Info Click Icon
|
The Tip is 'Teach Grandchildren' One day, while I was on the Made In America Secrets site my granddaughter noticed and asked me what I was doing. I told her about the Big Secret and as I explained, she began to ask me more questions. After several minutes she left my office to play with her little sister. Months had gone by and until recently, I had forgotten about that moment. She was visiting again and I was talking to her about buying a custom printed T-Shirt. She immediately told me about a website that I could use to buy one. Wow I thought, she is only eight years old and already teaching me. The most amazing thing then happened, she said "Pops they sell Made In America T-Shirts". Thanks to her I purchased six custom Made In USA T-Shirts. Her name is Britton, she understands the Big Secret and I love it when she tells me her Little Secrets! Now she is ten and writing a screenplay called Mertastic. It is a story about a mermaid. Recently, she was visiting our house again and using my computer. She called me to come into my office and of course I came to her because that is what grandparents love to do. One of the reasons I love to be with her is because it is always interesting to see what she is up to. This time, she needed a mermaid tail for her movie, so we began to look around using Google. Her mother is a talented seamstress and will make the tail so we were looking for fabric that would be satisfy my granddaughter's vision of her mermaid tail. Once again we began to talk about Made in America and therefore started to investigate the country of origin of the fabrics she was considering. Because of that experience Made in USA fabric is now one of Made in America Secrets products. Thank you, Britton. Buying Tip Continued - Read more on Made in America Products by Roy Denim I started in my little apartment sewing these jeans that, in hindsight, were really terrible. Somehow I was encouraged that I could make anything at all and within about 4 months I was making some wearable stuff. I really had no idea what I was doing, but would put in tons of time either sewing or talking to people or reading about sewing machines. I've had a few professions and one still is metal fabrication. I think it helped me to be able to think. I would close my eyes and work out a lot of sewing problems by thinking it through. So I just kept at it and I'm telling you, the highs were high and the lows were low. About 9 months in I met a really key person that, I felt, took me under her wing. Then she and her friends taught me about denim. Up till then I didn't know anything about denim. I was just trying to learn how to sew. This led to meeting a string of really smart people who seemed to be the gatekeepers of a lost art. Its funny to say the making jeans is a lost art, but it sort of is. Also, I started getting into the old machinery under certain peoples influence. This just made it even more fun for me. I already like old stuff, but old sewing machines have so much soul. At some point the apartment just became overwhelmingly packed with machines and my neighbors weren't that stoked. I found a great space for my studio and started getting even more machines. This started another phase because with all that I'd been learning, my stuff was getting better. I was trying new things ? jackets, shirts, skirts. And, the whole time I'd been working on men's and women's jeans by doing custom jeans to force my self to learn. Every pair was like designing a piece in a line. At some point I had to say no more to custom and focus on what I really want to be making. From there I narrowed in on one style that I liked and was willing to sell. I put up a website with pictures of my shop and a page to buy the one style to test the waters and see what the response would be. To my surprise, and due in no small part to the nature of modern communications, orders started rolling in. As an experiment it was valuable, but it also opened a porthole to another kind of work and, consequently, life for me. As I saw the close of that test, I took all the lessons and worked out how I, as a lone worker, could produce lots of my jeans and effectively sell them and develop new styles and still keep it fun. This is where I am at now. Honestly, I'm still experimenting. |
|