How to find sewing contractors
Posted by Kathleen Fasanella on Jun 27, 2007 at 2:27 pm / Contractors, Popular Topics / Trackback
Perhaps it would surprise you that I don’t have a magic list of sewing contractors. While I have a leg up in many respects, it’s still a challenge. I’m curious as to how people go about searching for contractors in the first place. The reason is that I get questions like this everyday but I don’t have the same problems finding names. If the question is from a member of the forum (a supporting member of this site), first I send them there to search for referrals other members have mentioned (or who are contractors themselves). If not a member, I can’t help them in part because I can’t make a living giving away free information but mostly because I don’t know if the person is sufficiently prepared to enter into a relationship with a manufacturer using my name as a lever. Sometimes because I’m curious though and I’ll search to find a range of contractors in their area and wonder why they couldn’t find them themselves. Once, I found a contractor who was literally, five blocks from the DE’s house (she is now very happily using this contractor). By the way, this DE (love her to death) swore up and down for two years there wasn’t a contractor she could use within 200 miles.
These are the strategies I use to find manufacturers of apparel and sewn products. Within an hour, I’ll have more names than I can sort through.
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One Response to “How to find sewing contractors”
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October 8th, 2007
10:24 am
Living in a major metropolitan it is not that I can’t find a contractor. The yellow pages turns out a list of at least 30. My problem is that I would like a reference or referal to one that others have used. Walking in to a contractor to have samples made is an open checkbook scenario. A scene from which I just got scorched pretty badly. I’m not willing to say that it didn’t take the conntractor 5 hours to sew a polo shirt but if it did take them that long (at $40.00/hour) I would have like to know in advance that they move at a snails pace and run chronically 2 weeks behind. BTW there were no patterning problems AND they had a sew-by. During my years as a contractor I got nearly all of my business from referals and I always carry around business card of people I would refer out. When so much is at steak I am hesitant to go to anybody again that I don’t get through referal or with references.