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I have a beautiful granddaughter who was born with Down syndrome. She has enough challenges to face in her life and I want to make sure that finding appropriately fitting clothes will not be one of them.

Friday, June 24, 2011

Taking our Time

Taking our Time

Now that I’m back from China, I need to focus on a new plan.  I do think that part of my problem has been that I have been trying to do too much at one time.  I have had the jeans factory working on the children’s jeans, the youth size jeans and remaking the men’s jeans.  I’ve had the shirt factory working on the children’s, the youth’s and the adults shirts all at the same time.  I think I have been handling this all wrong.

Sample of children's shirt
So this is my new plan.  We are only going to focus on the children’s for now.  The children’s jeans are the least complicated and so are the children’s tees.   So we will first get the patterns correct for only the children’s sizes.  Once the patterns are correct for the children’s jeans and tees and we’re sure the fit is good, then and only then will I start production.  For the little children, we only have four style jeans:  we have two girl’s styles and two boy’s styles.  One style  has  a full elastic waistband and the other style  has an adjustable waistband.   For the T-shirts, we are preparing the short-sleeved shirts for now and Jillian and Cara are busy creating new graphics for them.

The youth sizes will be much more difficult.  We must make more styles just like the adult sizes.  For the youth girls we are designing a full elastic waistband but for the youth boys, we will offer both a full elastic waistband with a mock zipper and a partial elastic waistband with a working zipper.  We will also have “Dip Down” styles for both girls and boys as well.   So the youth sizes are much more difficult and complicated. 

For the youth size T-shirts we will offer six sizes and two styles for both boys and girls.    For the girls and boys sizes there will be a regular fit around the waist for the first three sizes and the next three sizes up we will offer a full-figure style so they are not so tight around the middle.  We have found this to be necessary for a better fit. 

Because of the fuller tummy on many people with Down syndrome, we have found that these adjustments are necessary; so all the adult shirts will be redesigned as well.  Since we need short sleeve shirts anyway, we decided this was a good time to redesign the adult tees.  We already have full-figured shirts for the adult ladies, but we did not give the men the full-figure design in the bigger sizes.  So we are redesigning the men’s tees because we feel it’s necessary for a better fit. 

So once the youth size jeans and tees are completed and we are sure the fit is good, we will begin production on those.  Then, finally, we will begin to remake the men’s jeans.  Our ladies jeans have been a great fit, but the men’s jeans had too many problems.  It was a tough decision not to sell the men’s jeans, but I knew I had to correct the problems we had with them.  So that will be our last pattern to remake.  We also decided to offer a full elastic waistband for the men’s jeans with a mock zipper as well as the partial elastic waistband with a working zipper.  We had too many mother’s tell us their son cannot work a zipper, so that is something we had to take into consideration.  We need both styles to accommodate these issues.

So as it stands as of the end of June, 2011, we will still have nothing in production.  My nerves are at their very end.  But I must keep going, in spite of the struggles.  We’re so close, yet so far!

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