California Apparel News

Brandon Levey said his “head nearly exploded” when he saw a designer at a trade show receive a check from a buyer and then place it in a paper folder, highlighting the limited extent of the designer’s organizational system.

An engineer by trade, Levey, who was at the show to market his T-shirt line, was surprised to learn that many independent designers didn’t have one software system that could keep their business organized.“People were literally using pen and paper,” said Levey, who has since shuttered his T-shirt line. “Or if anyone was using anything, they were using QuickBooks or an Excel spreadsheet. But QuickBooks isn’t suited for multi-use or multi-users. It’s great for accounting, but you don’t run your business on it. You can’t have a sales rep across the world log on to your accounting system and see all of your accounting.”

So Levey set out to build an affordable, easy-to-use system that could streamline the complicated processes of manufacturing, buying, ordering and shipping that are involved with running a small business.

The result was Stitch Labs, a software system for designers, apparel companies and small businesses to track their orders, manage production and do accounting.

Levey built the database with a focus on design and user-friendliness so that people without a business or technology background could easily understand it. “I knew nobody would be able to use the product no matter how good it was if it was poorly designed. They need to know how to interface with it,” he said.

The online database houses business contacts, manages multiple sales channels, controls invoicing, and keeps track of manufacturing and production orders whether outsourcing locally or doing an international production run.

Businesses can have multiple users on the account, including sales representatives and partners, and they can make mass changes to prices or stock; generate visual reports, charts and graphs; and even create line sheets.

The service is offered as a monthly subscription service that starts with a free trial month. If customers are interested after the initial trial period, they can subscribe for $12 per month for each user or $24 per month for three users.

The company, located in the heart of San Francisco’s South of Market district, soft launched the database in January after talking with more than 1,000 businesses, said Levey’s partner and director of business development, Jake Gasaway. “The response from most people is that they’re so excited to make their products, and they dread the idea of having to manage the business end of it, so if they had a tool that would make it easier for them to do it, they would absolutely use it,” he said.

Gasaway said the product had its hard launch in May. There are about 95 users on the system right now—25 who are paying customers and about 70 who have free trial memberships. He said roughly 30 percent of users who tried the system bought a subscription and that no one has canceled a subscription.

User friendly

Oakland, Calif.–based Nohi Kids and New York–based Boa Style are two businesses that currently use the service. Boa Style owner Cristina De Perfetti likes the system because she can use it to manage her business from both New York and Morocco, Gasaway said.

Designer Heather Guevarra of Guevarra Arcega found Stitch Labs at the Thread trade show in San Francisco and has been using the product for about six months.

“I was using Excel worksheets or writing things down on paper, and my system just wasn’t working,” she said. “They came over, they showed me a demo of it, I showed them some of the worksheets that I create myself and how I like things to be organized, and they were really helpful in almost customizing it for me.”

Guevarra said the database’s reminder alerts and easy-to-use, self-explanatory features are part of what she likes about the service.

“The way that they’ve set up the inventory or product list, as soon as you create an order it gives you how much stock you have left,” she said. “It also gives you alerts to tell you that you’re running out of the stock, and it gives you a heads-up when you have to order new stock. It also lets me know which products are selling the most, and it gives me this nifty little chart that tells me what my top sellers are.”

So far, Guevarra said, she has only had to pay for one month because each time a customer refers a friend who subscribes, she receives a free month of service.

Stitch Labs was started with seed money from Levey and later included funding from friends and family, but Levey is aiming to grow the customer base until the company becomes sustainable—something he’s already done with Widget Factory, his mobile-accessories company.

One new development is a partnership with Etsy, the popular online market for buying and selling handmade or vintage arts, crafts and apparel. Stitch Labs is currently working on the development of an integrated platform between its database and Etsy so that users can incorporate Stitch Labs’ applications into their online Etsy shop. Levey said he hopes to offer this feature to current Stitch Labs customers by the end of October and to the public by early November.

According to Levey, the company told him that it had 800,000 people selling on the Etsy site as of three or four months ago. “We see that as a huge opportunity to expand our customer base very rapidly,” Levey said.

Poised to grow

Right now, Stitch Lab’s executive roster consists only of the three founders: Levey, Gasaway and Michelle Laham, who oversees the look and design of the website and is in charge of all marketing materials.

The company declined to share projected revenue for their first year, stating it was too early. “At this point, we’re not sharing that specific information,” Levey said. “This first year was all about proof of concept and making sure our customers love the product and helped us make it better. We’ve gotten some incredibly positive feedback and know we are moving in the right direction. This coming year, it’s about growth and continuing to help our customers succeed.”

One of Stitch Lab’s main competitors is still pen and paper, according to Gasaway. Competition also stems from Excel spreadsheets and similar applications in the marketplace, such as San Francisco–based Working Point and Baltimore-based Bizelo.

Levey said as far as he knows, his application is the only software that provides the different services small businesses need to organize manufacturing, ordering, sales and invoicing, as well as a system to streamline selling through multiple channels. “People don’t just sell online. People sell many different ways, and we’re really filling that void,” Levey said.

He is hoping that this multi-use component, along with an easy-to-use site, is what will help Stitch Labs succeed. “Our tools can help small businesses go to the next level of becoming a larger, more autonomous company.”