly was more than my right-hand, she was my rescuer. Molly whipped everything into shape, and when I saw my notions department labeled and color-coded, buttons in drawers, elastic in little bins, rickrack—no, I never had rickrack! Did I?—lots of zippers in various sizes and colors... she organized the heck out of every tiny little hook and eye, and when I saw it, I was able to accept that I really didn't want to be in the business of custom sewing anymore. Molly gave me permission to stop when I couldn't do that for myself.
It was an orderly retreat. More about that on another page. In the meantime, is it time for you to start thinking about hiring some help? People don't like the word outsourcing, because it smacks of sending jobs overseas, but outsourcing just means hiring someone else, a person, a firm, to do some of your work for you. Your bookkeeping and taxes might be outsourced to a professional accountant, unless you are like me, a control freak, which in that case you are determined to do it all yourself. You can outsource your patternmaking. You can outsource your sewing, some or all of it. This may be your chance to develop or hone your management skills.
Do you live near a trade college that offers a garment industry degree or certificate? Do you have friends in the garment or costume business? Here in the Pacific Northwest, there aren't so many folks who sew for money, as far as I can tell. But I know there are some who would, if they only knew their skills were in demand. You can place a flyer on a church bulletin board. You can run an ad in the classifieds. You can post a notice on craigslist, although be warned: you may have to screen out some wackjobs. If you are ready to be a boss, read on.
Contracting
I hired people as contractors so I wouldn't have to handle the nightmare of payroll deductions. I paid them a flat hourly rate and wrote them all checks at the end of the day. That is the only way I knew for sure I would have the cash in the bank to pay them. If I didn't have the cash, I would tell them not to come to work that day. At the end of the year I filled out 1099 forms for each person, and that was that. How they handled their taxes was none of my concern. It was simple (for me), perhaps not very professional, but I was white-knuckling my way through every day. It was all I could do to keep breathing.
If you hire people to work on the premises, be careful to follow the laws for your region. You may need workers' compensation insurance, in case someone sews through her finger (it can happen). You may need a payroll service to handle the tax deductions and issue the checks for all employees, including you. You must make sure you pay in the employer's share of the social security tax for each employee, including you. There are many laws that govern employers. You may need the services of a specialist to help you navigate the treacherous waters of human resource management.
On the other hand, you may just want to outsource to experts who have their own machines, their own cutting tables, their own insurance. Much easier for you. If you live near Mexico, you probably already know there are hordes of maquiladoras just south of the border making garments for American designers. There might be some production factories in your town. You could be the next Nike, who knows. And there are probably several skilled seamstresses or tailors in your town who would be happy to sew your cut garments for you. One note of caution, though: Be prepared to rip out everything they stitched if they do it wrong because your instructions weren't clear. I once had someone sew ten pair of clown pants. She sewed them quickly and neatly. Unfortunately, I failed to tell her they were for a man's waistline. She misread my notches and sized them for a woman's waist. Not her fault. I took off all the waistbands and redid them. Lesson learned.
Brand building
If you really want a custom design empire, then you need to start thinking big from the beginning. Start acting like the manager on day one. You won't be the production person for long, if world domination is your plan. You will need to hone your business plan and start soliciting investors. They may not take you seriously at first. After all, one sewing shop isn't necessarily all that impressive. But if you can convince them that they could get in on the ground floor while you are building a brand, you might find some angel investors willing to take a chance on your vision.
Even one shop can build a brand. Go back and review the information on the marketing page. Make sure all your marketing efforts support the personality of your business.
Franchising
If you are into brand building and money making, and don't mind giving up some control, then maybe franchising is for you. Franchising is where you sell your business model to others who are willing to do all the work to run the shop. You give them some management and marketing help, and they give you a percentage of their profits. Think McDonalds or Subway. Do you want to be the Subway of custom sewing? Get expert help if you plan to go this route.
Fast forward twenty years. Now you are a multi-millionaire. You are ready to retire. Or you've had enough, this isn't quite as much fun as you expected. You are ready to start something new. What do you do next? Read on to the final page for advice on how to exit, stage right.
