Worldwide Shipping!
Our Design & Development Process
Designing and making clothes that our customers fall in love with is what gets us out of bed in the morning (well, that and the strongest caffeine known to humankind). It’s a crazy involved process, but hey, that’s BlackMilk for ya – and we wouldn't have it any other way.
To give you an insight behind the scenes at BM, we asked our teams involved in this process to tell us a little about what they do each day.
Merchandise
Numbers, spreadsheets, something, something. That’s all we really know about what these guys do. Their job is super analytical, but they’re actually really fun.
Actually, our merchandise team spends many hours developing plans for every range we design here at BMHQ. They review and analyse all previous ranges to forward plan how many styles, which shapes, what the mix of plain and printed designs are and the quantity of each by size.
They then hand all of this data over to design and product development, who work together to create all the products that are gonna fulfil your mighty needs.
Merchandise also plan and order fabrics, manage stock through the manufacturing process with our production departments, and work extensively with marketing to ensure all products are ready for launch. Whew. Someone should buy those guys some donuts.
Design
Our design and graphics team looks after all the designs you see on your gear. If you’ve ever wondered what the secret to their creativity is, they run on 100% coffee and chocolate.
Sometimes when you’re looking at an end product, it’s hard to comprehend how much work has gone into making it a reality. For example, did you know that a lot of our prints are hand-drawn by our very own creative designers? Yup – that awesome piece you are wearing on your bod probably started out with a pencil, some paper and the awesome inspiration of a BM designer – and they’re always looking for new ways to create the unique prints you love.
Where do they get all their ideas? Other than the fact they are amazingly creative, our designers get inspo from fashion trends, collection themes and, of course, our customers – they love when you tell us what you wanna see!
Once an overall collection theme is decided, lots of time is spent researching and planning what the overall products might look like. Our designers begin to experiment with elements of their planned pieces to see how they might naturally work together, and how the prints will work on different shapes.
Product Development
When they’re not partaking in their strict 8am tea time ritual, this team takes all our crazy product ideas and turns them into workable designs ready to be manufactured. These guys do heaps of testing on every piece and work super hard to get the best fit possible for you. (This often involves jL joining in and getting a little scissor-happy.)
Once our designers have nailed down the collection theme and initial concepts, our talented product development team starts creating garment patterns to strict technical specifications. (Don’t ask us how, we’re guessing witchcraft.) A number of samples are made from the patterns, and these samples go through the fitting process. We make sure a whole lot of different people try it on to make sure it fits and feels fantastic.
Armed with the detailed feedback that comes from these fittings, our product developers tweak the patterns until they are perfect. The final sample, along with incredibly detailed technical deets, is then handed over to our manufacturing teams so they can ensure every piece produced consistently matches the original pattern.
