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We think that offering different sizes is serving our customers, but is it actually? Does standard sizing make it easier for the customer or does it just make it easier for the brand? Rick Levine and Steven Heard have thoughts.
They’ve each run multiple manufacturing businesses in different industries and are currently partners of the made-to-measure development and manufacturing studio ApparelWerks. No matter the business, their goal with product design, fit, and sizing has been the same: make each customer insanely happy. It impacts how they see production, technology, entrepreneurship, craftsmanship, customer relationships, and more. In episode 130, we cover it all.
Steven and Rick were introduced when Rick was looking into body scanning for a problem his daughter, an engineer, was trying to solve. "There's a guy in Portland who's been making customized clothing for decades. He knows all about scanners and measurement."
They discovered a shared appreciation for manufacturing technology, a fascination with old sewing machines, and a view that tech is only a means to an end; their past businesses were focused on making customers happy. Both were also looking for something new and interesting to do, and the result was starting ApparelWerks, a manufacturing and product development studio in Portland creating made-to-measure clothing.
Steven Heard has decades of experience making clothing, starting at the Levi Strauss factory on Valencia Street in San Francisco, at a time when all patterns and samples for the company were still created there. He was a senior pattern-maker for Levi's Dockers brand, and went on to spearhead the world’s first large-scale bespoke jeans production, leveraging body scanning technology to craft custom jeans for thousands of consumers. He founded pattern service bureau Clinton Park, doing garment development and pattern work for numerous national and start-up brands, and developed a reputation for being the go-to patternmaker for denim development. He went on to found Japanese-inspired San Francisco denim and workwear brand Dillon Montara in 2014, and was the development and manufacturing partner behind Portland's Ship John brand.
Rick Levine is the engineering black sheep in a family of artists. His father was a ceramist and designer, making and using tools to create mid-century ceramic tile and lamps on a large scale. Rick spent a lot of his time growing up around clay and machinery. Rick started his career as a producer and editor for film and video, and stepped sideways into programming tools and user interfaces for computer systems. He worked at Sun Microsystems early in its existence, and then at a series of start-ups. In 2006, Rick followed his interest in manufacturing automation to found chocolate brand Sun Cups. He repurposed industrial-scale chocolate techniques to create artisanal, organic, nut-free chocolates and made them available in thousands of stores. In 2013, he and his brother, designer Neil Levine, founded sock company XOAB, focusing on creating comfortable socks with a broad palette of Merino wool and Supima® cotton colors. They created a domestic supply chain, and used modified knitting machines and pattern analysis software to take new designs from sketch to shelf in less than a week, a capability unique in the hosiery industry.
This episode explores: Fitting the customer- Why the garment won’t fit unless you’ve had a conversation with the customer
- The difference between solving fit for your brand versus solving fit for your customer
- The advantages and limitations of 3D body scanning for apparel development
- How they know when they got the fit right
- Scaling on-demand production
- How one-piece production flow changes the way you see efficiency
- How Rick’s and Steven’s background lead to their perspectives on manufacturing
- The tools Rick and Steven use to systemetize custom clothing
- Why there’s value in both craft and technology
- Why Rick has a “healthy disrespect” for tools
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