Here’s why:

I recently worked with an accessory company who had grown quickly and organically over the past 2 years to a stage where they successfully managed an online, and retail business. Their product was very strong, and they had a polished leathery future ahead of them, but as they’d grown they’d failed to document their timelines and processes resulting in a vulnerable position without an internally shared knowledge base and virtually no formal planning. The knowledge was in the heads of the management with no consistent planning tool in place for the team below them to follow and implement. What this meant was that the leadership team, instead of the team of assistants, were driving the day-to-day workings instead of being the face of the growing business and tending to the business development side. They were creating the bottleneck for their own company.

This is not a unique position. It happens a lot with companies as they grow from one person into a team, heck, I’ve done it myself, often finding it easier to manage the process myself instead of delegating it down to my team. But believe me, it is a false economy and it will come back to bite you. There are, of course, simple processes that you can implement which can alleviate this problem. I’m sharing some below:

Assumptions:

Make a list of assumptions for each departmental process which can be shared as the companies grows. These assumptions should include timelines for trim, fabric, washing, manufacture and shipping by location. It should also list the timelines relating to company process: proto reviews, concept building, range plan creation etc.  With this list anyone can make a simple plan to determine a time and action. Without it and no one know how long each process could or should take. These assumptions will be used in the next point:

Matrix/Linelist:

This matrix/linelist is a document that should contain all the styles you are developing, (by style name, fabric, colour, factory and by product group). At the beginning of each season, build the clear and simple document that lists the details of your whole collection and treat it as a one stop shop for all collection information. Add in the financials (cost price, retail price and margin), the delivery drops planned, and also the production planning with milestone dates for fabric and trim buying and you have a complete and very detailed document.

By adding in the product planning section and the delivery drops, and by using the assumption sheet in point 1, you can build out a data driven set of reminders and milestones to enable more strategic bulk raw material procurement and seamless manufacturing order placement (with buffer time included). The pain of spending 2 hours of data entry can save you days of confusion, late deliveries and cancelled orders. Yes, it is time-consuming to build this out half way through a season, but so is having to find a second source for trims or materials when you have missed a deadline to order and your production is jeopardized.

Shared ownership:

Ever heard of the phrase, “A problem shared is a problem halved”? Have at least 2 people in the company that can manage or at least articulate these processes so there is a sharable system. If you are a team of 3 people, at least 2 of you should know how long every process takes in the company. If 1 person is travelling, the other can manage the ordering. Keeping the information in your head and not shared will damage the growth of your business.

So, whether you are starting out, or at the next level growth stage, look at your development, procurement and production processes and ask yourself:

• Are your timelines documented?
• Is there a document in place that lists the collection details with milestone reminders to help you plan?
• Is it in a shared drive and available?

If it’s a no to all to 1 or more, you may be causing a bottleneck.

For more information of product development, planning and production, check out my book Blue is The New Black.
My consultancy Co-lab54 specialises in strategic product development for fashion companies.

The key dates is the backbone to your collection and is an important set of deadlines from the start of development to the end of production.

Here are 3 quick tips to help you build the plan so that you deliver a great product on time:

1) Make sure all of your team is included in the plan:

Building a collection is a team sport. Everyone has roles and responsibilities to make it a success, so include them all in the plan so it doesn’t become a 1 man show.

Tip: Key words here are ‘ownership’ and ‘accountability’.

2) Be clear about which season you are working on and when you want to deliver the collection:

The delivery date of the collection  should be the most important date of the plan.

Tip:  Start with the end date of delivery and work back to ensure you don’t cut yourself  short on timing.

3) Understand the timings involved in each aspect:

Make sure you know how long each process takes.

• How long does it take for fabric to be produced?
• How long does it take for a prototype to be made?
• How long does it take for shipping from an offshore location vs a domestic one?

Tip: Have the timeline of every stage ready at hand when you make the plan so that you don’t plan too little time and be forced to deliver late to a customer.
 

For a free Key Dates pullout and more help and advise on collection building check out Blue is The New Black.

My consultancy Co-lab54 specialises in strategic product development for fashion companies.

I think it’s fair to say that to be good at fashion development or production you need to be organized. Some people use paper, some use apps like Trello and Evernote but whatever the method, using some form of ‘list’ or organizational tool is essential practice with the number of aspects that need to be juggled within a project. But list making is not just about being organized; it’s also about helping to maintain a focused and motivated outlook in the task ahead so that you see progress as it happens.  For me, these points are key and these are what I’ll be giving you tips on in this post.

Now, I think it’s also fair to say that being organized doesn’t always come naturally to people and for me it was the same. It’s something that has taken me years to manage and I have learnt the hard way by forgetting things or by just feeling overwhelmed by workloads.

Here is how I learned to love a list:

Around 20 years ago, I went to a time management course paid for by my then employer. It was one of those two day set ups in a beige, characterless conference room of a London Hotel filled with eager folk, pens and papers to the ready, waiting to soak up those all essential words of wisdom by some guy called Frits. I remember his name, randomly enough because usually Fritz is with a ‘z’ but he announced himself as ‘Frits–with-an-s’. This course was 20 years ago, strange what you remember: ‘Frits-with-an-s’.

Without going into a minute by minute run down of the course, what he taught us was to break things down stage by stage into bite size pieces, a piece of advise which I give to teams even now. His route was starting with a monthly schedule and dividing it first weekly, then daily,then hourly. What this does is make tasks or events more manageable which is crucial when faced with something big like planning a wedding or a product launch.

For me, the first time that this method of planning really kicked in, I was working at a new brand, which was setting up from scratch in its development and production department. What this meant was that I needed to hire a team, build a sourcing strategy (find factories), create internal processes, and build the information flow documentation (decide who did what). Quite a complex set of tasks and not something I had actually done before. So how did I start? Being old school and preferring to use a pen and paper (don’t judge) I took each section and divided it so that it was broken down into the smallest of detail:

Sourcing Strategy:

Product groups / Countries of manufacture / buying office / agent / factories /Contact person / email address

Team:

Departments / Positions / / Salary / Job Specs / Recruitment agents / Adverts

Internal Process:

Key Documents / Format / Templates

Once I had listed all these in a ‘waterfall list’ (items trickling down in size) I found it easier and less daunting to  attack each point and I was able to cross things off the list giving me a sense of accomplishment and  progression. If my list had been simply: ’ Set up the whole development and production structure for a large  international fashion brand’ I would have probably quit after 3 hours and taken up basket weaving instead. As  it was, I worked through the detailed list striking things off it, reviewing and updating the list daily and weekly.  I’m not saying that this set up was easy or things went according to plan, but by having a detailed plan of  action and by reviewing and updating it on a regular basis, I was able to make progress and slowly build the  department.

This takes me to another point: Reviewing and updating your list on a regular basis is a good thing and is essential for progression.

While working through a project, large or small, work or personal, you will notice that tasks and deadlines will change on a regular basis. This is not because you are not managing the list efficiently, it’s the just the nature of the beast. You are working with external forces (in development: factories and fabric mills, for a wedding, cake makers and florists) that also have their own lists and priorities, which may not match yours. Because of this, be prepared to update and review your list on a regular basis, changing priorities and adding new tasks. This process is a positive thing as there is nothing more satisfying that starting a new list and seeing how much has been crossed off the old one, or at least I think so.

Overtime, maybe your list will get smaller as you strike things through, or maybe it will stay the same length but will have different tasks on it because of a different project. But what should stay consistent is the way you approach it.

Here are my key tips on learning to love a list.

–       Break the task down into bite size pieces, from large to small (don’t be afraid of adding detail to make it easier)

–       Literally strike things through when they are done so that you see the progress.

–       Accept that things will change and that you can’t control everything.

–       Review and update on a regular basis.

Susie Breuer runs the consultancy Co-Lab54.

For more Industry related tips check out the book Blue is The New Black.