Frequently Asked Questions
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We design and produce footwear, accessories, leather goods and garments in Italy, and we guide founders through the decisions that come before production. Our team works from Milan with our own internal artisans, trusted factories we see every week, and a network of partners covering every step of the process. Brands come to us at three moments: when they want a collection designed, when they want it produced properly, or when they need someone who has done it before to say what they are about to get wrong.
Fashion brands of every size, from a single founder building a first collection to established houses adding a category. We have worked with luxury names and with people who have never made a shoe before. What our clients share is not a budget level... it is that they want the thing made correctly the first time.
Three things.
Built to be Produced is the core. We take a product from a sketch to something real, viable and ready to produce, inside our own network of factories and artisans: strategy, design, technical development, sourcing and production, as one system. We do not sell product development. We sell structure applied to the decisions that decide everything else. You do not really buy a product from us, you buy certainty in a process you cannot see. Ninety days from sketch to sample.
Fractional Head of Product is for brands already producing in Italy, in their own factory. We do not replace it, we become your product team on the ground: managing the calendar, sitting in on fittings, controlling quality before anything ships, and telling you what is really happening rather than what is being reported to you. You buy it as a set number of hours.
One-on-One Mentorship is direct sessions with Diana for founders who need judgement rather than execution.
The line between the first two is simple: either you make it in our factories, or you make it in your own. We never hand you a factory name and walk away.
Milan, Italy. Our production partners sit in the Italian footwear districts, which is where we go for a factory, a last maker, a tannery or a component supplier. We work with clients worldwide, mostly remotely, with the factory work handled by us on the ground.
No. Most of our clients are not in Italy and most never visit a factory. That is the point of hiring us. We are the ones in the room, checking the sample, arguing about the last, catching the problem while it is still cheap to fix.
English, Spanish and Italian.
Nine to six CET, Monday to Friday. Wherever you are, we find a call time that works for both of us inside those hours.
How a project starts
Yes. Thirty minutes, no charge. It is not automatic, though. Before we book it we ask you to fill in a short project form, and we read every one. That form is not a formality... it is how we understand what you are building, and it is what makes thirty minutes useful instead of a round of introductions.
Because the call is worth more when we already know your product, your stage and your volumes. It takes a few minutes. It tells us whether this is something we can help with, who on our team should be on the call, and what we should have prepared. If it is not a fit, we will say so honestly and point you somewhere better.
It depends on how much of the product is made specifically for you. Three sizes, and most projects land close to one of them.
Capsule, up to €5,000. We start from what we already hold: our own foundations and components, and materials our suppliers keep in stock. Your pattern is made for you, so it is still your brand and your design, worked out inside our guidelines, not a white label someone else is also selling. You get one prototype, one sample and a small production batch you can actually sell. Four to six months start to finish, with a sample in your hands in about ninety days. It suits a founder starting carefully, and it also suits an established brand that wants a small capsule for a particular moment, without moving the whole business to do it.
Signature, €5,000 to €20,000. Now more of the product becomes yours. Components developed for your project rather than chosen off a shelf, a new pattern, a wider colour range, and a production batch roughly double a Capsule run. Everything Capsule gives you, with more of the product shaped around your idea. Around six months start to finish.
Atelier, from €20,000. The full build. Everything developed from scratch: the tools your product is built on, the components, and an open material selection rather than whatever happens to be in stock. Multiple patterns, full sampling, full production, and packaging designed however you want it. Around twelve months start to finish. Clients working this way typically spend around €60,000 across a first year.
Design starts from €7,500 and moves with the scope. A six-style capsule and a forty-style seasonal collection are not the same job, so the quote comes after the intro call, once we know the number of styles, the complexity and the calendar.
We take a limited number of clients per category each year, deliberately, because that is what protects the quality of the work. Once the agreement is signed and the first instalment is in, we start within ten days.
Design and development
Your design team, remotely, and a collection ready to prototype. That means trend and market research, the collection concept, the designs, 2D renders and technical sheets... the drawings a factory actually needs in order to quote and build.
The part that matters most is harder to see on a list. Most designers are not technical, so they draw things that cannot be opened, closed, lasted or assembled. We design products that can actually be made. You finish with documents a manufacturer can price from and a collection that is market-ready and manufacturable, not with mood boards.
- Starting from your market research and competitors, we run a trend research and build the baseline of your product DNA.
- We present the collection concept and get your sign-off before drawing anything.
- We design, and you review.
- We deliver technical sheets and renders a factory can quote from.
Throughout, it is an ongoing dialogue between you and us: images, textures, colours, sketches.
Three months for a standard collection.
Fully, at every stage. You bring the direction. We have the experience to execute it and bring to life the thing you can picture but can only describe in words.
Two. Beyond that, further rounds are quoted separately and agreed before we start, so nothing shows up on an invoice you did not expect.
You do, unless you want it the other way. The collection can carry your name alone, or it can be co-signed with ours if having a known designer behind the line is useful to you commercially. We agree it before the project starts, in writing.
Production, sourcing and the Fractional Head of Product
Yes, and it is what we are best known for. It is how we have made our way through this industry over fifteen years.
We have internal artisans, so a project can start immediately and without intermediaries. We have trusted factories we work with hand in hand and speak to every week. And we have a network of partners for every single step of the production process... relationships long enough that they let us bring in projects that would otherwise be turned away, including projects with no minimum quantities.
It scales to what you need.
At one end, Fractional Head of Product: quality control and on-the-ground representation for brands already manufacturing in Italy, in their own factory, who want boots on the ground.
At the other end, and this is what we do most, the whole thing. Prototyping and sampling, which covers shoe last making, materials sourcing, components made to measure for your last, pattern making, one round of prototypes and the samples themselves. Then final production, sourcing and production oversight, quality control, and dispatch to the destination.
If a prototype needs reworking because of something on our side, we keep going at no extra cost. If you ask for further prototypes in order to keep altering the design, those are quoted separately and agreed before we start.
We hold no minimum order quantities. Because of long relationships with our suppliers we can make a collection as small as ten pieces.
There are honest constraints. Working without minimums ties us to suppliers who accept no minimums, which is why sneakers are usually difficult... sole makers tend to impose high minimums of their own. If you work with the lasts and soles we already have, we stay at no minimums.
There is also a commercial trade-off worth being clear about. At ten or twenty pieces, the unit cost will not repay the cost of the service. What it does is remove the exposure and the extra cost of committing to a large run before you know whether the product sells. It is a way to trial a real product at small risk.
Sampling runs up to twelve weeks for small and medium projects. Complex or big projects can take up to six months, partly because the first collection is always the hardest... every component has to be developed from nothing.
Production then takes one to three months for small and medium projects, and four to six months for complex ones.
For what you are buying beyond the shoe: construction quality, material access, artisanal know-how that has not been industrialised away, and a Made in Italy mark that changes how buyers and customers value your product. It is not the cheapest option and we will never pretend it is.
There is a second reason people miss. Cheaper markets need bigger quantities. The cost per shoe drops and the cost of the project climbs, once you count the money you did not plan for. What we offer instead is an artisanal collection with no minimums... a launch with the risk contained, where you are part of the process, learning, guided by people who have done it many times.
We do not look for factories. We work with ours. We have years of collaboration behind those relationships and we know exactly how we work together. Going out to find a new factory means putting our name on a third party we do not really know, and we are not willing to do that to you.
We manage the project from beginning to end. Once the goods leave the factory, responsibility passes to you. For small quantities we ship with DHL. For larger ones we use different partners depending on the destination. If you have a carrier you prefer, we hand over cleanly the moment production is ready. Customs and duties depend on where you are importing to.
Not as a service today. We do advise on distribution strategy inside one-on-one mentorship, where we can look at your specific market and channels.
One-on-One Mentorship
Direct working sessions with Diana on your brand: what to make, what it should cost, who should make it, how to price it, how to sell it. It is for founders who are not ready to have a collection designed for them or to go into our factories yet, but who need someone who has launched dozens of collections to look at the plan and say what is wrong with it.
One hour is €265, to be used within a month. Three hours are €725 (€241 per hour), within three months. Five hours are €1,125 (€225 per hour), within six months. Ten hours are €2,125 (€212 per hour), within twelve months.
Choose your package on the one-on-one sessions page and complete the purchase. You will get a confirmation email with a calendar link to schedule your first session.
Over Zoom, in sixty-minute sessions. Every session is recorded and sent to you afterwards, so you can work from it instead of taking notes while you are trying to think.
Yes, unless we agree otherwise. For specific topics a specialist from our team may join or lead a session when they are the better person to answer, and we always tell you in advance.
Anything about building the brand: business plan, collection structure, materials and construction, costing and pricing, choosing and approaching manufacturers, communication and sales strategy. Design work and production management are separate services.
Up to twice a week, inside the validity window of your package.
Sustainability and impact
No. Excluding brands because they have not started yet is the opposite of useful. We bring circular thinking into every project as far as you are willing to go, and we would rather move a conventional brand two steps forward than only work with the already convinced.
No. It is how we work. Around 80% of a product's environmental responsibility is decided in the design phase, which means it is decided before anyone touches a machine. So that is where we act.
We reduce the number of different materials in a product and aim for single-material construction wherever it is possible, so the product can actually be recycled at the end. We design things to be repaired, and where we can, to be taken apart.
We have also built our own life cycle assessment tool, which means every product we make can be measured. We know its environmental impact, we can see where to improve it, and we can quantify the improvement rather than claim it.
We run a social integration programme in our own workshop, bringing people from disadvantaged backgrounds back into the workforce through artisanship. The effect reaches past the person into their family and their community.
We train and integrate people through a collaboration with Fondazione San Carlo in Milan. We also work with the social cooperative Opera in Fiore, a hemming lab inside the high-security men's prison at Milano-Opera, where Diana has personally taught more than ten detainees and works alongside them on our projects.
About Diana and the team
Diana Carolina Yanes is a footwear designer and production consultant based in Milan, and the founder of DYC and of WTF.
She began her career in luxury, at Oscar de la Renta in New York, then at Alexander Wang. She has worked across New York, Shanghai and Milan, and studied in Paris and Arusha. She went on to work with a number of premium brands and eventually built her own... which she lost after a major production mistake. Since 2018 she has been dedicated to helping new brands launch their first collections without walking into the same wall.
No. DYC is a team: designers, technical and production people, our own artisans, and a network of Italian factories and specialist partners we have worked with for years. Diana leads the work and is personally involved in every project... she is not, however, the one at the bench cutting leather. That is the point of a team like ours.
Close to a hundred since 2018. They have been shown internationally at Lineapelle, Milano Unica, Mode Shanghai, Guangzhou Fashion Fair, Altaroma, White Milan and Première Vision in Paris.
Remotely and asynchronously where that makes sense, with scheduled calls where it does not. Our hours are nine to six CET, Monday to Friday, and we find a slot inside them that works for you. Sessions are recorded, decisions are documented, and the factory work happens on Italian time with us representing you in the room.
