Sometimes kids are good fashion test subjects.

In the interest of testing the dye sublimation process on waterproof softshell jackets, I recently made jackets in size Youth-S and Youth-M.   I'm pleased with the results and will adapt the graphic ideas to some adult versions soon.   Just have to finish some overdue work left over from the Fall and the holiday gift orders!

Mini fashion

So, here's my first effort at tiny clothing. I made this t- shirt for Cherry Bomb Toys. The figure wearing it is around 12" tall.

Ok - so it's been many many nights since I've had more than 5 hours of sleep in one go which, once again, brings up the issue of hiring people to help get things done.   Tonight I decided to lose a few hours of time to beer with Dan - a computer programmer with a creative edge.   He quoted something along the lines of 'we rise to the limits of our incompetence' or something like that.  Which he quoted with reference to the fact that although he manages a team of programmers, he's probably the best programmer amongst them - and his limitation is management.   So why isn't he a well paid programmer, replacing three less skilled people and being managed by someone who excels in management (not that he isn't good at that too).   With reference to Row West, it applies in the fact that I still haven't come across anyone who can sew as fast as me without making mistakes. And yet, business practices would indicate that as the owner of the company, I abandon sewing work to hire others to do it for me, decreasing production efficiency and creating a delicate balance of increasing costs vs the need for increased sales. 

So, what's the backward solution?   Maybe it's hiring someone to manage me.    Suppose I stay in the labour pool - it's kind of nice work.  You get to watch/listen to movies all day while making nice clothing.   Why should I stress about watching people who aren't as skilled as I am  putting my quality control at risk?    Is there a business where the owner occupies the entry level position while others do the managing of customer communication, accounting, etc?    Maybe that's what I need to create.   It seems like it might be a more fun way to own a business.   And really, if it's not fun it's not a great way to spend your life.

Also, aside from Row West stuff, if you have an eye for unusual beauty in creativity, look up Amanda Louise Spayd.    Her work really gives some people the heebyjeebies but all I see is astonishing beauty in bizarre form.   

I have a design for a micro solar cell, but that will wait until I get the stylus sorted out for my tablet.   The Gorge Elk regatta was this weekend.   I've been designing the regatta shirt since 1998 but this year, the workload in the shop was just too crazy to allow my brain to get creative.  Aside from the creativity, it also takes about a day to create the computer files for a shirt design, and then you're looking at around $1000 in blank t-shirts plus silkscreening costs.  It's a bit of a gamble and last year, the sales were terrible for the shirts.   Not that I think last year's shirt was the best design, but it wasn't the worst either.     So, this year I decided that I needed to step back and think about whether cotton t's are the best regatta memento.   I think they still work for Junior regattas, but most senior rowers already have drawers packed with rowing t's.   Regardless of how cool a design is, do they really need another t-shirt?   I'll be looking at the logistics of doing a technical shirt for future regattas.  

Anyway, here are my favourite designs that I've done for Gorge/Elk weekend.
1998 - with assistance from Adrian McFarlane and Mike Grace

2002



















2005

 2006

 2007

2008

Energy Crisiseseses

Every time I drive my car, I think, "I can't believe a liquid fuel has the energy to move this entire vehicle, all the stuff I have in the back (clean runners, reams of paper, a box of zippers I really need to give away - does anyone want $1500 in zippers?, pokemon cards, lego fragments, child boosters, Lee Valley catalogues and Applied Arts magazine, two coffee cups, pens, Tim Hortons recycling, and my spare bad-hair-day headsweats cap) and shove it up the Malahat Highway at .... um.. exactly 80km/hr, the posted limit.    How can there be that much kinetic energy in a little spritz of fuel ignited by a spark plug?   

Then I think about the noise of the wind  outside the car, the buzz of tires on road, how much my car shakes when a transport trucks whips by the other way and I think that despite the incredible output of energy from petroleum, we must be wasting incredible amounts of it!     I'm setting aside concerns about pollution and just thinking - what would it be like to suck every possible ounce of kinetic and potential energy out of a tank of gas?   

I already have some ideas.  Will post soon.   Got to get back to UBC unisuits right now.

Today's idea.

I was thinking today that I wish I could blog all my ideas for clothing designs and other products but to be honest, I have a certain level of paranoia about that.   Since I can't compete with larger companies when it comes to overall volume, my advantage really lies in quality control and originality (when possible).   So I was thinking maybe I would just post some of the other ideas that occur to me while I'm working away in my workshop.

As I looked at an order with a requested delivery date of yesterday, I was thinking about the Large Hadron Collider and FTL (faster than light) particles and then about all interesting ideas about time travel that came up a couple times every season in just about every Star Trek series (even though Voyager ended with a total time paradox, it was a good enough storyline not to really matter) and then I was thinking about how to restructure my website to accomodate pre-order deliveries.   So, if you receive a package from Row West marked with a Chronoton radiation warning label and accompanied by a shipping charge that exceeds the actual value of your order, please immediately go to rowwest.com and place an order identical to what you received in the box and choose "yesterday" for delivery deadline.   Should you make an error in your order, you may cause a tear in reality and your credit card will charged accordingly. 

First week of October

Busy day.   Got the kids off to school,  finished printing 42 shirts, posted product lineups for 2 new teams, and made, photographed and posted 2 variants of a new Dye Sublimation design that I've come up with.   Check out the Technical Shirts section of the site to see them.   Watching Terra Nova and working on more team order shirts tonight.   

Spoke to someone from Lolly Performance (soon to be Aptoella Rugby Apparel) yesterday.   Here's a cool company - gear for Women's Rugby designed and made by National Team rugby athletes.   Looking forward to talking shop with the owner/designer, Barbara.

trying blah blah

I think part of the problem with blogging is convincing yourself you have something worth saying for public consumption.   I'm not really convinced that I do most of the time - even when it's relevant to Row West.   Anyway, since blogs are kind of pointless unless you update them regularly, I'll give rambling a try and see how that works.  

So, the 1.5 man show continues here in the midst of Fall madness with crazy deadlines and requests for new gear.  I've had to develop a women-specific quickdry shirt design which has been pretty successful overall - a close fit in the upper body and looser at the waist - kind of opposite to what I'm used to with the spandex designs.    If I had a decent female mannequin, I would post a photo of it.   Mannequins - let me tell you - the perfect one doesn't exist.   Emaciated weird body types are all that's available.  Apparently athletic mannequins (especially female ones) are in very low demand because the only ones I've ever seen are the roid-monster ones at Sport Chek.   The only nice mannequins I've ever found are by La Rosa in Italy and I can't really afford to import those.   A market with a missing product - I'd do it if I wasn't getting killed by lack of sleep from filling rush orders for rowing gear (not complaining - it's better than being unemployed, that's for sure).  

Finding good help is hard but it's universal from what I hear from other small business owners.  I'm friends with Andy, the owner of Vancouver Island Salt Company and after just a few months of employing helpers, he's got a bank of stories to curdle the blood of any entrepeneur.   I really need two more people - a fast serger jockey and a fabric cutter who has the necessary skills of head-math, spacial strategizing, and manual dexterity with a cutting tool.   Ideally; people who like the kind of media I have on while working too.   But that's a tall order since, aside from mainstream tv, I like cartoons, documentaries, audiobooks, CBC radio podcasts and sci fi movies.

If I can ever get my workshop finished enough that it's not visually embarrassing, I'll give a photo tour of the madness here.   It's kind of like someone put a sweatshop in the middle of the matrix.

Anyway - Chris Clay at Digital Bloom just finished a sweet website update for me so I'll be back to adding products in the wee hours when I'm needing a break from sewing.  

School is coming. Fast.

Welcome to the month of September.   It was a busy summer at Row West.   In early summer, I got the equipment to do Dye Sublimation - the process in which you can actually dye fabric with the output from a inkjet printer.   Not just any printer, mind you.   Mine takes rolls of paper 44" wide and it's only a medium sized printer.   Lots of experiments and ideas have been bubbling.  The kids have been enjoying the test garments - lots of comic book images and so forth going onto drifit shirts.  

Running Row West as a tiny backwoods company is always a challenge in terms of juggling workload and family time but it's also fun a lot of the time.  This summer, the kids have been living half the time in the loft of the workshop, building lego and playing with Transformers while I've been down below getting the orders out the door.  

This time of year is divided between getting the earlybird orders out to the schools and preparing uniform packages for teams who are yet to have their first crew meeting.  New clothing ideas are on the table and I hope I can find the time to get more of the Row West website posted so that some of these new ideas can make out into the open.

Jeff Somerville in Peterborough is ready to rep Row West in Ontario (and beyond!).  I'm working on getting the infrastructure out to him so he can make a presence at this Fall's regattas.   I will post information in the regatta attendance section of the site once I'm sure where Row West will show up in Ontario.   I'm excited to work with Jeff.  He's got lots of inspiring ideas.

In Victoria, as a side-interest to making clothing, I also love toys - and designer toys in particular.  As a result of this, I've got a good relationship with Cherry Bomb Toys - a vintage (and new) toy store on Broad Street downtown.  They retail a jacket designed by owner Biagio, and myself and made by me.   Same fabrics as the Row West Helo jacket but a much different fit - with lots of pockets for action figures.  It also has velcro removable arm pockets.  At their upcoming October Toy Show, I expect to have a vendor table there with a product line never before seen by rowers.   It may have nothing to do with clothing at all.   Cherry Bomb is my kind of company - family run 7 days a week, raising their baby amidst towers of GI Joe and Transformers. I do love small business.

ORC orders on schedule for ERA's

Due to the postal strike, all ORC orders were held back for couriered shipping.  The package is expected to arrive in Ottawa today , June 28.  Order numbers from 29 to 87 are included.  The only items missing from a couple of these orders are headsweats caps, which will ship asap.  My apologies to anyone who requested shipping directly to their homes - this was the only way to guarantee your uniforms would make it to Ottawa in time for this weekend.   All orders are individually packaged and labelled with athlete name and contact information.

Kingston RC senior athlete uniforms should also be arriving about now.  The junior order, which was just recently placed is not expected to be ready for this weekend but should be shipping soon as well.

Halifax RC uniforms are shipping out shortly - likely by Express Post if the mail system seems to be operating properly.

So, here's what sucks about using couriers for shipping.  Shipping to a business is ok - the rates are only a little higher than post.  But shipping to a residential address ? Yikes.    I sent an envelope to Vancouver with a singlet in it that normally could go as a heavy letter (about $3 shipping) and had to pay $19 to send it by Greyhound Express delivery service.    I guess I can take comfort in the tax write-off of exorbitant business expenses.  My post office is still open but the staff is bored to tears since they can't really do any work.

Just did my first dye sublimation prints yesterday.  SO COOL.   First day of printing I also sold a contract printout (to a customer with their own heat press).  So that will be another avenue I'll look at for getting the machine to pay for itself.   Looking forward to sending out sales info to all the clubs I've had to pass by because of their designs that require a dye sub print. 

I'm starting to feel a little concerned about the ongoing Postal Strike.   As a business located in a rural location, I depend heavily on the postal system for outgoing packages.  Using a courier is immensely expensive when dealing with rural pickups - generally 3 to 4 times more expensive than post. I'm kind of surprised there hasn't been more talk in the news about this kind of problem.  Here in Shawnigan Lake, there are many many home based business that I see sending packages out every day.  I'm sure this must be the case across Canada in small towns.  

I can't say that I have a strong opinion about which way the strike should go - I can understand the concerns of both sides.   It's obvious that letter mail has had it's day.  That being said, Canada Post has amazing infrastructure to dominate the package delivery system - just too much bureaucracy to get it done.   I think the only thing that could really devastate Canada Post would be the invention of matter transport (like Star Trek).  That's probably a little ways off.

It's a busy month - June. Lots of summer crews are off to the races at the beginning of July and on the west coast, people are heading to Portland for racing this month. For them, it means training. For me, it means bustin' the hours in the workshop getting everyone's gear out on time. Just got a large format heat press and let me tell you that a 1200lb crate doesn't move easily on a gravel driveway. But it's in the shop now thanks to Pat and Doug. Now I'm waiting for my dye printer to get out of Customs in Calgary (why Calgary??). So once both units are up and running, it's time to play with artwork and stretchy material. FUN. You know, in between working on all the orders. With those two items, I should be able to print just about anything into white fabric. So complex designs and custom colours will be much easier to deal with.

The ecommerce site seems to be working well. It's a quick learning curve - sorting out how to add all the products and also sort through in the incoming orders. Still have a ways to go for all the products but the main thing right now is working on posting for all the teams who want their gear online.

Anyway - back to unisuits and dragon boat shorts with the soothing background of CBC podcasts. Or sci-fi and anime movies. Whichever.

Oh one more thing - last week there was a really good CBC radio piece on groupons gone wrong and why they can be a disaster for small businesses. See if you can find it - it's worth listening to.

Just finished adding most of Vancouver RC's uniforms to the shopping site.   Working on some dragon boat shirts today as well as working up computer visuals for Corporate Challenge crews.   Also putting together some super cool Fillipi unisuits for the folks at GO Rowing and Paddling Association.

Should be adding boat name decals to the decal options soon - just have to figure out how to cost them and what options to include (fonts, etc).

Wet weekend

So, the new rowwest.com site is now active.   Despite being very sparsely populated with products, I'll be endeavoring to fill it out over the next few weeks.   Of higher priority is actually getting all the team uniform products added first - so that customers who search for their club or team name can find their uniforms for ordering.

This weekend was the Shawnigan Lake regatta in BC.  Saturday was beautiful and Sunday was a torrential downpour.  Thankfully the wind held off.   I wouldn't have made it out of the regatta site without the helpful pushing hands of Aalbert from VCRC and others who pushed my loaded car out of the muddy slippery park onto the road.  So thanks to all who pushed.

Working on some uniforms for the Cariboo RC right now.  They have a great club in the BC Interior and will soon be racing in uniforms of purple, light blue and black.  

thinking about dye sublimation

Making plans that involve aquiring dye sublimation capabilities is exciting but also daunting.   This is not a simple thing.  Supplies required:
Dye Sublimation printer (basically an ink jet printer but BIG - like able to print 5 feet wide) ~ $20000 to $250000   and the inks are around $300 per litre
Industrial large format heat press.  Roughly the size and weight of a small car and requiring special electrical outlets.  These things don't run off your computer power bar.   Approximate cost $20000.
So, not cheap.  But with this equipment, the sky is the limit for sports wear.   I think the first thing I'll make is a full body suit that looks like Iron Man.   Then Optimus Prime.   Then maybe some more practical team wear.

In the meantime, I'm working on a plan to standardize training for the kind of sewing required for high performance stretch gear.  Obviously I can't keep doing it myself indefinitely.  There's a reason that not everybody makes their own spandex outfits at home.  It's tricky to work with and if you want to make things that last for years, you need to know what you're doing.  Maybe I'll start a sewing school attached to Row West.  

Setting up ecommerce should be easier

Today's challenge for creating a functional shopping environment is figuring out the best way to configure shipping costs.   Although the majority of Row West customers are from North America, there are some from overseas. Figuring out the best way to handle shipping isn't easy.  Right now the site will charge you the same amount of shipping for a unisuit as for a decal.  Clearly a problem.

The other issue to be handled will be team uniforms - many of which end up being ordered individually but shipped to a single club address, hopefully lowering the cost per person involved in the order.

Today's other fun activities included ordering forest green fabric.  Because it's a custom colour, the minimum order is 350 metres.   That ends up being around 8 large rolls of material and will last for around 2 years.   It takes approximately 8 weeks to get it in, so I have time to set aside the necessary funds to cover such a large order.  Fortunately, I don't need to do this for many colours.

I've been looking around for photos of athletes that I can use as fashion models for clothing sketches.   This initial sketch allows me to try out various clothing designs.   The photo I worked from is of a track and field athlete.

All done with this.  Saving it to use with a future comic strip project.

Almost done the thin line work.   Once this is done, I'm going to try some actual rowing-related drawings.

Heavy Metal.

This is a sketch in progress. I've been trying to come up with some vehicle artwork and I like this Hummer HX concept car.   Kind of the like the Rally Fighter (possibly the coolest looking independently manufactured vehicle).   Working on mechanical linework actually helps when switching back to more organic style art.   Will post this sketch in a few phases until it's done.

This has nothing to do with clothing - obviously.   Unless anyone wants a giraffe-print rowing uniform.  Just practicing sketching.

digital wood chopping

Continuing to add products to the new website.   It's not the easiest process.  Every product has to be presented visually - whether that's by photo or computer generated graphic.  Aside from prepping those images, I also have to decide on all the available options for each product and figure out the most logical way to present them. 

The new site uses a Joomla! foundation with Redshop as the functioning shopping interface.  It was constructed by Chris Clay at Digital Bloom.  Chris has been really good to work with.   I designed the look of the site and he recreated that look with functionality.   I'm a bit fussy about keeping the look clean and simple and Chris has been very patient with my requests for tweaks.   Hopefully Row West customers will like it as well.

The only thing I wish I had on the site, but don't, is the ability to interface Flash graphics with the shopping cart so that people could see how their colour choices will look on the product.   I'll work on figuring that out once the site is up and running.

It's a new year.

It's a new year and Row West has been in business now for 14 years.  That's a lot of spandex out the door.  I think on average I make around 3 or 4 thousand pieces of clothing each year.   Sometimes it makes me feel tired.   Right now, I'm working on orders for Canadian West Coast juniors.  And with a new feature on the clothing, I'm adding last names to the gear with the goal of reducing loss and theft in the boathouse.  

I'm also adding products to a new ecommerce website that I hope to have up and running by the end of this month.   This should simplify the ordering process and really, it's WAY overdue.

Working on some new designs that will be introduced with the new website as well.  

I'm also making efforts to work on my drawing skills, which can get rusty when you spend too much time on the sewing machine and not enough time with the pen and pencil.   I'll post some sketches here soon.