With that said, we will be introducing several new styles in a multitude of colorways. That usually means another trip to Indonesia for a sample stay.
Some interesting colors in the pipeline in the baseball henley style, regular crew henley style, and v-henley style include:
Moon Mist
Antler
Blue Blush
Midnight (Light and Dark)
Garnet
Mallard Green
etc.
In the meantime, here's a photo essay of the last trip:
We started off with the three styles in three colors. Our next drop of 12 colors in 5 styles will allow us to offer about 60 different variations. Hopefully that should quench the thirst.
A visit back to the factory.
The below photograph shows stacks of fabric with the paper patterns on top for cutting. That one being one of the heftier orders.
And then straight to lunch at the same Japanese restaurant. Again with the 2 main men behind the whole operation.
And then straight back into sampling mode.
This time our focus was on getting the henley styles correct. Things tend to get tricky when there are buttons and ribs involved. Sometimes the neck rib might not be big enough to hold the buttons. Hence the stickers on the tees. That's our way of outlining any future revisions.
The situation here was that the width of the rib was not adequate enough to host 14L buttons. Therefore it had to be increased by 1/8" to a total of 5/8" for the v-henley style. The regular crew henley and baseball henley will be able to have a 4/8" rib since there will be no buttons residing on the rib itself. These are some of the trickier issues you'd expect to encounter when making garments as simple as t-shirts. You can't avoid production issues no matter what you do. There's the garment business right there!
I tend to go on a treasure/scavenger hunt around the factory anytime I get a chance. Always some interesting finds.
There's a great variety of fabric that's just itching to be turned into garments. Luckily we have them within reach for sampling/wash testing, etc.
Ever wondered how they weigh a fabric swatch? This was another interesting mechanism I stumbled across.
The Green cutting mechanism is used to cut out a swatch that fits just nicely on the fabric weighing scale.
All garments have their specific fabric weight. Our Sifr Essentials t-shirts weigh the lightest they possibly can without forgoing fabric strength. They weigh in at a staggering 110 GSM in greige goods. Upon dyeing the fabric to certain colors they end up at between 115 GSM to 122 GSM. The dye adds extra weight to the fabric. As you can imagine, a white colored t-shirt will weigh a lot less than a black colored t-shirt. This polka dot example weighs in at a whopping 185 GSM.
Some valuable info for your comparison; The average t-shirt out there is between 145-160 GSM.
That's all for now. We're due for another trip when production starts.
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