Apparel Manufacture with Kyla from Lefty Production Co.

MADE Apparel Services Podcast

Heather Zager talks about all the questions new designers have about getting to manufacture with guest Kyla Sayre. Kyla is the Director of Business Development for Lefty Production Company and Stitch Texas. While Kyla has been in her current role for roughly four years, she’s been in the industry for ten years and has experience in many different aspects of the business. Heather does a deep dive into all the common things new designers run into in manufacturing with Kyla.

In answering the question of whether Lefty Production Company is a factory, manufacturer, agency, or wholesaler, Kyla defines the differences between each type of facility before identifying Lefty as a manufacturer that owns their own factories domestically. In her role as Director of Business Development, Kyla routinely connects with brands to help them with development and production assistance, performing costing exercises to see if domestic or overseas production would best fit their brand, and explaining all the costs and minimums that go into the process.

Heather’s discussion with Kyla Sayre explores a vast number of questions, from materials sourcing to wholesaling, PFD (Prepared For Dyeing) to MOQ (Minimum Order Quantities), and from what’s needed to be production-ready to assessing the benefits of domestic versus overseas production. Kyla explains what Lefty specializes in, how she walks her clients through the process, and offers a lot of inside information that is invaluable for new designers to have access to. This interview shines a light on the intricate decisions faced in the manufacturing process with straight-forward answers to common questions.

Resources discussed in this episode:

• MADE Apparel Services Design Concepting Course

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About Kyla Sayre:

Kyla is the Director of Business Development for Lefty Production Co. and Stitch TX, sister companies that offer a one-stop-shop solution for apparel and accessory development and manufacturing both domestically and overseas.

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Contact Heather Zager | MADE Apparel Services:

• Website: MADEApparelServices.com
• Facebook: MADEApparelServices
• Instagram: MADEApparelServices
• Linkedin: MADEApparelServices

Contact Kyla Sayre:

• Website: LeftyProductionCo.com
• Website: StitchTexas.com
• Kyle Sayre on LinkedIn
  
  

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Transcript

Heather Zager: [00:00:00] Hello everyone and welcome to today's podcast. My name is Heather Zager. I am the host of this podcast series and founder of Made Apparel Services. Hello and thank you for tuning in to our podcast today. And our guest today is Kyla Sayre of Lefty Productions, which is a California-based manufacturer who can do both domestic and foreign production. We're going to ask and answer questions that are common to new designers about getting to manufacture. So let's just start things off by, Kyla, tell us a little bit about who you are, how long you've been doing this, and how you got to where you are today.

Kyla Sayre: [00:00:39] Of course. And thank you so much for having me today on the show. I'm super excited to be here. Answer all of the questions that you have for me throughout this podcast. And as a bit of background about me, I'm the Director of Business Development for both Lefty Production Company and Stitch Texas, and on a daily basis, I connect with brands to help them with development and production assistants, going through different costing exercises and processes to see if domestic or overseas production would be a better fit for their brand, and all the costs and minimums that just go on into it. And this is about my fourth year in this specific role, but I've been in the industry for about ten years now altogether.

Heather Zager: [00:01:22] Okay. And what did you do prior to this four years?

Kyla Sayre: [00:01:26] Prior to this, I was actually in a lot of different places in the industry, so I did more of the retail side of things, but also wholesale. So I worked at the World Trade Center in Dallas for a while in a showroom. So, definitely a lot of different sides of things, which is nice because every single different side of the business goes into helping you understand the industry as a whole.

Heather Zager: [00:01:46] Yeah, that's exactly why I was curious with, before Lefty what you did. So perfect. Okay, that makes good sense. One question I have, I get this a lot is what is the difference between a factory, a manufacturer, an agency, a wholesaler, and which one is Lefty in all of those?

Kyla Sayre: [00:02:05] Absolutely. So a factory itself is really the facility where your goods are manufactured. So actually the warehouse where all of the cut-and-sew production happens. A manufacturer themselves is usually the entity that will own the factories. And they can also outsource or contract out some of the production. An agency is a bit different in itself that you can kind of look at an agency as a broker in the sense of they don't have their own in-house setup, ever. They're truly using their network of factories and facilities to connect with, to really outsource your production, which makes it kind of tricky because they don't have a ton of like, skin in the game, in a sense. Control over the factories and the actual quality that's being produced.

Heather Zager: [00:02:55] Right.

Kyla Sayre: [00:02:56] And then the last option, wholesaler, it's a little bit different because that's more people or brands who have goods that they sell to retail shops at a wholesale price that are then marked up to the retailer. So your cost that you'd get from manufacturer or factory would be lower than wholesale. So you'd mark that up to wholesale. And then as a wholesaler they would retail it on top of that.

Heather Zager: [00:03:22] Right.

Kyla Sayre: [00:03:23] So for Lefty specifically, we are a manufacturer who owns their own factories domestically.

Heather Zager: [00:03:31] Okay.

Kyla Sayre: [00:03:32] However, we do have some contractors we work with just where there are different sort of specialties or levels of expertise. For example, we have denim contractors where their bread and butter is doing denim work and we have a network of facilities as well we work with. And then overseas we play a little bit more of the role of an agent, but we're a lot more hands-on than an agent ever would be. So we have relationships with preexisting factories overseas that have really high consistent quality that we have vetted. We have boots on the ground. Check them out. We'll maintain that relationship and make sure everything is done properly. But it's really great for overseas production to be in that kind of situation. Because it's really hard as a brand starting out to get into those bigger factories on your own. When you have similar volumes. So using a facilitator like us, we're able to bundle your project alongside other ones to help...