Revealed: The truth about organic fabrics and expensive machines (and components) in the sewing business

Do you want to start a sewing business, but you're still not happy with the results?

Instead of selling, are you constantly looking for new and better materials, new machines, and better tools?
Are you stocking up so much that your workshop is overflowing with fabrics?

If so, it's time to have a serious talk about what you're focusing on in your business.

I myself launched a successful brand, Šibabi, and sewed for children using the best materials, which I ordered from Germany (later from the USA), and I felt that everything depended on it!

During the first year of business, I had a turnover of around 1.6 million CZK. In subsequent years, I even increased that number! But looking back, it fills me with horror and a flush of heat!

Why?

In this article, let's discover the magic that will allow you to sell more effectively and focus on the right things.

These are not expensive materials, but understanding customer needs, adapting to their wishes, and high margins – without accumulating materials and overflowing stock!

Find out how it's possible that people will pay, for example, 299 or 359 CZK for products you make for a purchase value of 37 CZK – and that's without a single question about whether they are organic eco materials from France, or knitwear from Germany from a wholesaler.

 

Forget the myth of expensive materials

When I started sewing, I had my own crazy obsession with expensive fabrics, perfect and quality materials.
I loved discovering beautiful yardage, browsing fabric e-shops, and experimenting with prints.

I wanted something special – something other seamstresses didn't have.

I bought an expensive tablet, graphic software, and started experimenting with my own prints.
I had kilometers of fabrics test-printed that I never used and only paid for. They are still lying at home today. I wasn't satisfied with the quality of the fabric.

The same applied to accessories and haberdashery.

I was constantly discovering new possibilities – better labels, new logo designs, packaging...
Once, I spent almost three weeks fine-tuning the packaging for leggings with straps, so they could be stacked well in the warehouse and not be too wrinkled.

The packaging itself was a great idea, but the constant fine-tuning of details and distracting my attention from important things was not so good. Customers still took the packaging and immediately threw it away. It was great for us and our needs in the warehouse.

As these obsessions of mine grew, so did the stock of materials, fabrics, and components in which I was sinking a lot of money.

I couldn't stop.

Everything had to be perfect. Because I believed in it. I thought that Czech production was based on it – that people pay for perfect quality of material, seams, components, packaging.
That everything had to be tip-top.

But you know what?

People don't pay for that. People pay for you to deliver the cutest clothes they can imagine. They pay for their feelings, their needs, which you help them satisfy in this way. They don't pay for a full warehouse of expensive fabrics or components.

 

Here's the hard truth:

• Commonly available materials are more than enough.

• Organic-eco-Czech cotton for 500 CZK/m is not necessary for customer satisfaction – it will sell much worse than fabric for 199 CZK/m.

• The pursuit of perfect tools only delays the start of a business.

 

Believe me, over the years I've sewn hundreds of products – and not one customer ever asked me if it was 100% organic cotton from America.

They mainly wanted to get what they came for: stylish, nice clothes to dress their children in.

I often heard from customers that my clothes were so fancy that they were afraid to wear them "just like that." And I understand. Buying leggings for 499 CZK for a child who will only wear them three times is simply a luxury.

But before, I saw the meaning in exactly that.
I wanted to dress children in 100% organic materials with authorial prints that you wouldn't find anywhere else.

Unfortunately – that was just my perspective. 99.3% of customers didn't share it. They just wanted to dress their children in beautiful and cute clothes.

I ignored what customers wanted

I didn't understand their basic motivation. And that ultimately cost me my business.

It wasn't a growth model. Orders stagnated and completely stopped during the crisis.
I exhausted the small circle of people who appreciated my "view of quality."

The others just wanted cute children's clothing – and "cute" played a bigger role than I thought.

Let's look at a small example. We'll show how working with expensive and cheaper materials differs, where cheaper doesn't necessarily mean lower quality!

📊 Fewer numbers = more profit

When I sewed the first collection for Šibabi, I bought organic cotton knitwear from Germany – 550 CZK/m. But if I had followed trends and focused on what the customer wanted, I could have earned more with a smaller investment.

Here in the model, you can see that I spent 550 CZK per meter of fabric 145 cm wide and only made 4 pieces of clothing. At the same price, I would have had a markup of only 264%. Still enough, but... Let's look at another line.

Wholesale knits from Germany can be bought for 149 CZK per meter with a width often of 160 cm. And you can sew 5 or 6 pieces from a meter (if you have the same assortment as me :-).

And here you suddenly see how the markup jumps too!

What else did I change in my business?

I started to realize that I was investing in shelves full of expensive fabrics and dedicating my attention to details that, unfortunately, could not outweigh the negative side of things - such as longer waiting times.

It looked luxurious, yes, but most people couldn't afford the products at that price anyway, and waiting 4 weeks for clothes was too long for them.

 

• I replaced expensive boxes for 39 CZK with ordinary ones for 15 CZK or plastic bags.

• I replaced luxurious knitwear from the USA at 550 CZK/m with Slovak knitwear at 329 CZK/m.

• Instead of a new machine for 190,000 CZK, I bought a used one for 39,000 CZK from a second-hand shop.
  

 

Another good example of my obsession is my personal story with labels. I thought that people carefully read labels and cared about them being soft and not scratchy. I also differentiated individual labels and felt that if I combined information with brand identification, it would look barbaric.

In reality, I was paying 1.50 CZK for one label. That's 3 CZK for two. When sewing, seamstresses often lost them on the floor, sewed them badly, and they had to be ripped out and discarded. And so I lost a lot of money! Because more than 2000 pieces of clothing were sewn monthly - that's already 6000 CZK just for labels.

One day, I was really tired of it. Constantly monitoring stock, replenishing only what was missing. It was driving me crazy. In the evening, I sat down, made a prototype of one label that contained all the information. It cost 1.40 CZK, and I was so happy that I managed to solve it. I immediately loved that customers would be thrilled with both the design and the function, and that I had saved money.

Until customers wrote to me:

"Do you have to put these annoying little papers there? We cut them off immediately anyway!"

Do you understand?

So much time spent on solving a detail, and people still come and cut them off immediately. That's why we then switched to an even cheaper version on plastic paper, where the cost was about 0.4 CZK per label (like Decathlon, for example), and we sewed them into the clothes with an extra piece of fabric. Because in the seam, the rest would scratch.

In the end, I saved a lot of money. Because the labels still had to be used. But because I understood what people wanted, I stopped worrying about it and made it so they would be satisfied.

So how do you get out of this? How do you focus more on customer needs and find out what they actually want?

 

Do market research

Before you start producing and selling anything, first go to Google and find at least three or four major players in your market.

Browse their website and find out what they are selling. What products and what are their TOP sellers with that designation. Pay attention to the small details. Also look at the rest of their offerings.

Then write down all the insights you gained from this research.

• Are the extravagant items or the basic black ones mostly sold out?
• Are the best-selling items the most expensive pieces or those in the basic segment?
• What details does the competition have well-developed and what doesn't it?
• What is important to the competition? A list of the creation process or perfect photos that show customer feelings?

 

Differentiate yourself, but smartly! Don't reinvent the wheel

When I came up with leggings with straps, it was a fantastic hit.

I really wanted to design something similar to the Sily Sillas tights, which are damn expensive and also cute.

When I was thinking about new products, I simply took this design and sewed these bibs onto ordinary sweatpants. The result?

Amazing!

Such a large quantity was sold, and I personally sewed thousands of them. The design was the result of what people desired (a cute look) and practicality (the pants no longer fell down). I focused on this, and in my marketing communication, we highlighted exactly this detail.

Customers loved them, and leggings with straps became the top-selling item.

By the way, you can buy the pattern from me here and use it in your business with a commercial license.

Take this as an example. Look around you, and you don't have to be absolutely the best. Often, it's enough to take one thing, give it a slightly different twist, and voilà, you have a bestseller.

 

So what's important in this article?

Pay attention to what customers want.

• Don't sell organic and eco and Czech-nice, but sell benefits and how the customer will feel.
• Don't focus on unimportant details, concentrate on what matters.
• Calculate and save, don't spend on "just in case."
• Give people what they need and give it a new look!

 

Thanks for reading and see you next time

Helena Lachowiczová