Here’s what I found out:

• I got in touch with each entity of the value chain. Not only the factory, but I spoke to the insoles producer, the soles producer, the heels supplier and gathered all the materials factories that we were working with
• I recognized that:
  • The brand was working with different materials’ suppliers each season. In fact, the suppliers were from different countries around the world
  • The brand was using materials that were not in stock, so the whole process was excessively time consuming. From the time we did the samples, till the time we produced them, the colors and materials were often not available
  • The insoles supplier was unreliable and we had to replace them
  • The factory didn’t have a recurring hemmer, so each time the outcome was different; another area of improvement
  • There was absolute miscommunication and confusion between the brand and the factory
  • There were no tech packs whatsoever!
  • There were many more problems, but these are the main ones we identified                                                                            

Here’s how I sailed through the situation:

• I replaced the parts of the value chain that were not working – and the brand allowed me to change it
• I visited each supplier, spent a full-day working with them to spot where and why mistakes were being done and fixed them
• I set up a Gant Chart and a Work Breakdown Structure so all the progress could be tracked down and possible troubles be forecasted

Easy to compile all this now, but it took us one year of day-to-day hard work to work on this collection. Due credit to the incredible artisans that were happy to share their experiences and discuss possible ways of making things happen towards a better outcome!

The “happy ending” did come; because despite all the difficult working conditions, we all learnt immensely and gained more experience. Our shoes started to sell, and celebrities started to wear them too. This simply strengthened my belief that hard work never goes unnoticed!