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Permalink Reply by SaFire on October 9, 2011 at 11:25pm

1.Are you an under the table craftster or have you started a business? If so, what format and how did you go about doing it?

I claim almost everything, anything I'm wholesaling or what I produced in Bali. I claim it under the umbrella business of Safire Dance Inc.  

 

2. Do you vend at festivals, sell online, locally or wholesale?

I've been vending at hoop retreats and at my hoop workshops lately. I'd love to sell online and would love to have others wholesale my designs, but that would involve finding a way to produce them in large amounts. 

 

3. Where do you get your labels?

I had my mine in Bali. Since I won't be producing there again I'll have to find another source for labels. 

 

4. Do you have any team mates/ partners or are you part of a community?

....etc :)

 

Not as of yet. I have wholesaled Maha Devi's clothing as well as Ember Nomads. I liked selling others designs because it provided me with more pieces than I could have made on my own and added variety to my table/shop. 

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Permalink Reply by Red Lunar Moon on October 10, 2011 at 3:07pm

Awesome, thanks SaFire, how's Cirquelle going? I've always wondered about the logistics of producing abroad.

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Permalink Reply by SaFire on October 10, 2011 at 4:32pm

I wouldn't recommend Bali or India. I've seen you sew before and you can work really fast. Production in those countries are slow and tedious and the fabric selection is limited. Hong Kong has a HUGE fabric and notions district, it's absurd. Again, production for a few pieces can take months, however you can get large numbers of the finished design. It general, Hong Kong, China and Japan can produce larger amounts with higher quality but India and Bali provide the opportunity to really customize detailed and hand made pieces. You can still get detailed pieces in central Asia of course but often items are machine made and you have to order minimum amounts that are in the hundreds/thousands. 

 

Some of the fabric in Hong Kong is to die for. You could make the more simple of things (basic tank or t-shirt) and it would look stunning. I didn't like though that you could only pick up samples, you cannot actually buy a bolt or cut of the fabric to play with. This made it tricky to visualize, I would pretty intuitively and let fabrics tell me what they want to be made into and when you're only look at a 5 inch square piece of fabric, it doesn't really inspire ideas. 

 

I'd love to hear you thoughts on doing the Edmonton Fashion Week?  I'm thinking about it, not for promo but just as a fun project of creating and putting together a finished show. I also tend to work well with deadlines so having a launching point to have a certain number of designs finished would be helpful for me. 

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Permalink Reply by Red Lunar Moon on January 10, 2012 at 10:46pm

Cool, good to know.

Yeah, I dunno about Edmonton Fashion Week, it's alright and I've been in it in the past but not necessarily the crowd I'm looking for. I'm still working towards really creating a confident plan first.

I'd love to try to make a not so mainstream event on a smaller scale but planning and resources are hard things to commit to combined with the 9-5 and mommy-ing.

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