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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, August 10, 2012

Making Progress (August 2012)

I cannot believe that August is already here.  Next month I'll be heading for China again; where does the time go.

Well, I must admit that I'm so encouraged about what is happening and the progress we are making.  Here's where we are so far with what's available and what will be available:

Our ladies jeans are available and so far have been a great success,  The photo on the left is a picture sent to me from a customer that was thrilled with our ladies jeans and sent me quite a few photos of his daughter wearing them. I wish there were more sales, but since I really haven't don't any marketing, what should I expect.  The children's jeans have been in stock for about 2 months and I've sold about a dozen pairs.  They are awesome little jeans, but I think part of the problem is the heat.  Who is wearing jeans this time of year?  And the fact that only my Facebook page followers really know about our clothing line doesn't help sales either, 

The large teen girl jeans are on a ship as we speak and are due in our shop about August 22.  We made one big mistake already that I can see.  We ordered them unhemmed at 27".  OMG, what was I thinking.  First of all we need 1" for the hem, so the longest length I would be able to sell is 26".  In my wildest dreams, we haven't seen any young teens with Down syndrome with an inseam that long.  But while we were at the conference, there were several.  So I've learned a huge lesson from this...make all the unhemmed jeans at least 30"


Our large men jeans (left photo) are in production and the small men's jeans (right photo) will be in production in about one week. These photos are only samples, they are not a finished products, but at least you can get an idea of the different body shapes and the look of jean.  These samples are not hemmed and are not the jeans after production.  There were small changes made even after these samples. 


Our large teen boy styles are being prepared for production also.  Production should begin in about one week.  This photo shows our teen model in the jean with a high rise in the front, it will also come in a jean with a low rise in the front (called our dip downs).  Again this is only a sample and not the finished product.  There's even a tag hanging from this pair.  As you can see these jeans are made for a boy with a fuller figure.  The other two styles will be coming out later for the thinner teen boy.  We are working on the harder to fit sizes first, then we'll finish up with the smaller sizes later.

The good news is that we finally found a girl and boy model at the Buddy Walk for our large youth sizes.  Up until now, we have had no models for this size.  We found some volunteers at the NDSC Conference, but Jill told me it is just too difficult not have a model close by so she see how each fitting looks and feels on the model.  Jill has begun to make test samples already.  She's even had her first fitting with the little girl model.  The one problem is the models both live in Medina and it's a little bit far for Jillian.  But, as usual, she always goes the extra mile to get the job done.  What would I do without her.  Also, with the experience she has gained developing these pants, she just gets better and better at figuring out how to made these jeans look right on their unique body shapes.  

With all this good news, I'm really hoping that by the Christmas holiday, I will have completed some jeans for all the age groups.  We may not have all the styles for each age group completed (we're creating 26 styles in all), but the harder-to-fit kids should be able to fit into a pair of our jeans. With the adult line, I think we will have all the styles completed and even startto make some of the styles in black denim.  Let's hope we continue moving forward.  I'm finally thrilled with our progress!