Mid-May Amy and I flew out to Los Angeles for some very important meetings in regards to our Fall / Holiday line. We’ve had somewhat of a fast-growing evolution with our Amalli Talli private label, which we committed to carrying solely at the beginning of this year (you can read more on that here). For about a year, we’ve had success designing and creating our pieces in and around the Minneapolis area, which has allowed us to ensure quality control and quickly adapt to requests from our customers! But as we continue to grow and challenge ourselves, we had an immense need to form new production partnerships – and unfortunately apparel production isn’t prominent in the Midwest.
Since we’ve been in business for over 3 years now, we’ve heard so many requests for so many different pieces that are hard for tall girls to find. It’s impossible for us in this time to produce everything (Amy explains why here), but there were some pieces on our dream list for fall that we knew we had to find a way to bring to life! Fortunately, we’ve built some super great relationships over time in this industry that has allowed us to connect with some new faces and make our dreams come true.
When we are looking for new production partners, we are looking for someone that we can build a great relationship with. If anybody doesn’t believe in our company mission, or gives us a sleazy sales pitch or bad vibe – then they aren’t the type of people that we want to be in business with. We have nothing but big goals for our line, and we want to find partners that ensure we can grow our businesses together. Lucky for us, we didn’t get a bad vibe from a single soul that we met during our time there. Everyone was so super kind and also so enthusiastic about our business model! (Although for the record – almost everyone was so surprised / shocked by our Amalli Talli spec sheet, which specifies our standard arm / leg measurements, among other things – LOL!)
These new partnerships are going to allow us to create pieces that we’ve never been able to create before, in a cost-effective manner that doesn’t compromise quality. We are so thankful because we’ve never been able to have such diversity within our own line! This is because each facility specializes in working with a certain type of fabric – so someone that helps with knits is usually not able to help you produce woven pieces, someone that does denim cannot produce athleisure wear, and so on and so forth. These businesses are also crucial in helping you find the fabrics you are hoping for. Only one in a million facilities can bring something truly unique to the table and help you find amazing colors and prints! This is such a tremendous benefit, as it is hard to have access to these types of fabrics as ‘independent designers’.
Without giving away everything we are working on, one thing we can for sure tell you is that we are SUPER duper excited about a new line of sweaters that will be coming out. There were always so many chic, stylish sweaters we would find at market to only find that the sleeves were way too short or the fit was too small or all wrong. We are overwhelmingly thankful for the chance to design our own – with extra long sleeves (duh!) and in sizes that are truly catered to the proportions of our taller frames.
One of the other goals we set for ourselves this year was to launch our own Amalli Talli jean line. To be completely transparent, this goal has not been an easy one to meet. One of the biggest challenges we are facing is finding a new denim production partner. Denim production and manufacturing is much more technical than any other apparel production, and we want to make sure we are working with the best in the industry. As a niche that doesn’t have access to a vast range of trendy options, it’s important to us to create an affordable jean line, but we want to make sure they are still high quality and something that we can be really proud of. We might sound like a broken record here, but we also want and need to work with a partner that can ensure the best fits for our customers. Our intent is to create our line in a wide range of sizes (including plus), and that is not something that is easily done or quickly thrown together. We toured some facilities while we were there, but none of them met our expectations in terms of quality and/or price point. But don’t you worry – we haven’t given up on this goal yet and have several more meetings in the works! We are bound and determined to make this dream a reality.
Other notable highlights from our trip:
- Spotting Erika Jayne (Girardi) at the Starbucks we had just left in West Hollywood – serious fan girl moment!
- Carb loading at our favorite Italian restaurant, Dan Tana’s! We highly recommend this place and most definitely the chicken parmesan (which is basically a plate of baked cheeses with some chicken underneath). Best enjoyed after you eat an entire basket of bread. 😉
- Having an over-priced glass of Lisa Vanderpump rose at SUR and watching the whole crew from Vanderpump Rules. (Can you tell we watch too much Bravo?)
- Not crashing our car on any of the insanely packed L.A. interstates!
For those of you who have been following our journey from the beginning, thank you so much for your support and encouragement along the way. And for those of you who are new to our brand and our blog, thank you for taking the time to get to us know better. Stay tuned for more updates and sneak peeks from our fall line – we are so excited to show you what we’ve been working on and hope it exceeds all of your expectations!
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