Product Development

• Creating a garment from start to finish
• Adapting the existing elements of a product to meet your merchandising needs

No, because product development doesn't copy an existing item directly -- it involves interpreting the elements of something that already exists

• Pricing structure
• Target customer profile
• Market research; trends

• Fabric specialists
• Technical designers
• Sourcing specialists
• Graphic designers
• Designers/merchandisers
• Production managers
• Quality control managers
• Buyers

Designed, produced, and marketed by a vendor and sold by many retailers

Developed by retailer and only sold in retailer's outlets

Developed by licensee and sold to either manufacturer or retailer

• Brands used to refuse to sell into national chain stores, so they created their own brands that were influenced by branded products
• Initially "private label" tended to be basic styles

• Line can be developed exclusively to fit retailer's customer
• Promotes customer loyalty
• Price advantage
• Higher initial margins
• New fashions at affordable prices
• Licensing options

• Responsibility for development costs
• Longer lead-times
• Lack of markdown money
• Investment in inventory
• Bad season can turn customer away

• Strategic planning
• Merchandise planning
• Creative planning
• Technical planning
• Production planning

• Focuses on a retailer's business direction (exec level)
• Sales and profit goals
• Analysis of growth opportunities (new products)
• Marketing mix by product categories
• Company resource allocation

• Focuses on the type of products to be developed:
• Price level
• Style assortment (merchandise mix)
• Timing of product arrival into the store

• Analyze historic data and current trends
• Break down into line or range plan
• Assortment plans within line plans

• Autopsy of past like season:
• Review of sales by style
• # of fabrics used
• # of styles in line (SKUs)
• # of colors
• # of sizes
• Price points
• Retail performance

Tracks and interprets trends and how they relate to your target customer

• Undertaken by the technical design team
• Defines styles by developing:
• (1) Fit standards
• (2) Construction specifications
• (3) Materials
• (4) Patterns

• Where to make the product
• Price
• Quality / quantity capabilities
• Production timelines
• Transit time

• (1) Line concept - trend research
• (2) Line development - sketches
• (3) Line review - presenting to management
• (4) Proto sketches / spec sheets to factory
• (5) Initial samples and corrections
• (6) Initial costing
• (7) Sales samples ordered
• (8) Final costing
• (9) Review meeting with store buyers

• Marketing calendar
• Merchandising calendar
• Line plan

• When does the product need to be in-store?
• All planning dates stem from that date
• Ads / promotion have to sync with product delivery

• Time and action calendar
• Primary control tool
• Critical path method (Gantt chart)

• Provides a skeleton product plan to the design team:
• # of fabrics
• # in styles by product group = fabric + silhouette
• # of constructions = fabric + silhouette + color
• # of SKUs = fabric + silhouette + color + size

• Previous history
• Trends and forecasters
• Guesswork

• Tracks the work-in-progress
• Monitors any potential production delays
• Allows corrective action to be taken in a timely manner

PD team must get the disred product to the customer as fast as possible, with the best possible quality at the best possible price

• Shorten the cycle times in apparel development, execution and delivery
• Risk reduction - utilizing technology to reduce merchandiser's guesswork

• Includes research, line planning, product development, costing, specs, review & adoption, and sample making
• Technology shortens each function

• Use of several factories based on delivery requirements
• Company can acheive pricing and replenishment objectives

Vertical supply chain

Out-sourcing

• Makes 60% of its merchandise in-house
• Warehouse moves about 2.5 million items a week
• Connected to 14 Zara factories through underground tunnels
• Clothing is floor-ready when shipped to stores
• Idea to shelves = 15 DAYS!!!

• POS tracks how items in store are selling
• PDA inputs items people come looking for

• Schedule materials to arrive exactly when they are needed in the production process - keeps inventory to a minimum
• Feature of the world's most responsive supply chains

• Zara (15-20% more)
• Zara can survive with higher labor costs because they produce lots of products in small lots, while Gap produces a smaller number in bigger lots

• No slack inventory: what it makes it sells
• Rarely have sales or take markdowns
• Being so quick = minimum risk

• Almost all products manufactured in Europe
• Cost differential with Asia becomes more pronounced in comparison to the strong Euro

• Color
• Print or pattern
• Fiber content
• Fabric construction
• Texture / surface treatment
• Silhouette
• Construction
• Fit
• Trims / embellishment

Current trends that relate to your target consumer

• Shopping the market
• Meeting with your buyers
• Researching the consumer market
• Shopping fabric and trim marekts
• Reading trade and business journals
• Observing lifestyle and tastes
• Style consultants
• Attend trade shows

• Distinguish what the current trends are
• Estimate how widespread they are
• Determine when these trends will reach your target customer

• Consumer acceptance and desire
• Economic acceptance (affordability)
• Social acceptance
• Adaptations (fabrics, textures, color)
• Marketing
• Fashion leaders

• Fashion acceptance begins among several socioeconomic groups
• Adopted by fashion leaders then spread outwards throughout the socioeconomic group
• Most prevalent in 21st century due to technology

• (1) Consumers establish fashion
• (2) Fashions are not based on price
• (3) Fashions are evolutionary in nature
• (4) Sales promotion cannot change fashion direction
• (5) All fashions end in extremes

• Unclear product concepts
• Inconsistent presentations at retail
• Confused customers

The lights and darks of a color you create by mixing black or white with a color

• A systematic way of using the color wheel to put colors together:
• Monochromatic
• Complementary
• Analogous
• Warm and cool

• Opposite on the color wheel
• Provide high contrast

• Found on the right side of the color wheel
• Make objects look closer; appear to advance
• Might give a nervous impression if overdone

• Found on the left side of the color wheel
• Tend to recede
• Can be depressing

• Age and life stage
• Fashion level
• Skin tone
• Ethnicity
• Geographical location
• End use

• Pantone books
• Color forecasts
• Experts
• Competitors
• Shopping

• Carry-over colors
• Basic colors plus some fashion "pop" colors
• Primary color story with secondary colors

• Pantone number
• Threads
• Fabric swatch

• Lab dips
• Light machines
• Color measurement equipment can provide consistent accurate results

• Fabric
• Human vision
• Fabric finishes
• Color calibration
• Light source

• Piece dyed
• Garment dyed
• Yarn dyed
• Fiber dyed

Exact color swatch that all fabric, prints, and patterns must match

Test for dying yarns or piece dyed fabric

Test for printed fabric

Test for patterned fabric

• Goretex (waterproof breathable)
• Stretch leather
• Coolfix (helps prevent sweating)
• Washable silks

• Consider:
• Silhouettes to be used
• Target market
• Climate
• Season
• End use

• Traditional marketable fabrics that change little from year to year
• The core fabrications in a group

• Unusual prints, patterns
• Usually unique in design (more expensive)

• Attend shows, form relationships with fabric suppliers
• Good suppliers present new fabrics to fit customer's market
• PD team purchases sample yardage
• Production yardage purchased after fabric is "adopted"
• Basic fabrics are purchased and dyed into the colors of the line
• Novelty fabrics are developed in colors & prints specified by PD team

• Offer a full package including the fabric
• Fabric supplier is specified by the PD team

• PD takes ownership of fabric prior to cutting
• Typically only CMT is contracted

• Color
• Texture
• Luster
• Patterns

• High/low knits or wovens
• Felting
• Brushing
• Sueding

• Fabric construction
• Print

• Natural (cotton, wool, silk, linen)
• Cellulosic (rayon, tencil)
• Petroleum based (polyester, nylon, acrylic)

• Woven
• Knit
• Felting

• Lengthwise yarn (warp)
• Crosswise yarns (weft/fill)
• Edge = selvage
• Ex: twill, canvas, sheeting

• Plain - taffeta
• Twill - diagonal pattern
• Satin - "silky" feel

• Interlocking loops
• Measured by gauge (coarser knit = lower gauge) and weight
• Ex: jersey, pique, rib, interlock

• Woven = at least two separate groups of yarn
• Knitting = can use one yarn only

Knitted fabric = more elasticity than woven

• Woven = higher coverage
• Knitted = looser in structure

Knitted = thicker, softer

• Weaving = expensive preparation processes
• Knitting = higher production rate

• Decreases pollution
• Improves soil fertility
• Prevents water, soil, and air contamination

• The only complete substitute of cotton for heavy weight products
• Eco-friendly substitute for linen
• Stronger than cotton
• Stain, mold, moth, fire resistant

Dye stuff applied to fabric surface of a complete fabric or garment

Created at the knitting or weaving stage

• Purchase from freelance textile designer
• Purchase fabric suppliers' existing prints
• In-house design (create our own)

• Target customer
• End use
• Season
• Trends
• Carry-over
• Competition
• Cost of development

• Roller printing
• Rotary screen printing
• Block printing
• Heat transfer printing
• Dye sublimation printing
• Flat (silk) screen printing
• Resist printing

• Print paste pressed between fabric and engraved roller
• Most common methods
• Achieves a high quality of print
• Can produce long runs of fabric; good for mass production

Wooden blocks applied to fabric with careful registration

• Transfer image to fabric from a paper carrier using heat and pressure
• Can be topical or absorbed

Squeegee moves across a screen on which print paste has been applied, forcing the paste through the screen and onto the fabric

• Methods are used to prevent the dye from reaching all the cloth, thereby creating a pattern
• Ex: tie-dye, batik

• Motifs face same direction
• Print design has a definite top and bottom
• Can create more wastage of fabric

• Motifs alternated up and down
• No top or bottom
• Easier to lay out the patterns (less wastage)

• Novelty print designs that have a theme, scene, or some special design
• Often used in children's market

• Two or more prints that can be merchandised together
• Ex: border print and body print

• Designs that are intended to fall in exactly the same place on each garment
• Lots of wastage = expensive

Describes the various color combinations in a pattern or print

A trial swatch of a yarn-dyed knitted fabric

• Guides for cutting
• Created based on graded patterns