springleap T-shirts | June Production Update

June Production Update

shoutOut on 5/6/08 by TheBrigand in wordUp

WWWoooooo!!!! Production is TOUGH!!!

TSHIRT PRODUCTION IN SOUTH AFRICA IS NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART!!!

When we got into the clothing production game, people warned us and said we were crazy STONE COLD CRAZY!!!

Well I kind of feeeeel crazy!

The CMT industry in particular is a fabric sea of steely sharks. Oh, wait – I guess you are wondering :

WHAT IS CMT?

CMT is short for Cut, Make and Trim. So it’s basically the person who cuts the fabric, makes the garment and trims it.

So Eric and I thought – why not tell people about the joys and tribulations of this side of the business.

This thread will update you on progress of the June production of springleap.com’s April winners. It will give you some insight into the industry as well as keep everyone in the loop to when our new range of slick threads are due to hit the floors of Big Blue, eSquared, Lover at V&A Waterfront and the Springleap.com website.

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The last of the May t-shirt design competition entries are being printed now – only 2 left to go and then they get sown together and made ready for purchase. I am hoping that we get it all together within this week. shoutBack on 8/8/08 by TheBrigand
The first 13 designs from the May winners got delivered to springleapHQ today, so if you ordered one of the winning May designs, they might be on their way to you tomorrow. The other 7 May designs should be arriving any day now… shoutBack on 6/8/08 by Eric
WOOOOOOOO!!! The proverbial St hit the fan yesterday and today. As you all well know, we had massive problems with a CMT in our first montha nd the move cost us huge time and money, so we are seriously running behind on May and June competition production. So more about the Mat t-shirts : Jst saw a bunch of them and they look HOT H-O-anotherOfor OH MY HAT!!!-T HOT! Our silkscreen partners really know their stuff, but in the classic naughtyness they are running HUGEly late and riving my CMT guy DILLY!!! Only 10 styles have been delivered so far and of course these are all for sale in JHB so we need em but BADBADBAD!!!!! We found out that they have not been run at night since the night staff are not jacked enough to handle the job and the day stafff only are putting it on 1 machine out of 4!!! Man I hit the ROOF!!! Anyways – calm down…. calm down… Well, we are working as hard as we can do a cancan. Even harder actually – have no fear – we will make a plan – like Stan the Man. We will sally FORTH! Tally ho what hot hot what is too hot what not. (any nominees for the next Jack Sparrow?) shoutBack on 29/7/08 by TheBrigand**
WOOOOOOOO!!! The proverbial St hit the fan yesterday and today. As you all well know, we had massive problems with a CMT in our first montha nd the move cost us huge time and money, so we are seriously running behind on May and June competition production. So more about the Mat t-shirts : Jst saw a bunch of them and they look HOT H-O-anotherOfor OH MY HAT!!!-T HOT! Our silkscreen partners really know their stuff, but in the classic naughtyness they are running HUGEly late and riving my CMT guy DILLY!!! Only 10 styles have been delivered so far and of course these are all for sale in JHB so we need em but BADBADBAD!!!!! We found out that they have not been run at night since the night staff are not jacked enough to handle the job and the day stafff only are putting it on 1 machine out of 4!!! Man I hit the ROOF!!! Anyways – calm down…. calm down… Well, we are working as hard as we can do a cancan. Even harder actually – have no fear – we will make a plan – like Stan the Man. We will sally FORTH! Tally ho what hot hot what is too hot what not. (any nominees for the next Jack Sparrow?) shoutBack on 29/7/08 by TheBrigand**
Hey guys – sorry to be out of the loop on production updates of late – IT HAS BEEN MAD!!! Super hectic with the crazy change-over to the new CMT. Well everything is with our silkscreeners now and the printing has begun – It’s going to be sort of a back-to-back whammy running June and July production simultaneously, but looks like we will just make it. It has been a tremendously steep learning curve and finally we have consolidated all our fabric supply from our main partner and hammered out our final colours with them so everything should proceed like clockwork. Matching colours for t-shirts can be an absolutely INSANE task. It really is quite mad. The thing is : when you finally find the Pantone colours you want your shirts to be (or find a colour of fabric you already have and want to match) – they first check with existing colour swatches they have on file to see if a direct match can be found – ie something they have made up before and have the exact recipe for already. If this is a no go, then they send the colour to a dye-lab that specializes in matching the colour . Some colours are especially hard to match and since different manufacturers use different dyeing techniques, it makes things even more complicated with very rich or deep colours. Having said that, we now have a full compliment of our colours and everything is completely standardised as of the July production. In June, Ocean blue is a bit more of a Turquoise and True Blue is more of a royal blue – this is a once off and I think the new Ocean BLue and True Blue which will appear from July production onwards are AWESOME colours. We will try to have a set made up soon and take photos so you can see the colours – we will probably offer a few photos in the new and improved springleap tshirt template kit I will be be uploading soon. This means you will be able to see the real colours that march up to th ones in the kit. We also have hammered out the new packaging – but I ain’t spilling the beans!!! You will see it on the site soon – the new ranges of t-shirts are really going to rock! shoutBack on 16/7/08 by TheBrigand
we all want an update shoutBack on 14/7/08 by Eric
Well we FINALLY got the last of the fabric in yesterday and started to cut it all up into superfine t-shirts. Our new CMT is so much more jacked than the last one. Everything is cross-checked several times for quality assurance. There are more checkpoints in place there than there are beans in Mexico. All the art has been processed and the posies and screens sit at the screenprinters hungry for fabric. Soooon my pet. Soon. Jeez – it’s such a mad spashback we have to deal with as a result of the nonsense that the CMT guy put us through – it’s splashing back on this month’s production line. We are looking at hiring a quality assurance person on top of all of this to make sure EVERYTHING is totally waxed. sigh. SO SOME GOOD NEWS : looks like we have also finally hammered out the process which is going to make our garment so silky smooth – it will feel like you are wearing a Hugo oss or Armani shirt. Sweeeet. These babies are gonna feel like MAGIC! Rock on! shoutBack on 4/7/08 by TheBrigand
heya firefly the funny thing is that this ACTUALLY is a blog, but very few people realise it. we’ll be adding RSS feeds etc soon so that people can subscribe to the threads that interest them in the meantime, just bookmark the URL of the threads that interest you shoutBack on 23/6/08 by Eric
If this was a blog I’d subscribe immediately! (Some pics would be nice :P) For someone thats not really “in the industry” this is really interesting – Keep it up! shoutBack on 22/6/08 by firefly
I what was another mad flurry of a day, We discovered yet MORE issues with our samples. The men’s sample looks fantastic, but was too short! Oh no!!! this is going to cost us a few more days of sampling. There is no ways we are meeting deadlines this month sadly – from next month, things will be running much smoother. We also found that the material supplied to us for the rib was too light and lacked memory, so if you gave it a tug, it didn’t some back to shape – we sent it back naturally. Of course this means more days lost :( WTF!!!!! The good news is that all of these different elements are teaching us what to expect and how to avoid problems in the future by putting systems in place to prevent this from happening again. Reconsidering the packaging has also been quite a mission – it seems people are not keen to try on t-shirts that are in bags, so we are not supplying the springleap t-shirts in bags any more – the goodies will be in a separate bag attached to the garment by a kimble, but all is good – we will make it look TOTALLY sweet :):):) shoutBack on 21/6/08 by TheBrigand

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