Every year, our MakersValley engineers brainstorm ways to make the platform better, easier to use, and more transparent for both emerging fashion designers and established fashion brands producing numerous apparel or shoe collections each year. In that spirit, we've done a couple of updates this year that go a long way to drive access to Italian manufacturing for fashion designers anywhere in the world and make it easier to navigate the online sourcing and production project management experiences.
Introducing: MakersValley 2.0!
Start for Free before You Subscribe
In the old days, only customers who already had a MakersValley subscription could access the MakersValley Platform to start a project. Now, we’ve made a few changes, and opened up our exclusive Platform to give you a better idea of what you can do with MakersValley:- New fashion designers and brands can create a login and preview the MakersValley Platform before choosing a subscription plan.
- We won’t charge you for a subscription plan until after you submit your project AND we know we can match you with an Italian manufacturer or artisan to fulfill your product sample and production demands. That’s right, you create a project absolutely for free, and only pay when you know for sure that your piece will get made.*
- Get paired with your very own account manager, and get his or her help anytime while working through the project and the private label clothing manufacturing process.
Never Miss a Notification
We’ve improved notifications on the Platform dashboard so that things really stand out! Now, the notification bell pulses to alert you about unseen project notifications, and lets you know if you’ve missed a message from your Account Manager.
New Project Types for All Makers
MakersValley can help any designer build their own private label clothing brand, but our initial project offering – Bring to Life – had some of you feeling left out. That’s why we created another project type: Be Inspired.
While we used to require Makers to send us a pattern, sew-by-sample, or tech pack (you can still do this with our MakersValley Bring to Life project) to get matched to a manufacturer, we now offer MakersValley Be Inspired projects for Makers who don’t have a sample or a pattern. Here’s how MakersValley Be Inspired works:
- Freely browse the Be Inspired Catalog of thousands of white label apparel and apparel accessory samples from our Italian factory-artisan partners.
- Select and pay for as many samples as you want.
- Receive your samples in the mail, from Italy.
- Create a Be Inspired project on the MakersValley Platform.
- Customize and edit the samples to your liking, until you have the perfect real-life sample of your dreams! Don’t forget to add your brand label and fill out your Be Inspired project with all the details of your modified, white label garment sample.
- Mail the sample back to us.
- Submit your project on the Platform to get matched with the manufacturer who will create your final garment product sample and production order.
* Update as of January 2019: MakersValley Be Inspired has been discontinued, but you will still be able to use white label factory design samples as the basis for your design listing. For more updates on this change of service, please subscribe to our newsletter, ask your MakersValley account manager, or check out this blog on Made in Italy Factory Designs.
More Visuals for Clearer Direction
You can now add multiple pictures for trims, fabric, and other details you want to incorporate into your project, plus views of samples from the front, back, left, right, you name it! We want you to be able to give your manufacturer clear instructions so that your dream garment turns out exactly as you planned.
A Bid by Any Other Name
Since our Italian manufacturers and artisans send Makers bids to create their garment, we’ve renamed the Offers section of your Platform to “Bids”.
Interactive Support That Never Sleeps
The MakersValley Help Center is up and running! Of course, your dedicated account manager will still be there every day to help you, but just in case they aren’t available right at that moment, we now have a searchable Help Center that can walk you through every aspect of managing your factory floor with the MakersValley Platform.
We’re still adding more and more help articles, so if you have a question and don’t see the answer, send us a note through the Help Center and we’ll get back to you directly, plus add a new FAQ to the Center so that everyone can enjoy the knowledge and have a better experience.
If you’ve got a minute, check it out, and let us know what you think!
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