Company-owned production
There are a number of ways to organize company-owned production.

• Sew all of your products yourself in your home.
• Hire a small number of workers to help you, either at your home or at theirs, with you providing the materials. This requires registration with the U.S. Department of Labor (www.dol.gov) to assure that you are complying with the Fair Labor Standards Act and minimum wage laws.
• Establish a factory with rented or purchased space, equipment, and employees. This is a major step. You should conduct extensive research and evaluate the costs and benefits before deciding to start a factory. You should consider the following advice.
  • Talk to other factory owners and ask them about their challenges.
  • Consider hiring a factory manager or consultant with extensive experience in apparel and sewing production to help you organize the factory, equipment purchases, flow of materials, human resource needs, and budget. Information and communication technology needs should also be outlined during the planning stages.
  • Match your production needs with production capacity in labor and equipment. Too much production capacity will leave you with excess inventory. Too little will drive the cost of labor and equipment up.
  • Compare the costs and benefits of owning your own factory versus contract options

"We bought a factory. We thought, oh well, this can’t be too hard…We learned pretty quickly that keeping a factory full and making money doing that is a whole different ball of wax. " Hartstrings was successful for a number of years without any production facilities. But at one point, the company decided to get into the manufacturing of their apparel products and Peggy Hart Earle describes the results. They found that running a production facility is very different than designing and marketing products and it takes a different knowledge and skill base.