These Entrepreneurs Help Small Fashion Brands Make Their Goods In The U.S.A.

Ryan Martin recalls the first time he saw the factory. He had traveled to Los Angeles for a quality check on a line of jeans he and a partner were launching. The factory’s owner drove him to an alley in an unprepossessing neighborhood and then led him through an unmarked door and up three flights of stairs. “There was probably a 40,000-square-foot facility with hundreds and hundreds of operators going hog wild on the product,” Martin says. “It was crazy.” Martin is the founder and sole employee of W.H Ranch Dungarees, a couture jeans business he operates from his basement in Kansas City, Kansas. In 2017, he met Eric Edwards, a local workwear retailer with four stores, who wanted him to design an in-house line of jeans and knitwear called KC Jacks. Martin had little experience with the kind of mass production the workwear line would require. But he and Martin hired a local manufacturer to produce a first order of 1,200 items. Martin inspected them all and sent back 75 percent for what he calls “egregious flaws.” Read more at Inc.