Manufacturer Reviews

Below is a list of reviews of various manufacturers to help you decide on whether you would like to work with a specific manufacturer.

If you would like to contribute to this list, please e-mail your review, along with the business name and location (city is fine), and let us know whether you would like to have your name associated with the review or not.

Factory/ Agency/Business Name Business Location Review of Experience - positive or negative Date Name of Member (Optional)
Aldine Printing New York City This is a first class, very expensive printer who can do business cards, Lookbooks, mailers and they even did hang tags for me Their work is far superior to most of the average-priced printers in NY, but you get what you pay for. Being an art director, I'm very picky about color, and they were able to match things better than a number of other places. 10/19/16 Lisa Selwitz
Clinton Park san francisco offers pattern making, markers, grading, consultations. Steven Heard is owner. Makes most of his money providing these services to clients but owns his own custom-made denim company. he is generally nice but can be quite frustrating to work with. ive been working with him for over a year. in that time, he's made mistakes on my patterns and markers twice, and both times charged me for the work anyway. i made several samples based on his incorrect markers, about $850 in samples, which was infuriating. he doesn't take responsibility, nor apologizes, and there is always a subtle hint that its the clients fault. In both cases, I had email evidence of the changes to be made, and that he did not follow the written list, but he makes excuses. He is not reliable time-wise and is not organized. He makes it very clear if he likes/dislikes you. He has been in fashion for over 20 yeras, an ex-Levi's employee, so has a lot of experience and when he is focused does great work. but all of these other characteristics unfortuately makes it not worthwhile to work with him. he is not cheap. 2/28/17 olga lemberg
Clothier Design Source St. Paul, MN Sourcing manager quit, completely disorganized and unprofessional staff, etc. 4/26/2016
Clothier Design Source St. Paul, MN I am using CDS for my sports bra. I am in prototyping and really not using every piece of their service for development. They charge for every single thing. I sent them 5 elastic samples I sourced this week. I told them "give me three that you want me to order to test and I will order them." They cahrges me $100 to evaluate the email about the elastics! I understand once I've ordered them and they want to evaluate them they can charge me. Now this is Time I spent sourcing! It's stuff like this that I find very annoying. So I have my own product developer and I discussing most everything and have them simply doing design review and sewing. 4/26/2016 Tahra Makinson-Sanders
Clothier Design Source St. Paul, MN I first hired CDS to fabric source for me. I sent them super detailed specs of what I needed and even a ton of swatches I sourced myself to give them references for what worked or didn't work. Months later, I get a packet of fabrics, 90% of which fall outside of the specs I specified so clearly (too heavy or light, no stretch when i needed stretch, etc.). I complained & they defended themselves by saying that I did such a good job sourcing myself that they didn't have much to offer! Then why the heck did they let me pay them $350 for something they couldn't help me with!? And of course this was such an absurd excuse given they are a huge company offering fabric sourcing and I am a start up designer! How could it be that I did a better job sourcing than they did? I soon understood that the sourcing manager didn't know what she was doing and/or she wasn't trying hard to help me find what I needed. Soon after that, the sourcing manager quit (?got fired) suddenly. Still not having found even ONE fabric that works for me, the new sourcing manager comes on and tells me, "sorry, your project should have been managed differently based on the type of fabric you were asking for (custom vs. stock). so if you want us to find something else, you need to pay more." ahh! I immediately left. Regardless, hopefully you will be happy with their sewing - its certainly reasonable to think they might be better for certain tasks 4/26/2016
Clothing Labels 4u.com Florida This company makes digital and woven labels. They're on the pricier side, and I'm currently embroiled in a dispute over the quality of their production. They made digitally-printed satin labels for me and they were twisted. They wouldn't lay flat. They made them over again, and they were even worse. Now they're denying there's even a problem in the first place. Very difficult company to work with. Would definitely avoid them in the future. 10/19/16 Lisa Selwitz
DPS/Design Pattern Sample Atlanta, GA This is a case of attempted price gouging. I received a quote from Geffry Tate to produce my handbags. He wanted to base his quote on what I paid for a prior production run rather than what he could actually do the work for. I had a conversation with Mr. Tate prior to receiving a quote. During that conversation, I told him I wanted to reduce production cost and work with someone locally. He offered to send me a quote within 24 hours after I send him pictures of my handbags and the cost of the previous production run for each item. His logic was he wanted to base his quote off of my budget. I told him what I paid was high and was not my budget. I again told him I wanted to reduce cost. He sent me the quote after a couple of email exchanges. What he quoted me was exactly $.64 cheaper per item than what I had paid before. I told him no thanks. I received another email from him trying to argue that his quoted price was cheaper than what I paid before. I reminded him that his quote was only $.64 cheaper per item and told him his quote should not have anything to do with what I paid before. That was the end of our exchange. 12/23/16 Angie Beavers
DPS/Design Pattern Sample Atlanta, GA UPDATE: I received another email from Mr. Tate trying to convince me to give him another opportunity. My answer was no...too many red flags. He didn't know the difference between a messenger bag and a satchel nor did he seem knowledgeable about fabric. Also, the quote was based off of what I paid previously. His follow-up email was very nasty after I told him I was no longer interested in doing business with him. He accused me of not having money for production, not being satisfied with anything he offered, not being a serious inquiry, and being uncooperative. In the meantime, I researched this company on the web and found out DPS is an affiliate of Community Reach Inc. It also operates under the business names of Elizabeth M. Design and PDS. The address shown on Maker's Row points to a non-existent building on the GPS. I am unable to find anything on the company listed as a reference on DPS' Maker's Row profile page. This company has a C- rating with the BBB with 2 complaints. Mr. Tate is actually mentioned by name in one of the complaints. There is also a complaint on Thumbtack. The major complaints include, charging for unauthorized work, failure to honor contract terms and poor quality of work. I have not found a business license for DPS yet so.... After finding all of this information, I responded to Mr. Tate one last time. My actual response, "Yes, let's blame the person who said no to being overcharged. I am serious about my inquiry, but not interested in being taken for a ride. As far as red flags, I will be happy to point you to the BBB complaints and the complaint about Elizabeth M. Design concerning not honoring contracts. As far as resources to move forward, you don't know what's in my pocket. The only thing you do know about it is that you will not be able to get your hands on it. BTW, I am sorry you are offended by me expecting a fair quote and quality work when paying for a service. Are we done?" I have not heard back from Geffry Tate nor do I want to. 12/24/16 Angie Beavers
Gotham Textile/Softlines Manufacturing MN First off, Gotham Textile "rebranded" to Softlines Manufacturing, so I was unable to track down references for the new name -- that should already tell you something. Original account rep promised me patterns, a BOM, and digital die files and they will now no longer provide me with any of these deliverables, despite paying them almost $2k.
Gotham Textile/Softlines Manufacturing MN I had 2 separate negative experiences. One was just simply lack of communication, broken promises on timing, and no respone after leaving numerous voice mail and phone calls. Second time around, a year later, same experience. Spent 3 weeks just waiting on initial contact after they recieved my design notes and sample via UPS. 2/1/17
Jeanette of South San Francicso San Francisco meeting her on Friday May 5. She quoted $35/hr to sew samples. She comes highly recommended. I'll let you all know. Tahra Makinson-Sanders
Jennifer Loel Designs Cotati, CA She and her team are always delayed in their work, their work is not high quality and she charges a fortune! In my opinion Jennifer Loel just takes on more and more clients, meanwhile she & her team can't handle the work she brings in and so the results are always a disaster. I also lost a lot of money with her. 4/26/2016
Jennifer Loel Designs Cotati, CA I had an horrible experience with Jennifer Loel as well, lost a lot of money on unusable samples. I lost nearly 15K with her... 4/26/2016
JLD Studio Portland, OR Small operation run by 1 woman. I sent them my prototypes to evaluate and give me a 1st quote. The proces seemed very good based on 100 units. Samples of a knit dress with no more than 8 - 10 panels was between $100-150 each. I asked them to sew production samlpes for me. They used their laser cutter which they are new to. The fabric cutter was out the day they worked on my project. The owner admitted they misused the laser cutter by allowing the fabric to feed in from the floor rather than from the roller, meaning the fabric was not cut in a relaxed state. Causing the dresses all to be 2 inches too short. They didn't tell me this I had to discover it and wait for them to evaluate it after they said the tech pack didn't' have a spec sheet. I spent money paying my prod developer to create the spec sheet in painful detail. Then I flew there to do a face to face. They admitted what they did but said since your patterns need another round of adjusting anyway we'll credit 4 hours of pattern work to make up for the errors in fabric cutting. Now, my own pattern maker is $60/hr. They wanted to charge $90/hr for pattern adjustments. Then I asked for new quote since they have now sewn the styles. One style went up 2x in price because i added a pocket and two invisible zippers. So, now trying to get a quote from another factory. Each dress at a 100 units was between $27 - $36 to sew. Tahra Makinson-Sanders
Kathy McCabe Los Angeles, CA Horrible communication. Constantly having to check in and call/email. Chose not to work with her based solely on how bad her communication skills were. 7/2016
LaLaLand Production Los Angeles, CA Started out fantastic. Gorgeous factory with very impressive clientele list. We decided to work with them, so shipped them everything for our production order. Cost us several thousands dollars. Several weeks later, they informed us that they didn't have time to take on our project. We wasted months with this factory. When they shipped our goods back to us, it was missing a box of our custom zippers, cost of $2,000. The package was signed for by their employee but we were told that it wasn't there and they wouldn't reimburse us. A month later, the box arrived on our doorstep (clearly it was in their factory the whole time). We had already reordered the zippers, so we were out another 2K. 10/2016
Lefty Production Los Angeles I worked with Lefty Production on my latest batch of towels - they even packaged them for me. The quality was fantastic and Marta and her team were super responsive. My one problem with them is that they said that the fabric manufacturers didn't send enough trim. The shop was super messy as they were changing up their setup and, while I obviously can't be certain or prove it, when I did the math it sounded like they misplaced an entire box. It bothered me that they didn't even entertain it as a possibility and shifted the blame immediately to my fabric guys. Meanwhile my fabric guys were kind enough to split the cost of a new shipment of fringe - that's the customer service I want. At the end of the day I brushed it off as this experience was far smoother than my first sew shop and I think you just have to expect stuff like this to happen. I will say though that I know someone else who worked with Lefty and they had an entire box of completed product go missing once it was supposedly in UPS hands and they ended up losing quite a bit of money and weren't happy with the customer service response either. So.. if you do work with them - I'd say pay attention to the details and ask for documentation on materials received and get insurance on your shipping 2/28/17 Tiffany Shown
Lefty Production Los Angeles spoke with Marta and and she was responsive and professional, just didn't have a ton of experience in handbags. 2/28/17
Lefty Production Los Angeles I have been in contact with Marta + Megan at Lefty -- they are super nice and responsive. I ended up not going with them because their prices weren't inline with what I was searching for, but I did get a good first impression 2/28/17
MadeRight San Mateo, CA super sweet guys but I did not love their work. Their guy that did tech packs was not good (I had to pay another person to fix their tech pack which they charged me $500 if I remember correctly). They only do production abroad and have minimums of I think 100 pieces per style and color. At the time I was working with them they did not provide a service for having samples sewn so you had to go and get your samples done somewhere else and then bring it to them. Finally things just kind of took a long time. For example, each tech pack revision seemed to take forever... it was frustrating
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  • Factory/ Agency/Business Name Aldine Printing
  • Business Location New York City
  • Review of Experience - positive or negative This is a first class, very expensive printer who can do business cards, Lookbooks, mailers and they even did hang tags for me Their work is far superior to most of the average-priced printers in NY, but you get what you pay for. Being an art director, I'm very picky about color, and they were able to match things better than a number of other places.
  • Date 10/19/16
  • Name of Member (Optional) Lisa Selwitz
  • Factory/ Agency/Business Name Clinton Park
  • Business Location san francisco
  • Review of Experience - positive or negative offers pattern making, markers, grading, consultations. Steven Heard is owner. Makes most of his money providing these services to clients but owns his own custom-made denim company. he is generally nice but can be quite frustrating to work with. ive been working with him for over a year. in that time, he's made mistakes on my patterns and markers twice, and both times charged me for the work anyway. i made several samples based on his incorrect markers, about $850 in samples, which was infuriating. he doesn't take responsibility, nor apologizes, and there is always a subtle hint that its the clients fault. In both cases, I had email evidence of the changes to be made, and that he did not follow the written list, but he makes excuses. He is not reliable time-wise and is not organized. He makes it very clear if he likes/dislikes you. He has been in fashion for over 20 yeras, an ex-Levi's employee, so has a lot of experience and when he is focused does great work. but all of these other characteristics unfortuately makes it not worthwhile to work with him. he is not cheap.
  • Date 2/28/17
  • Name of Member (Optional) olga lemberg
  • Factory/ Agency/Business Name Clothier Design Source
  • Business Location St. Paul, MN
  • Review of Experience - positive or negative Sourcing manager quit, completely disorganized and unprofessional staff, etc.
  • Date 4/26/2016
  • Name of Member (Optional)
  • Factory/ Agency/Business Name Clothier Design Source
  • Business Location St. Paul, MN
  • Review of Experience - positive or negative I am using CDS for my sports bra. I am in prototyping and really not using every piece of their service for development. They charge for every single thing. I sent them 5 elastic samples I sourced this week. I told them "give me three that you want me to order to test and I will order them." They cahrges me $100 to evaluate the email about the elastics! I understand once I've ordered them and they want to evaluate them they can charge me. Now this is Time I spent sourcing! It's stuff like this that I find very annoying. So I have my own product developer and I discussing most everything and have them simply doing design review and sewing.
  • Date 4/26/2016
  • Name of Member (Optional) Tahra Makinson-Sanders
  • Factory/ Agency/Business Name Clothier Design Source
  • Business Location St. Paul, MN
  • Review of Experience - positive or negative I first hired CDS to fabric source for me. I sent them super detailed specs of what I needed and even a ton of swatches I sourced myself to give them references for what worked or didn't work. Months later, I get a packet of fabrics, 90% of which fall outside of the specs I specified so clearly (too heavy or light, no stretch when i needed stretch, etc.). I complained & they defended themselves by saying that I did such a good job sourcing myself that they didn't have much to offer! Then why the heck did they let me pay them $350 for something they couldn't help me with!? And of course this was such an absurd excuse given they are a huge company offering fabric sourcing and I am a start up designer! How could it be that I did a better job sourcing than they did? I soon understood that the sourcing manager didn't know what she was doing and/or she wasn't trying hard to help me find what I needed. Soon after that, the sourcing manager quit (?got fired) suddenly. Still not having found even ONE fabric that works for me, the new sourcing manager comes on and tells me, "sorry, your project should have been managed differently based on the type of fabric you were asking for (custom vs. stock). so if you want us to find something else, you need to pay more." ahh! I immediately left. Regardless, hopefully you will be happy with their sewing - its certainly reasonable to think they might be better for certain tasks
  • Date 4/26/2016
  • Name of Member (Optional)
  • Factory/ Agency/Business Name Clothing Labels 4u.com
  • Business Location Florida
  • Review of Experience - positive or negative This company makes digital and woven labels. They're on the pricier side, and I'm currently embroiled in a dispute over the quality of their production. They made digitally-printed satin labels for me and they were twisted. They wouldn't lay flat. They made them over again, and they were even worse. Now they're denying there's even a problem in the first place. Very difficult company to work with. Would definitely avoid them in the future.
  • Date 10/19/16
  • Name of Member (Optional) Lisa Selwitz
  • Factory/ Agency/Business Name DPS/Design Pattern Sample
  • Business Location Atlanta, GA
  • Review of Experience - positive or negative This is a case of attempted price gouging. I received a quote from Geffry Tate to produce my handbags. He wanted to base his quote on what I paid for a prior production run rather than what he could actually do the work for. I had a conversation with Mr. Tate prior to receiving a quote. During that conversation, I told him I wanted to reduce production cost and work with someone locally. He offered to send me a quote within 24 hours after I send him pictures of my handbags and the cost of the previous production run for each item. His logic was he wanted to base his quote off of my budget. I told him what I paid was high and was not my budget. I again told him I wanted to reduce cost. He sent me the quote after a couple of email exchanges. What he quoted me was exactly $.64 cheaper per item than what I had paid before. I told him no thanks. I received another email from him trying to argue that his quoted price was cheaper than what I paid before. I reminded him that his quote was only $.64 cheaper per item and told him his quote should not have anything to do with what I paid before. That was the end of our exchange.
  • Date 12/23/16
  • Name of Member (Optional) Angie Beavers
  • Factory/ Agency/Business Name DPS/Design Pattern Sample
  • Business Location Atlanta, GA
  • Review of Experience - positive or negative UPDATE: I received another email from Mr. Tate trying to convince me to give him another opportunity. My answer was no...too many red flags. He didn't know the difference between a messenger bag and a satchel nor did he seem knowledgeable about fabric. Also, the quote was based off of what I paid previously. His follow-up email was very nasty after I told him I was no longer interested in doing business with him. He accused me of not having money for production, not being satisfied with anything he offered, not being a serious inquiry, and being uncooperative. In the meantime, I researched this company on the web and found out DPS is an affiliate of Community Reach Inc. It also operates under the business names of Elizabeth M. Design and PDS. The address shown on Maker's Row points to a non-existent building on the GPS. I am unable to find anything on the company listed as a reference on DPS' Maker's Row profile page. This company has a C- rating with the BBB with 2 complaints. Mr. Tate is actually mentioned by name in one of the complaints. There is also a complaint on Thumbtack. The major complaints include, charging for unauthorized work, failure to honor contract terms and poor quality of work. I have not found a business license for DPS yet so.... After finding all of this information, I responded to Mr. Tate one last time. My actual response, "Yes, let's blame the person who said no to being overcharged. I am serious about my inquiry, but not interested in being taken for a ride. As far as red flags, I will be happy to point you to the BBB complaints and the complaint about Elizabeth M. Design concerning not honoring contracts. As far as resources to move forward, you don't know what's in my pocket. The only thing you do know about it is that you will not be able to get your hands on it. BTW, I am sorry you are offended by me expecting a fair quote and quality work when paying for a service. Are we done?" I have not heard back from Geffry Tate nor do I want to.
  • Date 12/24/16
  • Name of Member (Optional) Angie Beavers
  • Factory/ Agency/Business Name Gotham Textile/Softlines Manufacturing
  • Business Location MN
  • Review of Experience - positive or negative First off, Gotham Textile "rebranded" to Softlines Manufacturing, so I was unable to track down references for the new name -- that should already tell you something. Original account rep promised me patterns, a BOM, and digital die files and they will now no longer provide me with any of these deliverables, despite paying them almost $2k.
  • Date
  • Name of Member (Optional)
  • Factory/ Agency/Business Name Gotham Textile/Softlines Manufacturing
  • Business Location MN
  • Review of Experience - positive or negative I had 2 separate negative experiences. One was just simply lack of communication, broken promises on timing, and no respone after leaving numerous voice mail and phone calls. Second time around, a year later, same experience. Spent 3 weeks just waiting on initial contact after they recieved my design notes and sample via UPS.
  • Date 2/1/17
  • Name of Member (Optional)
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