RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT
Over two years of doing this, I’ve never had a single industry connection handed to me. Yet somehow, I’ve managed to find and work with manufacturers for some seriously notable brands worldwide.
I drew inspiration from a few brands I admired. Back then, I kept seeing the same hats every “brand” was using, and I wanted in. So, I started by studying my favorite hat brands—cool ones I’d noticed around—digging into what made them stand out. I spotted one specific detail, but that’s my little secret. With that insight, I set out to create my first batch of goods. My initial order was about 40 hats. I had no clue who to contact for embellishment, but they arrived at my parents’ place in the Bay Area—shoutout to San Mateo. I was home for a week or two in April 2022, though I can’t recall why. Anyway, this big box showed up. I had my design ready but no one to embroider them. A quick Google search led me to a small embroiderer and screenprinter a mile or two away—super convenient. I reached out—maybe emailed first, maybe called, I’m not sure—and connected with Colleen from Pacifica, CA. She’d recently taken over BOV Embroidery in Burlingame from another family or something. Small-town vibes. I met her, dropped off the hats, picked some thread colors, had her refine the art file, and I was on my way to my first real batch. A week later, she delivered what I thought were the slickest hats at the time. The embroidery was flawless—still the cleanest I’ve seen from any local embroiderer, even compared to LA. Sadly, that relationship faded. She started taking too long and raising prices as I brought more business—pretty frustrating.
That was my entry into clothing. I barely understood screen-printing or embroidery at first. Those initial hats sold out in a week—the brand name and design hit hard right away. So, I ordered about a hundred for the next round. It took longer, but those sold out too. Orders grew steadily, though I eventually hit a plateau. My vision shifted—from a surf-and-hat brand to something far bigger. The hats lost their spark over time. Four or five months in, I got fired from my full-time job, and WDSC became my sole income for the next year and a half to two years. With that reality, scaling into the fashion brand I envisioned was a challenge. I wanted to dive into cut-and-sew—embroidery and screen-printing weren’t cutting it anymore. But it was tough since I depended heavily on sales to drive that dream.
Fast forward, I spent the next year diving deep into the world of manufacturers—not to start production right away, but to build a network of potential contacts. I connected with hundreds of people in all sorts of ways: meeting folks in DTLA’s Arts District, chatting at pop-ups on Abbott Kinney in Venice, emailing countless manufacturers, even scouring Google Maps for production sites. I was always after the best quality at the lowest cost—who isn’t? One thing I learned: opportunities often found me. For example, I got linked to Supreme’s hat manufacturer in LA through a woman who overheard me talking to a guy at a fabric shop’s front desk in DTLA. She hesitated—the industry’s so guarded—but then said, “Screw it, you seem like a good guy,” and I think she might’ve found me charming. Michelle, thank you. That kind of thing happened a lot. At one pop-up, a girl stopped by my booth, genuinely excited about my stuff. She loved the hats and saw potential in the brand, despite its rough edges. We clicked, and she turned out to be Taylor, who later built Bella Venice, a women’s clothing brand with maybe 10k Instagram followers at the time. She’s since teamed up with some impressive names on cool campaigns. Taylor, if you’re reading this, I truly appreciate your early support. We’d run into each other now and then, and once I mentioned struggling to find an affordable cut-and-sew seamstress. She said, “I’ve got a connection,” and I asked if she’d share it. She told me to text her, so I got her number. A week or so later, I followed up, and she gave me the contact for a woman in South Central who sewed clothes in a tiny room behind a car wash.
From there, as cliché as it sounds, I started to “trust the universe” to bring me the right opportunities—which it did, every time. And every time, I doubted it. I genuinely believe the universe has a plan for everyone; life’s one big learning lesson. Anyway, another six months to a year down the line, without going into much detail, I connected with a very high-end sunglasses manufacturer in China, a notable footwear producer in Portugal, fabric suppliers in Japan, and some top-tier Chinese clothing manufacturers. Not because I forced it, though—these links happened by chance, almost every time. I put myself in a mindset to attract these things, subconsciously searching, and when they appeared, I seized them.
The moral of the story? Leverage your connections. Be approachable. Don’t shy away from asking for help. Be open, learn, adapt, and keep pushing forward. You don’t need industry connects. Make them yourself. Figure it out. It’s possible.
