Book a Demo
Sign Up

Our Blog

Welcome to our Blog. Share your thoughts on our latest and trending posts

Search
All

Popular Acronyms – A Breakdown of Key Words in the Fashion Industry

The fashion industry is complex at the best of times, but acronyms can help beginners breakdown the most important parts. If you own your own fashion clothing line or intend on starting one, it is important to know certain fashion acronyms, as they are used quite often for quick communication with your suppliers, manufacturers and designers. In this article, we have highlighted the most popular fashion acronyms that you will need to know as an entrepreneur in the fashion industry – ranging from sustainability to specific skillsets. The Top Fashion Design Acronyms: Fashion design acronyms are used frequently, and may also be used in your tech pack. It is important to know the basic design related acronyms, as it may be easier to communicate with amongst other fashion designers, suppliers and manufacturers. A/H– Armhole:used to describe the opening of the garment where the armhole fits throughAI – Artificial Intelligence: the development of computer systems to perform tasks (such as design, trend forecasting and so on)A/W– Autumn / Winter: used to describe season of collectionCAD – Computer Aided Design: a platform used to design and edit productsCB – Centre Back: this is to describe the centre of the back in a fashion designCF – Centre Front: this is used to describe the centre of the front in a fashion design (such as the torso)DTM –  Dyed To Match: used to inform product information for designHPS – High Point Shoulder: describes the horizontal line across the shoulder point of the garmentSPI –  Stitch Per Inch:  describes the length of stitches by how many stiches are in an inchS/S  – Spring/Summer: use to describe season of collectionPOM –  Point of Measure: used to describe the exact place to measure the garmentPS – Photoshop: Adobe platform that edits photosTM –  Total Measure: the total measurement from point A to point BWB – Waistband:used to describe the waistband section of a fashion design The Top Manufacturing Acronyms: It is handy to know some manufacturing terms as they may use a lot of them when communicating with you regarding there types or production process. We have listed a few common terms that are used: APQP–  Advanced Product Quality Planning: an automatic process for product realisationBOM – Bill Of Material: a list of the raw materials, sub-components parts, intermediate assemblies, sub-assemblies, and the quantities needed for each end product. A BOM is a form of communication for this between each manufacturing partnerCMT – Cut, Make, Trim: used to describe a type of manufacturing serviceMSRP –  Manufacturing Suggested Retail Price: a pricing suggested from the manufacturer in regards to the retail priceMTM –  Made to Measure: this usually refers to custom clothing that is cut and sewn using a standard-sized base patternMTO –  Made To Order: a manufacturing process where the manufacturing starts once the customer has made an official orderOBL –  Ocean Bill of Landing: a document that goes into detail regarding transportation/ shipment informationPO – Purchase Order: this is a documentation issued by a buyer to their seller; it will include quantities, indicating types and final prices of the product. This documentation is used to control the purchasing of products from suppliersRMG – Ready Made Garments: this is used to describe the mass-produced finished products of the clothing industrySMV – Standard Minute Value: this is used to define as the time which is allowed to perform a certain job. It is usually expressed in minute value and often used broadly within the world of garment manufacturing Top Fabric-related Acronyms: If you are a fashion designer or a founder of a clothing line, you will need to know your fabrics. Having said that, you will also need to know the acronyms to decide such fabrics. We have put together some of the most commonly used fabric acronyms for you: AC : AcetateAF: Other FibresCMD: ModalCO: CottonCV: Viscose (Rayon)EA/EL: ElastaneHL: Cotton / Linen MixHS: Horse HairLI: LinenMA: ModacrylicME: Metallic FibreNY: NylonPA: PolyamidPE: PolyethylenePL: PolyesterPM: Metallised PolyesterPU: Polyurethane FibreRA: RamieSE: SilkVY: VinylWA: AngoraWB: BeaverWK: Camel HairWO: Recycled WoolWP: AlpacaWS: CashmereWY: Yack These are just a common set of fabric acronyms to name a few. It’s handy to keep a note of them for when you are creating your Tech Pack or sending out a general enquiry to your garment manufacturer regarding your fashion products. Top Logistical-related Acronyms: Whilst it may seem like a pretty heavy task of learning acronyms within different sectors, it’s good to get your head around logistic acronyms also, this may be handy when speaking with fashion buyers. BOL – Bill Of Lading: A document issued by a carrier to acknowledge the receipt of goodsCIF – Cost, Insurance, Freight: an expense paid by a seller to cover the cost, insurance and freight against the possibility of any errors (such as loss or damage to the product) that happen during the transportation of the products.DDP – Delivery Duty Paid: a delivery agreement where the seller have responsibility for the goods until the buyer transfers the goods to the destination portFAK – Freight All Kinds: A pricing category that groups different types of freight into a single classFOB – Free On Board: when the buyer takes the delivery of the products being shipped to it by a supplier, once the products leave the suppliers shipping dockPOS – Point Of Sale: where a product is passed from the seller to the customerTQM – Total Quality Management:  management approach to long-term success, assessed through customer satisfaction We hope that this article has covered the most important acronyms for you, that will come of use when communicating with all assisting stakeholders for your fashion business. Refer to this as your own ‘fashion communications manual’ and you will soon get the hang of all they key acronyms.

Read More »
Main-image-seamlesssource.com
All

The story of Seamless Source

Where did our story begin? Established in 2019, Chanodil set out to simplify the fashion supply chain whilst making sustainable sourcing more accessible for SMEs. These brands faced issues finding reliable, responsible, and sustainable suppliers without having the right connections within the fashion industry.  Fashion brands found the old processes expensive and complex, while order management and communications proved to be complicated and unaffordable for most brands. The final problem we found was a lack of transparency in the fashion supply chain, where most of the middle parties were a barrier between brands and suppliers. As a collective, we wanted to abolish the above factors and create a platform that simplified a brand’s journey from concept to production. That’s why we created Seamless Source (formerly known as Chanodil), a management tool to help fashion brands build a more responsible supply chain. We help brands save time and money with our seamless sourcing platform; our inbuilt order management tool can help reduce costs by up to 20%. As well as saving you time and money, Seamless Source also provides transparency. With our digital supply chain, fashion brands achieve 50% extra visibility of the production journey as well as a tracking system that enables trust and security for our partners. So, why the rebrand? Quite simply, we wanted what we do as a company to be visible through our appearance. We changed our brand colours from blue to purple so that they aligned with our mission and values as a brand. We have always aimed to help fashion brands around the world manage their supply chain, through our technology and support. However, we felt that our previous name ‘Chanodil’ didn’t comply with our mission and values. That’s why we’ve chosen to go with the name ‘Seamless Source’ so that our partners know exactly what we’re here to do. Our mission is to transform supply-chain responsibility that enables global brands to achieve responsible and innovative solutions. Seamless Source is an automated, award-winning sourcing platform that allows global brands to build faster, leaner, and more responsible supply chains within the fashion industry.  Although our appearance has changed, the mission we began with remains:   ⦁ We remain a trusted platform with a robust list of vetted manufacturers you can rely on. ⦁ We strive to help you save time and money by providing you with a powerful dashboard to view your orders from start to finish. ⦁ We remain focused on sustainability and ensure that all our partners are vetted to meet high labour and environmental standards. With our new look, we wanted to align our online appearance with our mission and values, which are trust, time, cost and sustainability. As a seamless sourcing platform, we can help your fashion brand build a digitalised, faster and more responsible supply chain, all in one platform. Whether you are a fashion startup or an established business, you can trust Seamless Source to help you every step of the way, to bring your creations to life.

Read More »
Success stories

Spectra Sensory Clothing

Spectra’s first order was delivered in four weeks to meet the tight deadline of getting their products in time for the start of the school term.

Read More »
Success stories

NexLife

Nexlife successfully developed complex bio-mechanic tracking electronic garments with our expert supply partners.

Read More »
Success stories

MoldMe

MoldMe reached out to Seamless Source to create shapewear products. We delivered products that fit and perfectly matched to MoldMe specifications.

Read More »
Interviews

Elizabeth Stiles – An Interview with a Fashion Brand Consultant

The next in our series of interviews comes from fashion brand consultant Elizabeth Stiles. Elizabeth runs her own consultancy, helping small to large fashion businesses with the running and optimisation of their company.  Find out more about Elizabeth and her brand below… Can you tell us a little bit about yourself! Hi, I’m Elizabeth Stiles (with an I), and I am a fashion brand consultant. I work with independent brands on their mindset, manufacturing and marketing. My background is in fashion buying and I’ve worked for suppliers as well. So I’ve sold to buyers and bought from suppliers and worked for lots of different high street brands such as Next, Warehouse, and Urban Outfitters, etc. So I have had some really interesting experiences, such as cost negotiations, delivery handling, range building, designing, trend forecasting, shopping around the world… all very glamorous.  In 2018, I could just see this huge uprising for small businesses and entrepreneurship. When I was in the office, big brands were all sending us inspiration from these small businesses, and I thought if you’re looking to them instead of the catwalks, that’s where it’s at! So I want to be where it’s at. I left my job in 2018 and never looked back. Did you study at University? I studied fashion retail buying. When I went to do the course, nobody had actually graduated from it, I was only the second intake – it was a brand new course. I remember when I was at university reading in the Metro newspaper that people are taking more and more ‘Mickey Mouse degrees’ such as fashion, retail and buying. Which was a bit of a kick in the teeth, but I’m doing it all right now. The massive thing when that influx came of all these new courses being introduced, even aside from fashion courses, was that there were some people looking down on them to begin with. I think that’s something that I try and talk about a lot on my Instagram – people will say, oh, you can’t study fashion? And it’s like, yes you can, and I’m here to help you.  The fashion industry is the third-largest industry that brings in money to the UK, and so it’s something to be taken seriously. What is your most important piece of advice for someone wanting to start? Do you solely focus on fashion brands? I think as I’ve grown, it’s become sort of a fashion and lifestyle business. I might work with people who sell products such as wall hangings, scrunchies, and necklace charms. However, the majority of it is fashion.  My best piece of advice would be to assume that it’s going to work right from the beginning and take it seriously yourself. Some feedback that I have from people is that it feels a bit embarrassing to say I’ve got a business, but then people aren’t taking it seriously, and I want them to.  ‘What if nobody buys it? What if nobody is going to be interested? What will people think?’ It’s just an endless stream of negative chatter inside your mind, and it’s not great when we’re trying to step outside of our comfort zone and start a business.  When you realize that you can take control of that voice inside your head and assume the best is gonna happen, I think the energy that you put into it will be vastly different. For example, if you’re emailing a buyer to get your products stocked in-store, and your mindset is that they’re never going to read this, what kind of effort are you going to be putting into that email? But if you’re excited about the prospect and want the buyer to love the products, then the level of energy is going to be so different, you’re going to want to make it look pretty, you’re going to want to show all of the benefits of stocking it. And so when they’re reading it, one version will stand out over the other. What’s the importance of ensuring your brand has a clear story and spreading it out across all your marketing channels? If there are 73 new e-commerce brands that start every single day (as it’s easier than ever)  what is going to make you stand out is you and your story.  Some common reasons why people want to start a brand are because they couldn’t find what they were looking for on the market and they want people to feel good about themselves and their clothes. Unless you’re a robot, that is why everybody starts a business, because you want to help people find what they’re looking for.  Everyone has different reasons – but you need to make your reason stand out. When you talk about your inspirations, it gives you a topic of discussion other than just flogging the product itself. If you can start telling that story and connect with customers on a human level, they’ll connect with you and then buy from you. The aim really is to get more people to know you, like you, and trust you. It’s just all about relationship building.  How do you maintain a work/life balance?  I think it’s super important to maintain a good balance because when you work for yourself, your energy is your greatest resource. If you burn yourself out, you’re done. You’ve got no income, because you’re not working. You really do have to put a bit of a bubble around you to only take on so much of other people’s stuff.  I’m quite regimented when I work from home, I had a timetable in my calendar and had to stick to it. And when you do that, you actually realize you don’t need to be working 24 hours of the day. You can organise your time – for example ‘I need to check my emails three times a day, let’s put that in the calendar, I need to eat my lunch every day, let’s put that in the

Read More »
Success stories

Madam Apparel

Madam apparel came to Seamless Source with just an idea. We brought multiple collections for the market.

Read More »
About us

Increasing Holiday Sales – Successful Marketing (Part 3)

Marketing effectively has the opportunity to increase sales even more this holiday season but can be tricky to do, especially when busy, so learning how different types of marketing can be effective for Christmas sales is increasingly important.  With so many purchases being carried out online – SEO and PPC marketing are extremely useful for raising awareness for your brand, and Email marketing can be a great way to retain customers and send out notifications or communications. SEO SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) marketing is an organic tool to bring in customers who will potentially love to your products/brand. SEO is completely free to do (other than your time) and will help increase traffic to your website. The only drawback for SEO is that it is not quick so it helps to have the future in mind when developing SEO tactics.  If you want to start increasing your SEO presence, the first thing you need to do is to make sure your website is structured properly. This included ensuring keywords are inline with your goals and your market, categories are relevant, and all links and backlinks are working.  To begin – you can use various keyword trackers (SEMrush, Google Ads Keyword Planner) to find out high-volume searches that relate to your brand, these can be incorporated into your website and if it is strong enough, the algorithm will pick it up and bring the ranking of your site up.  SEO planning should realistically be a few months ahead of the season you are aiming to target – so preparation is key. In this time, be sure to update update update, curate your content and start some blog posts! PPC PPC (Pay Per Click) marketing is a paid tool that will help you get your products out there quickly. Missed the holiday season preparations but still want to increase your profits? With PPC you are able to do this quickly and efficiently, and sometimes at a relatively low cost depending on what you decide to target.  Approximately 35% of all searches start on Google, so getting to the first few pages is key. With paid ads, you can bypass all of the SEO links and even sometimes appear directly below the search bar, which would increase traffic exponentially.  If you have a smaller business and run on a tight budget, make sure do to tailored research to decide where best to spend your precious coins, as PPC will add up due to the number of clicks. One way to combat the big costs of the Christmas season is to get in early. People like to make sure they’re prepared, so there’s plenty of opportunity for targeted ads. PPC is a visual sales pitch, so getting product pictures right is the first step to any campaign. You should also ensure the description is tailored, your keywords are on-brand, and the price is clearly visible. Try looking at the closest competitors product – what do they include in theirs? If you are able to master this, you will be able to rank above them and channel their sales to your website. PPC is an extremely useful option, so keep it in mind if you have the budget for it and it will likely make your investment worth the risk.  Email marketing As mentioned above, email marketing is essential for building customer relationships and ensuring that established customers and potential customers are all kept up to date with your business over the holiday season.  You can receive initial email data through sign up forms on your website, or through the option to become a member to create ease for repeat payments. A simple way to get new customers information is to run a 10% off everything with your first purchase campaign, as customers will have to enter their email to receive the reward.  Email marketing is a fabulous way to reach out to people with personal messages, newsletters, sales, new lines dropping, special deals and more.  Email marketing is also trackable – and you can look into how your customers are engaging with you in order to categorise them. Having categories such as long-term buyers, repeat buyers, one time buyers and potential buyers will help you to develop different marketing strategies to best reach them.  Understanding all of these processes can be intimidating when first looking into the holiday season – but are needed to increase sales. You don’t need to do everything – just try incorporating a few of these tips and tricks into your plans.  If you would like to read more blogs around business development or the wider fashion industry, Chanodil has you covered. You can check out our blog posts here. 

Read More »
About us

Increasing Holiday Sales – Creating a Unique Experience (Part 2)

With the holidays being such a competitive time of year, it is important to gain an understanding of what customers want out of their shopping experiences in order to grow and make more sales. In this part of our holiday sales series we will be going through how you can add a unique twist to your brand so that you can stand out from the crowd! How do you get ahead of the shopping curve? In 2021 – the initial hunt usually means going straight online and searching something related to ‘gifts for…’ and browsing the endless supply of items. So how are you supposed to be their first choice (especially if your focus is on bricks and mortar)?  Well, before a customer will make a final purchase, they will usually shop around. To start increasing your sales, you need to increase interest. Your brand will need something to stand out with to get them to click on your website or enter your store in the initial decision-making process.  But how do you do this successfully? The key to this is to create an experience that will engage people in the shortest-time possible!  Increase physical and mental engagement quickly The holidays are usually a bit of a ‘rush’ so combatting this in the best way is important to keep sales increased. Make sure that your website and shops are updated and ready to go, with all the information, demos and reviews you might need. Don’t allow for disjointedness – have everything located in one place and make it visually pleasing, allowing the customer to find exactly what they want without wading through everything they don’t want like on competitors sites. Ensure that your offering the best possible options – make sure to price check competitors, look at their packaging and make yours better. Constantly review which areas you can be improving on and make the changes – your customers will reward your dedication with purchases. Add fun experiental aspects You could also look into creating a unique experience through event or activities people can get involved in. Experiential shopping has become the new thing for getting customers in-store post Covid-19, and it can be transferred online as well, so if you have the means then try it out! The festive spirit is so important for customers around Christmas, with people prioritising spending time with loved-ones and focusing on self-care. There are a multitude of ways to use this to create unforgettable experiences. Examples to try out include holiday pop-ups, livestream shopping, augmented reality, make-overs, personal styling sessions, and picture trails. You could also try offering prizes for engaging with your brand – such as posting a photo of your product with a hashtag on social media for the chance to win a free product hamper.   The most important thing to remember is to think outside of the box, and to make sure you’re thinking of your customer first! Check out the other posts in this series over on our blog.

Read More »