A common question we get is, “how fast can you get this done?”, meaning, in how many days, weeks, or months, the client will have the shirts, jackets, trousers… delivered to its warehouse.
The answer, of course, is “it depends”.
The three main factors impacting time to delivery are fabrics, location, and the client’s own decision making process.
Fabrics
If the client wants a very particular fabric that’s out of stock, like a special denim from a famous Italian mill, it might take 2-3 months until the fabric is available, despite all our best efforts and long-time connections. The mills sometimes just can’t put our orders in front of the queue, because their orders books are filled with urgent orders for months in advance.
On the other hand, if the client wants something simpler, like white plain popelin for a batch of shirts, we or someone we know usually already have the desired quantities in stock, and we can get straight to production.
Location
If the client wants his order for jackets manufactured in Portugal out of Italian fabrics and delivered to France, the logistics of shippings raw materials and finished goods are pretty straightforward. Trucks are fast and reliable, and can get across the European Union in a couple of days.
However, if you want your shirts to be manufactured in India, because you have a big order on your hands and you are price-sensitive, keep in mind that the smallest lot on a container ship can contain 13,000 shirts, and that the average shipping time to Europe is 45 days. Shipping by plane is just absurdly expensive, and can only be considered for very high value-added production like designer garments.
The client’s decision making process
That’s out of our control, of course, but we usually do the maximum to make life easier during the creation of any new item. From prototype to test series to the delivery of the final order, our technicians are always at your service to let you focus on what you do best: branding and marketing.