The messy truth about making a western shirt in America.
When we receive a box of 300 finished western shirts from our factory in L.A. , you’d think - this is awesome. I can throw them on my website, and start selling! Yay!
NOT THE CASE 😀
Woven shirt manufacturing has largely left the U.S. The skilled labor that can do it - isn’t really here anymore. So when you find a factory that “can” do it - you’re often not getting a perfect product back, ready to ship (unless you’re okay shipping an imperfect product - which I’m not).
So instead, we have to inspect each shirt, spec them, trim, iron, fold, bag and tag - ONE AT A TIME - before we can put it on a shelf, and it’s ready to ship to a customer.
A good junk of my time is spent in a room like this, going through shirts, hunched over an ironing board for days. Putting the good ones in one pile, putting the bad ones on the other, with detailed notes, to go back to the factory.
This is one of many reasons why most clothing businesses don’t manufacture here. They don’t want to deal with nightmares like this. Many factories here don't care sadly. You have to grind on them, relentlessly, to improve the product. It's like moving a giant cruise ship from factory hell.
Just getting a perfect quality shirt made, with zero issues, at scale - again and again - isn’t possible today, and what I'm trying to achieve / solve at the moment.
But we’re holding the line. Year after year, putting pressure on our factory to keep improving - and they are.
Two years ago, they struggled with the sides of our pocket flaps. One side would be longer than the other. Now they’re perfect.
This little detail alone is such a huge win. Little by little, we eat the elephant one bite at a time.
The entire business is insane, and often times feels impossible. But the exciting thing is, IF we pull it off, we'll be one of the only ones in the world to make this product here.
