Before the brief: the case an item has to make
A good breakdown of the road from brief to production run went round recently. The clock starts earlier than that. Before the brief there is a budgetary proposal and a line strategy, and the item has to earn its place in both.
I recently read a clear-eyed breakdown of how long it really takes to get from an idea to boxes on a truck, and I concur with all of it. It was posted by Justin Chambers, an industrial designer and soft goods specialist at OCNMTN Design, and it is worth reading in full.
"The tech pack, not the sketch, not the sample, is the single most important document in the process."
Justin Chambers, on LinkedIn
He is right about the brief, right about the tech pack, and right about the sampling rounds. A brief that says "a bag for outdoor people" is not a brief. A ten litre daypack for trail runners, with a bladder, a jacket, and a home for a phone and keys, is a brief. Two to four rounds of sampling at three to six weeks each is the honest number, and twelve to eighteen months from scratch is the honest timeline.
I would go a bit further upstream. Before the brief there is the initial budgetary proposal, and the strategy that legitimises and justifies how this particular item or collection fits the overall line and the brand.
The stage before the brief
That stage has no glamour and rarely has a document. It is the part where somebody has to answer, in writing, why this item should exist at all.
- Where does it sit in the line? Above what, below what, and next to what. If it cannot be placed, it is not a product yet.
- What does it replace? New styles usually take a slot rather than add one. If nothing is coming out, the line is growing, and someone is paying for that.
- What does it have to earn? A target retail, a target margin, and a volume that makes the tooling and the material minimums make sense.
- What will it cost to make? Not a quote. A range, built from the construction you have in mind, before anyone has drawn it properly.
- Does the brand have permission to make it? Some products are right for a company and wrong for its brand. That is a strategy question, not a design one.
None of that is a design task, and none of it can be delegated to the factory. It is the work that turns an idea into a proposal a business can say yes or no to.
Why the upstream stage saves the downstream one
Here is the practical link, and it is the reason I raise it at all. A brief can only be as specific as the strategy behind it.
When the proposal has done its job, the brief writes itself. Ten litres, because that is the gap in the line. This price, because that is the shelf it has to sit on. These materials, because the margin will carry them and the mill can deliver them in the window. The specificity Justin is asking for in the brief is not a writing skill. It is what is left over when the commercial questions have already been answered.
When the proposal has not been done, the brief stays vague, and the vagueness travels. It becomes questions from the factory, and rounds of sampling that are really rounds of deciding what the product is. That is where the two to four rounds becomes five or six, and where the timeline goes.
The number nobody budgets
The upstream stage has a clock of its own. On a serious programme, expect a real chunk of time to place the item in the line, agree the target cost and margin, and get a decision. It is far cheaper than the alternative, which is finding out during sampling.
Add it to Justin's twelve to eighteen months rather than hoping it fits inside them. A programme that starts with a decision behind it moves faster through every stage that follows, because nobody is relitigating the product while the factory waits.
The same case, seen from the factory
The upstream logic runs in both directions. I get two or three inquiries a week from factories, fabric mills, and component makers hoping to enter the Western market, or to get the attention of the US, UK, and European brands already in it. Almost all of them lead with a capability list. Very few make a case for where they fit in a brand's line.
A brand's merchandiser reads a factory pitch the way a business reads a product proposal. What slot does this fill, what does it replace, what does it cost me to switch, and why now. A mill that can answer those questions in the brand's own terms gets a meeting. One that sends a catalogue and a price list joins the pile.
That is advisory work I do as well, strategic or specific to a category or an item, for manufacturers who want Western brands to take them seriously. It is the same discipline as the proposal stage, applied from the other side of the table.
What it looks like when it is skipped
A product that is well designed, properly sampled, and manufactured to spec will sell, as he says. One that is not will sit in a warehouse. I would add the version I have seen more often than either: a product that was well designed, properly sampled, manufactured exactly to spec, and never had a reason to exist. It sits in the warehouse too. The tech pack was perfect. The case for the item was never made.
Thirty-five years of this, in China since 1989 and across Vietnam, Taiwan, Korea, Thailand, and Mexico. Most of the programmes I am asked to rescue did not fail at the factory. They failed before the brief.