Bret Schnitker, Emily Lane
September 16, 2025
Bret Schnitker 00:04
The individual prototypes cost money. It's that simple. And then many of those prototypes, if you want that prototype to be in the exact fabric, as we mentioned before, you're gonna have to run a certain amount of yardage to knit, weave or die and die. So that's time. So that's time and money, right?
Emily Lane 00:35
Welcome to Clothing Coulture, a fashion industry podcast at the intersection of technology and innovation. I'm Emily Lane
Bret Schnitker 00:42
and I'm Bret Schnitker. We speak with experts and disruptors who are moving the industry forward and discuss solutions to real industry challenges.
Emily Lane 00:51
Clothing Coulture is produced by Stars Design Group, a global design and production house with more than 30 years of experience.
Emily Lane 01:02
Welcome, back to another episode of Clothing Coulture Today, we're back at the bar, our space for candid conversations sparked by listener questions. In this episode, we're diving into product development cycle from that first spark of inspiration for a new collection through the stages of prototyping, manufacturing and everything in between. For those new to the industry, the process can feel overwhelming, full of unexpected steps, timelines and decisions. So today, we're breaking it all down to bring clarity to the creative journey. Bret, welcome back to the bar.
Bret Schnitker 01:39
Thank you.
Emily Lane 01:40
Only we don't have a beverage.
Bret Schnitker 01:42
Oh, you're breaking it all down
Emily Lane 01:43
with no juice. Well, let's talk about
Bret Schnitker 01:51
It's dry Thursday.
Emily Lane 01:53
It's just too early in the day. Maybe at the end of the episode, let's start.
Bret Schnitker 01:58
Maybe our listeners will start drinking as we get through this. On how we're starting.
Emily Lane 02:03
Pretty, pretty sure of that. Let's start at the beginning and talk about the concept and ideation phase. You know, people get that idea, they they're like, I think I have the next best idea. Or it might even just be the beginning of of a new collection. How do these ideas typically start? What are the influences that that happen that shape these amazing new ideas?
Bret Schnitker 02:27
Drugs and alcohol usually.
Emily Lane 02:29
Here we are back at the bar.
Bret Schnitker 02:30
Yeah, back at the bar. Every day, we get these kind of inquiries, and I think all these great ideas, surely, there's not a ton of new ideas, but we we constantly get people that are involved in some activity, have been surrounded by some circumstance, and they come up with a new idea. And, you know, I think you know, events that that establish need create good opportunity for new brands. And we're finding a lot of these kind of popping up, where they they find a missing link, if you will, on a particular product, and approach us about it. And we got on that path of developing it. Sometimes they don't have the answers either, right?
Emily Lane 03:16
Sure, you gotta, you gotta work through it, and that can take time. So you know, what's that first step of, of turning this great idea into a working design?
Bret Schnitker 03:28
A lot of conversation, you know, I think really understanding the scope of the project super important a good distillation. And that's done through, you know, asking a number of very pointed questions, understanding not only what the customer thinks they want, but some of the more detail that they might not be thinking through, because in many cases, the people that approach us about doing these kind of things haven't been in the business before. So some of these questions kind of establish some of the challenges that might put in place and make them think through that. Right?
Emily Lane 04:07
Absolutely. What about things like when it comes to fabric decisions, and, you know, helping to guide people through that process? I mean, like you said, a lot of these people haven't been in the business before. There's pros and cons to cons to different fabrications. You know, how do you really guide people who are at this for the first time,
Bret Schnitker 04:29
it's again when it comes to fabrication. You know, the world's our oyster here. We've got 50,000 swatches plus to choose from, but not every fabric has its place for a particular program. So understanding climatic objectives, durable objectives, performance thing, items that they'd like to achieve, when once we distill what the particular product is and. Um, what, what they want it to achieve. That helps us guide the path, at least in terms of composition. And then we kind of go down the path in terms of maybe an esthetic, or a finish, a weight, color, you know, all those,
Emily Lane 05:15
all those details. So 3D can play a big role at this stage too, because you can really play around with esthetics and
Emily Lane 05:17
ideation of pattern and styling for sure.
Emily Lane 05:27
Yeah, that's great. Let's talk about the materials just a little bit more. How do you you know you reference having a robust library as a resource, but when it comes time to actually making that that fabric for that program, how do you go about determining the right fit for manufacturing of or knitting or weaving of a particular fabrication?
Bret Schnitker 05:59
Some of it's trial and error. Sometimes we're going to go through and we show our clients a variety of fabrics. They make some decisions on those. We take if we can, if there are meters in stock of a particular fabric, and that's fewer and far between nowadays, sometimes you have to knit or weave to to order. And we can do small at a time, doesn't it? It can take 30 to 45 days. Some of our partners can knit as small as, you know, really, 100 meters is is a good running quantity, any less than that, you kind of, you know, the machine doesn't have a chance to get up and running. But you can, for our industry, that's pretty small meterage. And either we pull it, finding it available, or we knit this minimum meterage and then we put it into the garment with, you know, all the details that we have. The customer can try it on. We can run fabric tests on those particular fabrications, if the garment is going to come up against a lot of abrasives, we can run Martindale tests, which are this kind of test that rubs one fabric against another for a certain amount of cycles, and determine if the fabric is durable enough for a particular event. We can do snagging. We can do color fastness to light, if the customer's outside all the time, and sometimes that's a learning process. We inherently know fabrics that are stronger than others. We know dye stuffs that'll perform better than others, but the nuance actually comes down to it when you're practically working through the program.
Emily Lane 07:38
There's also strengths and weaknesses globally of certain countries and certain fabrics. So synthetic fabrics, for example, are much more common out of China, sure. And of course, natural you're you'll see more in India. So I imagine those kinds of things play an active role in determining where you're going to have your fabric come from? Absolutely, yeah. Right now, you know, we've got some global supply chain disruptions. How does that affect sourcing when it comes to this side of or this phase of the project?
Bret Schnitker 08:12
Speaking about wanting a drink, yeah, it's been really interesting, and every day is a new twist and turn. You know, I feel like I'm on some economic roller coaster, but all of those things have, all these things that are coming across the table today are complicating our landscape, because it used to be a little more straightforward. Hey, we're going to go here for our fabric. We're going to go here for our CM. And today, based upon tariffs and and war, real wars and freight and logistics issues and timing and and all of those things. You know, every time you add some unique thing into the into our manufacturing landscape, you just got another thing to manage and and it requires, perhaps in some cases, more time to think through that some cases, if China is the best place to make synthetic still today, other countries have yet to catch up. Yet China's tariff is very high, then we need to make a decision on the country of origin for fabric, and then the country of manufacture for garment, not all countries, and we think it could be simple. Hey, let's just pick up that fabric. Let's say it's synthetic, and move it to India. Well, tariffs are kind of crazy there, so let's move it to someplace else.
Emily Lane 09:32
Sometimes that skill set isn't established, because working with a synthetic fabric in a cut and sew environment is completely different.
Bret Schnitker 09:39
If you're used to managing natural fibers, and you're trying to sew synthetics, it's completely different thing. And it can range, factor by factoring, country by country. And so it really requires, one, an understanding of the manufacturing world that we live in, and then two, trying to have some sort of a crystal ball understanding this whole landscape. Politically that we're dealing with and helping customers move through that.
Emily Lane 10:04
A lot of times, people are eager to, you know, they'll call and say, Hey, I have an idea. What can I do to get a sample or a prototype made? And a lot of times, that's not the first step. And so, and a lot of times, there are alternate times in which you can go down the sampling path. And so I'd love for you to explain when the time is right to kind of start your process with prototyping and sampling, and then when it makes more sense to just kind of tuck it into the traditional process of going down the production path
Bret Schnitker 10:41
individual prototypes cost money. It's that simple. And then many of those prototypes, if you want that prototype to be in the exact fabric, as we mentioned before, you're gonna have to run a certain amount of yardage to knit, weave, dye and dye. So that's time. So that's time and money, right, and when the individual just has to decide what they want, how, what path they want to go down, if they have a certain launch date, all of those things to your point, take up a certain amount of time. And with the logistics issues, the challenges on small parcel today, getting through after de minimis was eliminated. Now it extends the time that you can actually go into production and then ultimately go to market, and so customers can make that choice and say, Look, I want to work through all the details up front so I'm confident that I'm making the right decision, and it's all put together in one garment, then I'll write what's called a purchase order, a contract to purchase goods. It extends the lead time, but it provides probably a lot more transparency into a particular garment, especially if that garment or item is unique or unique in some way. New technology employed new spec, employed things like that. People want to work through that and that. And you know, here, there have been some really complex products, and I think people underestimate the time that that R and D takes. R and D can take six months. Sometimes right? Reiterations of that product, redevelopments of that product sometimes go prepay. I thought this was going to work, and I want to change this nuance. Well, that changes all the patterns. That changes all the rework requires another sample, so time can really, really be an enemy along that path. Technology today has has helped in that respect, for people that trust the technology with like you mentioned, 3D design, we actually, at Stars, use 3D design to help speed up a lot of these initial processes. We can take our patterns, our 3D design, develop from the pattern file, and put it into a virtual environment so the customer, at least, can look at style pattern and fit in a virtual environment, and speed that up, make some tweaks and decisions. With respect to that, it's kind of hard to really visualize the fabric in the environment. To this point, there's a lot of physical attributes you can plug into a 3D environment, but you really physically can't touch and feel and therein lies the issue. People that walk into the business, they kind of want to wear it, touch and feel it, they personalize it.
Emily Lane 13:28
And so that I'm so glad you brought up fit, because this is absolutely a common misunderstanding, is that you know going through this process, the first thing you do when you get your samples is you need to do wear tests, you need to put them on Fit models and lots of different bodies and get feedback. Can you talk about when that's right to go through that process versus leaning on technology?
Bret Schnitker 13:55
Yeah, that's a big conversation. So people that are just starting up the business. Don't have a lot of background and experience in garments. I would say that understanding the scope of the product first and then employing science of fit. We use Alvanon here pretty regularly, and they scan 1000s of bodies around the world. They run algorithms. They create amazing blocks to be able to grade from create grade rules. There's a lot of science to fit that you can employ if you need to, and those at every step before you actually go into a lot of prototyping, you do have to address fit, right? And so I think it's all part of that process. But the question is, is, you know, how do you engage fit? How can you be sort of fit objective? So many clients that walk in the door become very fit subjective. They try it on themselves. They consider themselves the client, because they're the ones that came up with the idea. And a lot of the clients will try. Them on themselves and say, well, this doesn't fit right or whatever, without considering where do I fit on that particular fit spectrum to my customer? And so it's really important to one you science of fit, employ it at the right stage and be as fit objective as you can, understanding if the individual that's starting this brand is, let's say, three inches shorter than the average consumer, or has arms that are two inches longer, or they're thinner than the average consumer for the target market, understanding where they fit on that spectrum, so that when they're trying on garments themselves, they understand, oh, this should fit a little bit looser to me, or a little bit longer, because I might be a little bit shorter than the scientific customer that I'm trying to target.
Emily Lane 15:46
We've seen customers that have that new idea that's highly technical in nature, that they can kind of just want to tweak on forever, you know, oh, but what if we do this? And what if we do that?
Bret Schnitker 15:57
Some of that's insecurity, right? If you've not, if you're not, gone down this path 100 times. If you're not an established brand that has defined your fit or defined your DNA into the market, we find that all the time it's just like, hey, I want every little nuance and detail to be correct. And I guess I always say some of it's by intent, of course, but Apple's a trillion dollar company. They have 17 now, 17 coming out, 17 iPhone models. They didn't start with the iPhone being perfect, right? And I would say the same goes for our industry. It's a journey you start with trying to develop the best possible product with the knowledge that you have on hand today, and that is, you gather more knowledge and or if the market moves, or there's technology that enhances that product, you evolve it along the way. The benefit is the product gets better with learned information. And two people want to come back for the new and improved model. So it's kind of a win win.
Emily Lane 16:58
And you can get good feedback right from your end,
Bret Schnitker 17:02
but you can't usually get good feedback until you really get it out there.
Emily Lane 17:07
Yeah, so how do you know? Okay, it's ready. It's time to lean in. It's time to move this into production and get this to market.
Bret Schnitker 17:15
That you've gone through all the fundamental steps of what we do in pre production, you know, we go through the style and design detail in a digital format. You get to take a look at that. You check that off. You go through all the pre production steps in terms of fabric choices, trim choices, color choices, all that gets checked off. We do prototypes, usually between one and three prototypes for pre production processes. One, usually if it's a very, very simple product. Three, if it's more complex, and you have some iterations, once you go through those for specific fit, you try them on the forums, you feel like it's really, really good. Then you've checked off all the pre production steps of that process and you're ready to go into production.
Emily Lane 18:03
So how long is that cycle on average, from I've got the idea to I've gone through the prototyping phase to Okay, everything's approved, and we're ready to go into production.
Bret Schnitker 18:15
And our timing and action grid, we give between 60 and 90 days. If product gets a little more complicated, it can be up to six months.
Emily Lane 18:22
And then what about now we're in production. How long does was, you know, we're now actually cutting and sewing and making these garments come to life. How long should somebody plan for that?
Bret Schnitker 18:34
For production alone, the world is pretty similar in terms of production timelines, and it falls within a band of 90 to 120 days.
Emily Lane 18:45
Okay. And then let's talk about getting the goods to you. There's variances depending on where you're making you know, it takes longer to ship out of certain ports, out of certain countries.
Bret Schnitker 18:58
China's 30 Days to a coast India is probably 45 days, once you have mother and feeder vessels and things like that, Vietnam is 28 days. You know, you always want to, I would say you always want to plan 45 to 60, because that would ensure that you've got both freight covered, if you're going by boat, and clearance, because we still have clearance to deal with. And, yes, you know, the pickup of trucks and delivery to a warehouse. And so 45 to 60 days is usually a good number for the transit portion. If you're going by ocean or boat,
Emily Lane 19:36
are there, you know, before you got it loaded on a vessel, you know, we're still in the production lines here. Are there common pitfalls that people experience new time, people experience at this phase that you know their production can be vulnerable for. And how would you avoid those?
Bret Schnitker 19:53
Well, if you don't have a detailed enough tech pack, we build tech packs here, and tech packs for those that. That aren't aware of them. They're blueprints for production. When you build a house, you've got all these blueprints. The more detailed the blueprint, the better the house comes out. Because you're you're giving the contractor guidelines and parameters. Yes, you know there are, there is in every blueprint a little bit of room for error, right? We call those tolerances in the apparel business, and so those tolerances are allowed in spec, right? If a, if I, you know, a chest is 24 inches across, sometimes we have a certain percentage or certain tolerance plus or minus that allows three quarters of edge to be larger or smaller in that chest. Because nothing's exacting in an organic fabric type situation or or business, and so it's really important to start with a very, very detailed tech pack. Most don't know how to build a detailed tech pack. We abdicated manufacturing years ago, so a lot of people aren't really taught. You mean those in the United States, in the United States, for sure, sorry, to be specific, but making sure that you've got one that lays all that out a good way to ensure that you don't have issues vetting the right manufacturing partner is, again, super important. There are 1000s of factories all around the world. I've been in 1000s of factories, and there's a wide scale of expertise and performance. Just because you put up walls and have sewing machines and sewers, you doesn't mean that they really know how to do product well or a particular product well. And so you have to make sure that you're vetting the particular factory in a good way outside of social compliances and everything else. It's about how they manage, and there are ways to walk through a factory to ensure that they're making a product right. Then you cannot inspect in good quality. You've got to make sure quality is down on the line. So there needs to be some supervision and make sure, making sure you're making the right decision with a factory partner, but to ensure that the product that when it's finished before it gets on a boat, and you're committing to a lot more expense. Independent inspections are sort of a norm today, and there are a number of inspection companies around the world. UL is we have a global contract with UL we utilize them for both fabric and garment inspection. So all of our fabrics are independently inspected for a battery of tests to make sure that as the fabric moves to the CM warehouse or the CM factory, which is cut and make factory to assemble the garments, that we don't have issues in fabric. And so once all of that's passed, once the factory has made all of the garments, then an independent inspector will go in and pull a sample selection of an entire shipment, and he has a checklist that he reviews. We break it into critical majors and minors. Criticals are there's a needle in a kid's clothing, that would be bad news. The entire shipments rejected immediately. There's no going forward, and it has to be fully re inspected. Majors are something that a customer would see on a garment and cause them not to buy the garment because it's a visible defect, a hole or a hole that's not fashionable whole, right? And then minors can, and it's much shorter list, but it's a loose thread or untrim thread on the inside, a customer would never return or not buy the garment. It's something that we in the industry think could be a little bit better in terms of that production. And so that independent inspector will go through and take the sample lot, look for criticals, majors and minors. They'll measure a number of garments to make sure that the factory is doing a good job in terms of maintaining the specifications within tolerance based on what we've had. And once we have that report combined with our fabric report combined with a good, vetted partner, then you really raise the confidence level, the confidence level that you're going to have consistent, good product all the time, and all of that can occur before it goes on a boat.
Emily Lane 24:13
I think it's important to set an expectation here. I mean, manufacturing still is a human process for the most part,
Bret Schnitker 24:20
for the most part, every day, more and more technology gets lane into the lines.
Emily Lane 24:24
But the point is, you're never going to have a perfect shipment.
Bret Schnitker 24:28
There is no such thing as a perfect shipment.
Emily Lane 24:30
So what is the industry standard for, you know, what? What would be deemed, you know, products that you wouldn't want included in the shipment, or where there might be a failure.
Bret Schnitker 24:44
Yeah, it's an interesting ratio, but inspectors today use what's called an AQL system, and that AQL system allows for these criticals, majors and minors, and they there's all these different levels of an AQL system today. Say, a lot use a 2.5 4.0 AQL. That means that there's this table that's associated with these numbers. And when you pull that sample lot, and you move over to 2.5 and it's a very, very tight allowance for the number of majors that exist in a shipment,
Emily Lane 25:20
majors and minors, right?
Bret Schnitker 25:21
2.5 is only focused on the majors, okay? And then there's this 4.0 the 2.5 4.0 4.0 is the indication that they would use this table and go down look for minors. It's a it's a more lenient tolerance on minors and a much more tighter tolerance on majors. It has a zero critical and so as shipments go through, inspectors always find majors and minors. Every shipment that I have seen for 30 years always has some of them, even when it comes to specifications, especially like in knitwear, you will see inspectors calling out variances to spec. And that's why tolerances are really important to understand, because there are things in that where we call super fabrics, if you don't, if you don't open up, the tolerances on Super fabric, sure, waffles, for instance, if someone pads a waffle down, one different way, one inspector versus the factory line or whatever else. It has a much bigger movement organically. So you could produce everything, right? Someone pushes that down, it spreads it out, and you're out of tolerance. So understanding fabrics and understanding tolerances, understanding unique production protocols, like garment dying that can, you know, a garment can be in SPAC, and then there's more variances. All play roles in determining that, you know, that final acceptance level.
Emily Lane 26:57
But the industry, from what I I've read, hovers around 8% or something like that, that you can anticipate.
Bret Schnitker 27:03
I've seen numbers like that. I've seen numbers as high as 20% sometimes. And you know, it could be that fast fashion plays a big role in in skewing that. Because I don't really believe in fast fashion. There's a whole lot of focus on quality control. I think the better product moves from fast fashion to moderate to better to haute couture, there's probably much tighter levels of quality. And so I would say, you know, you can in a normal better shipment, you probably are looking somewhere around between majors and minors, somewhere around two to 3% and your shipment will have some of thoses.
Emily Lane 27:43
So you're getting ready to ship your goods. You've mentioned if somebody chooses to ship via boat, obviously air is an option. It's more expensive. But when would it be the right decision to ship or via boat or air?
Bret Schnitker 28:01
Sure, I don't think there's ever a right, profitable decision to air. Anything. Air eats up a lot of profit.
Emily Lane 28:09
What's the like? What's the difference in, you know, what's the number times two times three,
Bret Schnitker 28:16
three to four times more expensive than about Okay? And so. And then weight and bulkiness play a big role in air, because of the cubic volume and the challenges that you have filling the belly of a plane, like they charge a lot for really heavy items and really bulky items, if you can fit a whole lot of those, like really lightweight T shirts that that multiplier might be a little bit lower, but it's still very expensive. So there are times that air and a decision to air will be used. And so some of those times are, you have a dated event, you've made a decision late, you've got to get it in. Well, air saves, you know, if we're saying rounding it off 60 days to get stuff shipped and cleared and delivered to a warehouse, air can be five to five to 15 days, depending on where it's coming from, so that saves a whole lot of time filling into demand. Air can be helpful too, especially in a better market where there's more margin, sometimes capturing lightning at a bottle for a really great style that maybe you've under bought. You want to get back in and manage the season. You can figure out a calculation where, if you're airing product, as opposed to just intentionally over buying product up front, the savings on chasing product and chasing product to a known demand level to a degree like, Hey, I'm selling 100 of those every week. I know that if I want that product to be in for the next five weeks, I'm above 500 I'm going to air it because of what I voted in. And I'm chasing that business. If you buy it that tightly, and you kind of chase it by air, you eliminate markdowns on the backside. You don't over buy unintentionally. So by eliminating markdowns, which is a pure expense, right? And choosing to buy a little bit tighter or once you've determined demand of a particular product in a business, the additional cost of air still provides profitability and eliminates markdown. So sometimes that makes-
Emily Lane 30:36
that's the right decision, yeah, yeah. So you're you've got your goods, you're selling them, and it's time to start all over. So you know, if you're talking about replenishment, or you're looking at your new collection, is the same amount of timeline that we've just talked through or or do things get a little bit condensed once you're in a cycle of replenishment.
Bret Schnitker 31:01
When you're starting all over, literally, with new styles, the timeline remains the same when you're talking about replenishment or filling back into existing styles, core basics. Let's say you've established 15 colors of a basic t shirt, and you've already run the t shirt, you're saving a lot of pre production approval steps. You can move quicker. And so we've seen times where, let's say, something normally takes 90 days. They can do those reorders in 70 days. You save about 20 days in terms of that. There are things you can do to increase, sorry, decrease the amount of time on those reorders, especially on basics, you can put we call greige fabric commitments in place. Greige is undyed fabric. So you know, fabric knitting times can be two to four weeks about so you save two to four weeks in terms of that fabric in the long production cycle. And then if you have dyeing, if you have garments that are pre dyed, that can add another two or three weeks. And so if you have fabric that's in place already completely dyed, you're speeding up that cycle. And there are a lot of companies on basics that not only have fabric in store. They also have production planned. They and that's been a big thing that factories love to have benefits the clients, but clients are always hesitant to do and that's plan production for factories. Give them forecasts. With forecasts, they're able to reserve garment lines. If there's an open line that you've reserved for a forecast, goods will move quickly through that things that can blow the whole thing up in terms of fast reorder times. Is the factory doesn't have to go through all the approvals anymore, because they've already got the recipes for dyeing and knitting and garment construction. But what happens if someone's come in and taken up all the production lines in the CM factory, you're then pushed back out to 90 to 120 days until that other production run gets kind of pulled through. So there are all these things that you can do to really collaborate with a factory, a mill and a factory to speed up your production, but it really does take planning.
Emily Lane 33:26
C oordination. Yeah, well, from idea to garment. Thank you for helping to demystify the product development cycle. Are there any other pieces of advice you'd like to share before we wrap this up and get that cocktail we were dreaming about at the beginning of this conversation?
Bret Schnitker 33:27
Yeah, I would say, look, it's a fascinating business, but you can make a lot of money or lose a lot of money in this business, so it's important to be very intentional about each step. It's super important to make sure that you're picking the right partners and asking all the right questions. And I think, you know, not being in a rush at the outset, let the process take the time that it needs to. Sometimes the process will move very, very quickly. Sometimes that process will take a lot longer. And then understand that garment production and manufacture is only part of the whole business cycle. Make sure that you on the other side have all those elements in place to address consumer awareness and demand and marketing
Emily Lane 34:28
sales and a whole other conversation.
Bret Schnitker 34:32
Yeah, we found people that have built this wonderful product and run out of money or not put any plans in place to go market their product or use the wrong marketing partners or the wrong marketing plan, and the product just sits.
Emily Lane 34:45
yeah, you're absolutely right. Well, thank you for that advice. Thank you for joining us today. Don't forget to subscribe and stay apprised of upcoming conversations.
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