With Sifr in full swing, we thought we'd make the production process a bit more transparent in this very space. Not many others out there care to share with the end user about what goes into creating a product line. This is where we come in.
To quickly provide some brief background info:
The relationship between Sifr and KIN is an interesting one. Not many labels have the opportunity to showcase their produce hot off the press in a setting that already hosts a stable of other fine brands. We are lucky to be able to go through the production process, receive the goods, sell them to KIN and have them display at the store right away. The time lag is greatly reduced so as to ensure continuous progress.
With the consolidation of the retail space, it has now given us the ability to pay a lot more attention to Sifr's production process. A lot has been learned simply through communication with suppliers and associates. One specific associate is a garment manufacturing company run by my family members in Indonesia. They have a facility further out of Jakarta that focuses on production of knitted sleepwear and pajamas/pyjamas. This facility hosts an array of machines that take care of buttons to picot stitches.
They also have their very own Gerber Scientific pattern marker machine. It is very slick piece of equipment and is manned by an equally slick individual. He's been nothing but great help to us. Another great help has been the factory super(woman)visor.
When we design a certain garment, it is usually accompanied by a flat sketch and spec sheet that is sent out to the manufacturer. They then sample the garment and ask us to make comments and provide us with a measurement specification sheet. Filling out the measurement specification sheet or grading is probably the most sensitive part. This is where we gradually expand or contract from the sample size to create an entire size run. As easy as this sounds, it rarely is when in practice as you're trying to accommodate the general population. This is where the Jakarta outfit comes in.
With a combination of experience and technical knowledge, Umesh (Gerber operator) then measures our sample and completes the entire grading process from XS - XL. What would take us a whole day to complete took him a quick 20 minutes. If we were producing at that specific factory, he would then use those measurements to create a whole size run of patterns with help from the Gerber Machine.
This time however, we were there to create size specs as well as work with the factory supervisor to perfect certain prototypes to ready for our manufacturer in China. All this to reduce any margin for error.
