Custom pattern design pause
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Email AppWe are pausing our offer for custom pattern design. Previously we provided a free service to create a custom-fit sewing pattern to anyone who submitted their ideas, designs, or descriptions to us.
We appreciate everyone who requested that we create custom-fit sewing patterns based off their submissions. We had some great successes. There were several take-aways from the last 6 months of our experiment.
We can’t accommodate everyone’s designs
Some of you submitted really crazy off-the-wall stuff that would take us tons of hours to design and we’d probably only sell one of them. Sorry – but that was not something that we could do and stay in business.
We lose money initially on every design that we make. It costs several hundred dollars to create a pattern, and we need to sell many patterns to justify the expense. Therefore we can’t make patterns that are so specific to a customer that no one else would ever want it.
It’s really hard to hire good people
We had hoped that as demand increased, and it did increase as the word spread, that we would be able to ramp up production by hiring more people to help with pattern design and testing. Unfortunately, we went through almost half a dozen new hires and none of them worked out. This is the primary reason why we have to slow things down.
FYI – if you would like to be a pattern tester or help us with pattern creation (taking pictures and videos of the construction process) – then please get in contact with us at sales@MJTrends.com.
The marketplace is hard to gauge
Another reason for us to offer custom design services for free to the community is because we thought your submissions might be a better predictor of demand that MJTrends could do internally. However, in terms of popularity, we are about as good as you at picking patterns that other people want.
Some patterns don’t sell at all, and others sell like hotcakes. We haven’t figured out how to predict which ones will be popular. For now, we are going to return to producing the ones that have been asked for the most after we get caught up with current requests.
We plan to make everything easier
Ultimately, our goal is to make it easier for you to get custom-fit patterns in as short a time as possible. That might mean an easier design option for customers to use on our website as a self-service option, or an improved way for us to turn around designs faster with the staff that we currently have.
Most likely the solution will be a combination of both. Whatever solution we use at MJTrends internally will most likely also be available to customers to use in a self-service way for those of you who want ultimate control over your designs.
Over the next 12-24 months, we hope to dedicate the time and resources to introduce our 3rd version of our pattern design tools. The goal is a 100% visual design application that requires no math or setting of measurements, as everything will be automated, allowing the user the freedom to design quickly and intuitively. (If you were unaware our 2nd version exists currently at www.Modamake.com.)
Regardless, we hope that you’ll understand and continue to be patient with us as we try to improve our custom-fit sewing pattern service. We’d still love to hear from you on new designs that you would like.
Please drop us a line at sales@MJTrends.com and let us know your thoughts. And yes, to those of you who are waiting – we know we owe you a female catsuit pattern, and it is next on the list…
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