We knew coming in that our minimum order might be a problem. We weren’t looking to order a thousand bags we were looking for maaaaaybe a couple hundred. And that was even pushing it. We aren’t swimming in cash, I don’t happen to have a couple hundred grand that I left lying around looking for a fun time.
We were hoping to make the bag within the US, but after chatting with a few manufactures here and sharing with them our minimum, they all came back saying “I would definitely go overseas with this project, we can help you with that”. We passed on their offers and extended our search across the seas, with hopes to bring it back home if we have enough interest.
After blasting emails out (gmail probably started to think we were spammers), we actually got a good response. We were pleasantly surprised that most accepted our diagram and our low order quantity and gladly gave us quotes. We narrowed our search to 3 different manufacturers in 3 different countries. It was the final rose ceremony in the Atlas Bag Bachelorette and we paid each one to make us a sample bag.
There was a couple weeks of emailing back and forth, answering questions, brainstorming how certain things would work. Between our lack of experience and all of that being done in broken English, I was starting to er on the side of the thought that this would be more of a frankenstein situation. Trying to cleverly fix our problems, we might just end up with this ugly misshapen pile of fabric that has good intentions but isn’t fit for society. I’m usually pretty pessimistic though, unlike my husband. So when photos came in of the first sample I was in more shock than he was.
It was pretty good! It was beautiful leather and was everything and more than what we had in the diagrams! There was a couple things we could see right away that needed changing but we couldn’t wait to get our hands on it.
After seeing samples from all three manufacturers, we only ended up shipping two of them to our home. After seeing the thought and the care that went into our favorite sample, it was a no brainer. We told them we loved it and it’s been a happy working marriage since.
Now came the fun part..
Testing, edits, changes, more testing, tweaks and more.