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)
AnabelleNYC -Manufactuer New York (Brooklyn area) Worse exprience ever! Anabelle NYC, does not ever meet deadlines, She lies a lot. Tell you one thing and its another. Good at sewing and pricing. Thats it. If you want your line to launch on time DO NOT GO TO HER. You would be better off going to a manufactuer who has morality and understand start up money does not grow on trees. I am in the processs of taking away and adding to my collection. Due to ANABELLE NYC , lost about 6000.00 dollars because the season I wanted to launch for has came and went. My Lesson is to do research
Rainbow Leather New York (College Point) http://www.rainbowleather.com/ Rainbow Leather does full-color printing, foil stamping, cutting, perforating, and embossing of leather. I have so far only used them for full color printing, but I can highly recommend them for this. I talked to and tested out many other leather printers before I chose Rainbow. They are responsive, fast, and reasonably priced. They answered all of my emails within 24 hours, and they turned around my orders within the quoted time frame (2 weeks). The one issue I had was that I had leather hides delivered to them and signed for by their front desk, but they weren't aware they'd received them. So, if you send them hides from an outside source, be sure to get the tracking code and follow up with Rainbow as soon as you know your package has been delivered. When I followed up they were all over it. They'd found my package by the next morning, and all was right back on track. They're also great about sending free samples of their work so you can see it for yourself before you commit. A+ 8/1/18 Laura Shape
Funari Fashion Consulting New York (Brooklyn ) http://www.funarifashionconsulting.com Janelle Funari and her business partner Danny Levine run this company. They are expensive and have no system for communication whatsoever. Sometimes texting and sometimes calling and rarely emailing the messages are confusing and unitelligible. They SHARE an email address so you don't even know who is writing to you! A design meeting is $975.00 and their retainers are $2500.00 and they go through them quickly. After asking many questions I was told, "perhaps you shouldn't be in fashion." I was reminded daily about "how they have launched over 50 successful brands" and that "they could do this shit in their sleep". Hubris does not make for good business. I had to get really mean and legally agressive to get them to WORK FOR ME. I ultimately had to fire them. My lawyer (who said they are notorious for being unprofessional and money grubbers) has had to intervene to get my second retainer back...or what's left of it. There are many other choices for product development in NYC, do not use them. Feel free to reach out to me if you want more detail. 1/14/19 David Mucci
Thread Tech, Inc Boston, MA After designing my first full line of clothes I was excited to work locally with a new manufacturing company that advertised that they could take designers from idea to production, completing all the necessary steps along the way under one roof. Initially I was impressed with the attention to detail that the owner, Donielle Martorano McKeever, displayed while showing me the work done on some other pieces. I value quality workmanship so was thankful to find someone who did as well. I picked up two completed styles in early July and found that none of the sewn pieces looked like I expected. The simplest example being that striped pants didn't have the strips lined up at the seam and patterned skirts did not have the pattern centered. Two aspects that should be basic quality requirements. I brought everything back the next day to show Donielle and was told they would take a look and make sure to correct everything. She asked me to email details of everything that was wrong with pieces which I did. One week later I was sent an email stating "she had discussed the matter with her attorney and he would take it from here." I was dumbfounded. 3 months later and the situation is still not resolved. Thread Tech has all of my patterns, samples, designs, fabric, etc., and money. I have done a lot of research into this company, its founder and backers. What I've learned is that Thread Tech is at least the fourth manufacturing business Donielle has started and two have been taken bankrupt along with designers property. Their pricing structure while advertised to save a designer money and time, is actually way over standards and a la carte. For example, Tech packs are $300 and not complete or detailed so useless. 10/8/19
The D.N.A. Group San Francisco, CA The short version is that they are unreliable, unprofessional and are not accountable. Worked with them for two years. During that time I received poorly made samples with many errors. The patterns were full errors as well and some were completely missing pieces or had the wrong pieces. I tried to get the patterns fixed by a third party but there are so many errors that I have to get them completely redone at this point. Now, I have nothing and I am in the process of having my pattern completely remade. Below are details if you have time to read through. 1. Sample Making Process: a. Overall poorly made samples were produced. b. No Quality Control. Samples were clearly rushed to be made for the fitting and no one reviewed them before the fitting. c. Errors - Didn’t offer to fix their errors for free i. Backwards collars on two samples ii. Buckled lining iii. One side of the jacket longer by 2” iv. Bad samples overall which made it hard for me to determine if the fit was right and/or if I can move forward with finalizing my samples. 2. Suppose to be experts that you can rely on: a. Didn’t even mention that I should have interfacing in my jackets until I asked about it later on. b. They feed on your lack of knowledge. c. Since you already paid them, they didn’t have your best interest and I just felt like the root cause of the sample issues never really got addressed. 3. Not accountable for your timeline at all. a. Slow process and doesn’t respect your deadlines. b. They will tell you a date that something will be completed by but they don’t give you any updates but miss your deadline. 4. Not professional. a. Won’t pick up your phone calls or return your emails for several days. b. People will go on vacation but you have no idea because you don’t receive an OOO reply letting you know they will be out or they don’t give you heads up about it. c. Moving across the country without notifying their clients. d. Logo, label, or hang tag development - I didn't receive any service on these items and paid others to complete. 5. Patterns included many issues: a. They didn’t give me the specs at the time of the fittings so you weren’t really able to keep track of things that needed to be updated. b. I was told that I would get my final graded patterns on July 5th but didn’t get until August 2nd. I was told that they needed the extra time for quality control review of the patterns. c. I could clearly see there was no quality control review of the patterns. Just on one style alone I found the following errors. i. Collar from the pattern was completely different from the sample. I had to have it remade to match the sample by another pattern maker. ii. No back facing included in the pattern. iii. No lapel facing patterns included. iv. Several pattern piece indicating to cut “1”when the sample clearly showed that there “2”. v. Missing patterns for the lining. vi. There are so many errors that it is better for me to have them completely redone by someon else. 6. Material and sample fabric: a. All my materials and samples were shipped to the east coast without my knowledge. We were coming to the end of my contract and I could have picked up my samples and fabrics avoided incurring shipping fees. b. DNA Group lost 5 yards of lining that I have been tracking on my end since they were purchased in March 2019. Even though I know that it was not used in any samples they insisted that it was. Furthermore, I was told by them that they are not a storage facility and are not responsible for lost items. 11/11/2019 Lori Reposa
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  • Factory/ Agency/Business Name V Mora
  • Business Location Chicago, IL
  • Review of Experience - positive or negative Only when I threatened a lawsuit did I get action but still lost time and money.
  • Date 4/26/2016
  • Name of Member (Optional)
  • Factory/ Agency/Business Name V Mora
  • Business Location Chicago, IL
  • Review of Experience - positive or negative Same problem with VMora. Lost a lot of time an money with them with none of the materials I paid for. Very little of the sourcing I paid for did they give to me. They switched account managers on me so many time and moved my project from a Chicago group to a NY group.
  • Date 4/26/2016
  • Name of Member (Optional) Tahra Makinson-Sanders
  • Factory/ Agency/Business Name V Mora
  • Business Location San Francisco
  • Review of Experience - positive or negative I didn't deal with them personally but heard from friend designers that their samples were unusable.
  • Date 5/5/2016
  • Name of Member (Optional)
  • Factory/ Agency/Business Name U.S Embroidery
  • Business Location Wilsonville, OR
  • Review of Experience - positive or negative The bulk of their business is athletic football and basketball jersyes, but they do fashion knits and wovens too. I"ve been really happy with their work and found the owner, Kirk, to be responsive and HONEST!. They have two cutting tables, 12 sewers and embroidery machines. Patterns must be digital and ready for production.
  • Date 4/14/17
  • Name of Member (Optional) Michele Thomson
  • Factory/ Agency/Business Name Maderight
  • Business Location San Mateo / Asia
  • Review of Experience - positive or negative Seems they are focusing mostly on woven. They give a contracted delivery date. If they miss the date they give you a % back. First time working together they expect 6 months. After that they expect reruns in about 30 days. They are pushing thier white label line and working off those designs. 14 day sampling gaurunteed. There is a dedicated account rep for your project/ They say they reduced lead time by 50% by allowing customer to see online where in the process the project is, time stamps and notes. Main office is in San Mateo. Sample factory is in Shanghai and owned by Maderight. They carry a lot of fabric in stock. Some of the recent production issues they have had is customers being able to meet fabric minimums. They can do sublimation but has higher minimums. They provide printing services. Plastisol heatpress for active apparel (synthicatical) Heat pressing logos. Minimums are 300 units for production. 14 pieces for sampling.
  • Date 06/21/2017
  • Name of Member (Optional) Tahra Makinson-Sanders
  • Factory/ Agency/Business Name ClutchMade
  • Business Location NYC
  • Review of Experience - positive or negative I've now worked with CluthMade for the product development of our initial collection and one production. I can't say many good things about them. The first few prototypes were done super fast, and while they were expensive (average $1000 each), we were happy to have found someone who could work this fast. The relationship went downhill fast. They missed our first production date alltogether, which they chose the date based on our photoshoot. No apologies (this continued through our relationship). So we were missing pieces for our shoot, which was a huge expense. Orders were constantly late, and quality control not great. Only after our first produciton run did the owner Laura inform us that they would charge us a "monthly storage fee" to hold our very small amount of fabric and hardware! We paid almost $300 a month. Then, when I went to place a reorder a few months later, she informed me that her pricing went up 40% and her minimums doubled. We were stuck completely at this point not being able to afford the new minimums so we found a bew factory and asked her to ship our metal dies to us. She charged us $490 to package them. Not to ship them, just to PACKAGE them. There were only 4 styles. My new factory received the dies, with several parts missing and big clunks missing out of them. I emailed Laura and asked about the missing pieces and she replied that she was shipping them. No apologies no offer to ship on her dime. Needless to say, i DO NOT recommend anyone work with this factory!
  • Date
  • Name of Member (Optional)
  • Factory/ Agency/Business Name Kloth
  • Business Location Vancouver, Canada
  • Review of Experience - positive or negative ve been working with Kloth for a couple years now and I have to say they are WONDERFUL. Their work is impeccable, timely, and the owners, Garry and Michelle, are honest and straightforward - no BS type people. They are a bit on the expensive side, but they also have no minimums and will work with literally any size order you have. I have gotten production runs as small as 18 pieces from them and they don't bat an eye. They don't push my work to the side in order to satisfy larger clients either, which I know is very often an issue for startups with small minimums. I started working with Kloth because they were the only low-minimum factory near me in Vancouver, but since learning so much more about the industry I realize how lucky I've been! They are now located on Vancouver Island, about 45 minutes from where I live, and Garry has even come into my town to pick up fabric/notions from me so that I didn't have to ship it or drive it up to them! So helpful and friendly! They have even been patient with me while I sorted out funding, even though I know they are extremely busy.
  • Date 11/14/17
  • Name of Member (Optional) Kaitlin Martin
  • Factory/ Agency/Business Name U.S. Embroidery
  • Business Location Oregon
  • Review of Experience - positive or negative A factory that I work with would like me to share their information to all you awesome designers. The factory is U.S Embroidery in Wilsonville, OR. They have about 12 sewers and also have a full run of embroidery machines (obviously, hence their name). They sew knits and woven. The've sewn a simple long sleeve t-shirt for me and now are sewing a woven slip dress. I've found the owner, Kirk, to be professional, knowledgeable and fair and honest!. You will see from their website that the majority of their work they do is football jerseys and sports team uniforms, but I've been very happy with their work and Kirk is open to working with small designer companies like us. No minimums. The slip dress cost me $30, but I am only making about 20 of them in production.
  • Date 12/28/2017
  • Name of Member (Optional)
  • Factory/ Agency/Business Name Suuchi
  • Business Location NJ
  • Review of Experience - positive or negative Discussion in FB group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1837844186441304/permalink/2394822980743419/
  • Date 1/27/18
  • Name of Member (Optional)
  • Factory/ Agency/Business Name krysmanufacturing.com
  • Business Location Philadelphia, PA
  • Review of Experience - positive or negative To start, this website is essentially false advertising. Kristin ( the owner) claims to have a skilled team, she doesn't it's her and a few non skilled workers and interns. It also claims " she will make certain your product is EXACTLY the way you want it " this is not even remotely true. I first met with her at the end of January, I explained that I wanted to start with 2 gowns that were bodice/skirt combos so 4 pieces total. One of them would be a remake of my wedding dress, which I left there as a reference. and the other would be a remake of a gown that was mostly completed but needed some changes based on what the fabric was telling me etc. I agreed that I would make the changes to the pattern myself and bring it in the future. In that meeting I told her that these patterns were a bit tricky, that I was looking for someone who had experience with formal wear and the fabrics that were used in it namely silks, organza, dress bones, slippery lining fabrics, invisible zippers etc. I said that I understood that many companies specialize in things like uniforms, street wear, athletic gear etc and that if she didn't think they were set up for my project I totally understood and I didn't mind if she wanted to talk to her people and get back to me afterward. I gave her the opportunity in that moment to choose whether or not my project was a good fit for herself and her team's skills. She told me no problem, that we should just walk through the patterns when I came back and then it should be fine. We met again the next week, I brought the aforementioned wedding dress, that I made by myself, and the incomplete sample bodice and skirt which were complete enough to provide an adequate reference for anyone saying that they are qualified for such a project. I also brought the relevant patterns, some invisible zippers and interfacing. We went through the order of operations for the bodices which were the complicated part, I physically showed her how all the pieces folded and fit together, I let her take notes on the patterns and add additional info as she saw fit, I listened to her input, answered her questions and asked her if she needed anything else from me. She said that now that we had done that it seemed pretty straight forward and doable and she had the examples as well as photographs I had given her as references so she would be fine. We agreed on the price and the standard 50% deposit and that she would do the preliminary samples before the final fabric samples which I agreed was standard, I asked if she needed materials for that and said that I would be happy to provide muslin or any appropriate fabric that was similar to the silk in the bodice. She said they had what they needed and they would probably start on it the following week. I said I was going back to NYC mid Feb ,( about 2 weeks from then )to have a few meetings and to source fabric and that I would let her know what I had when I came back. It seemed pretty standard for companies to make full muslin samples of each agreed upon garment, in my case 2 outfits totaling 4 pieces. According to everyone I've talked to initial muslins are meant to include all facings, finishings, linings, trims, closures and the agreed upon type of hem. This is what I was expecting to have by the time I had my real fabric. I gave her the time to walk her sewer through the patterns like she said she would, and to start making these proper samples while I focused on my upcoming trip and getting fabric. When I came back with my fabric I emailed her what I had and asked if the samples were finished. She showed me one photo of a sloppily put together bodice front in a dark, textured fabric that wasn't the right weight. I said it was hard to see the detail in that fabric and it didn't seem folded properly or lined and that it was on the right track but not there. She provided no other pics of the other bodice or 2 skirts. She had said she'd keep working on it. I waited to hear back about the progress or any questions. About 2 weeks passed, I assumed that since there were no more questions she was just working away at it and I emailed to check in. She said she thought I was sending the fabric to her even though I never said I would do that , I said let me know when you're done and ready for the real fabric. She also said that because she thought I was sending it she had stopped working on the project instead of continuing to develop full samples like a professional would do. I said I would drive up to check in and bring fabric ( one hour each way if there's no construction or traffic ) When I arrived we went over everything again, she again said it would be straight forward, not to worry and that she didn't make the skirts because she thought they would be easy. She said they would start working on it again in the next few days, They didn't. Then I start getting the barrage of emails with photos because now she has tons of questions because she wanted to take a short cut and not work out the patterns in muslin like a professional. Some of her questions she wanted to blame on the patterns being bad, they aren't I used them to make my wedding dress by myself just fine and they were professionally made by a woman who was a pattern maker for Nike who used the latest pattern making software. I answered all of her questions she said she understood but it started to become obvious that she wasn't following the directions I had discussed or written and that she wasn't following the sketches I left which included each swatch for each piece along with the list of additional notions that each piece required. The next time she emailed me it was obvious that not only had they not been working as much as they said that because she wasn't following my instructions she was in fact, cutting out pattern pieces in the wrong fabrics i.e. one gown was white, one was light pink, she was cutting out a large pattern piece clearly meant for the white dress out of the pink fabric and then telling me I didn't have enough pink fabric. I ordered more and had it sent there and the problems continued with her sending me pictures showing how sloppy her work was. I was seriously stressed at this point, and I knew that I had done a much better job and that I could do a much better job so I decided she was destroying my project and I needed to fire her and go get it. So I did. She had plopped everything on a table on the lower level of the building so she could just buzz me in without helping me or discussing anything. I grabbed everything and went home. Once I started looking through everything it became obvious how horribly unprofessional she was. I had brought all of my patterns either hung on hooks or neatly folded in their envelopes. I would say there were 50 pieces total. When I brought them home none of them were hung up and every single pattern piece, even the ones in the envelopes were completely wrinkled. I had to iron every single piece and the wrinkles will never come out completely so I will have to pay to re print them. She had partially remade the pink skirt with the wrong pattern, the bottom of the skirt was uneven, the seams were puckering and she didn't even bother to face it. The other skirt was partially cut out and each piece had jagged edges because she clearly did not know how to cut silk and didn't give a shit. The white bodice was partially assembled and smashed. The pink bodice was a nightmare. The inner corset was slopped together, the fusible interfacing wasn't fused, the boning which comes on a roll, wasn't ironed first so it was buckling and the front pieces were thrown together. NOT A SINGLE PIECE FOLLOWED THE 1/2" SEAM ALLOWANCE ! It went from 1/8- 3/4" like the person had never used a sewing machine before and they just shoved it through ! This is silk that I now cannot reuse. On top of all of that,she kept the leftover 2 types of dress boning, lining, used that wrong zippers and every single item smells like she sprayed it with perfume. I can't use any of what was returned and now have to buy more silk because of her and start over. It was clear that she didn't care at all about my expensive fabric or my business. She took a project she was absolutely not qualified for, tried to make excuses about it, destroyed it and never apologized. She has no business in this business and I wouldn't trust her to make a simple cotton pillow case let alone a garment. I literally could have done a better job drunk !
  • Date 1/18-4/18
  • Name of Member (Optional) Michelle Fite
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