The material world: Stitch Factory is hub for budding designers

Co-working environments are hot in the tech world. But what about fashion?

“As a designer, you can take your sewing machine to Starbucks, but that would be really awkward,” said fashion entrepreneur Jen Taler. “Would you really want to do that? So where do you live in that co-working environment?”

The answer devised by Taler’s business partner, Meghan Mossler, is the Stitch Factory, a creative space for Las Vegas’ emerging and established designers.

The shared industrial space at 300 Las Vegas Blvd. North, Suite 120, is packed with cutting tables, industrial sewing machines, dress forms, bolts of fabric and people brimming with creative ambition. Taler said the business has a full-time staff of 10 and a database of people it brings in on a variety of projects.

She said Las Vegas has been a great place to launch a fashion business.

“Obviously, there’s a lot happening in the Arts District and on the Strip with the costuming industry, and there’s the different design schools here,” she said. “So we wanted to kind of create a place where there’s maybe more of a hub where everyone can come in and create together or through mixers and events collide. I think there’s a huge opportunity.”

Las Vegas also has MAGIC, the Men’s Apparel Guild in California, one of the largest trade shows in the world bringing in buyers, brands and designers twice a year. Taler said MAGIC can be overwhelming to people who have never been to or who don’t understand it.

“So we actually have a guided tour through MAGIC that we do twice a year in August and February where we take you through some suggested seminars and also walk the show and engage with some of the brands and kind of educate you on what’s happening and how to properly attack it if you’re going there as a retailer or if you want to be a designer and get ready before you take that next step,” she said.

The Stitch Factory is all about helping budding designers longing to take that next step. The business focuses on three areas: membership, education and production.

Memberships, like dresses, come in different sizes. Community members are invited to events, receive discounts on classes and have access to lounge areas. Creator members have access to shared work space and equipment, receive on-site technical design support, have access to a fashion resource library and benefit from office basics, such as a receptionist, Wi-Fi, coffee and printing. Designers get all that and dedicated studio space.

“They have their own working space and their own machine so they don’t have to rethread each time,” Stitch Factory marketing representative Rachel Herring said.

“As you can see, it’s set up so designers can work out of here, work on their collection and be set up with a full design studio without having to personally invest in space and all that machinery and all the equipment that you need because that does add up,” Taler said.

On the education end, the facility hosts “anything from fun DIY projects that are really great gateways into design all the way through technical design classes,” Taler said. “We have two-day workshops, nine-week courses, day workshops that take you through the beginning fundamentals of design all the way through in-depth technical workshops.”

The classes draw students of all backgrounds and ages.

Last summer, the Stitch Factory launched a weeklong summer children’s day camp, with crafty campers stitching pillows, dolls and totes. This summer, Taler said the business hopes to expand the camps to full-day programs to accommodate children with working parents.

Kevin Smith, who also teaches at Sanford-Brown College (formerly the International Academy of Design & Technology), heads up the Stitch Factory course offerings. He said he’s developing certificate programs in sewing and pattern making as an alternative to a fashion bachelor’s degree. He said great pattern makers with experience can make a good living.

“A really good pattern maker, they’re like a chef because they’re putting together the architecture of what needs to go together,” Smith said.

The designer, whose first career was in social work, said he would like to secure grants to help provide fashion training to women trying to escape the sex trafficking industry.

“A lot of these girls, they get caught in sex trafficking when they’re 12,” he said. “So they don’t have any kind of skills with anything. So that’s why they continue to go back to that life.”

Another component of the education program is a fashion-focused speakers series. Herring, who coordinates the series, said the Stitch Factory invites fashion industry leaders to visit and speak in a forum “open to the community so they can listen and get inspired by their stories. We’ve had some amazing speakers come out: Peter Kim, the CEO of Hudson Jeans; Donald J. Pliner; Jerome Rousseau; amazing shoe designers; Katie Butler with Nine West.

“Last but not least, we focus on production,” Herring said. “We do pattern making, sample making, manufacturing. We don’t have any minimums, so we can do one-of-a-kind to thousands of units.”

“Our focus tends to be on product development and brand building,” Smith said. “We’re not trying to be a main manufacturer. We do small runs here. So if people need, like, less than 500 pieces, we’re going to do that in-house, depending on what it is. We also source out to fair factories. We have strong relationships with factories around the country.”

Smith said advisers at the Stitch Factory can help product designers find factories that are licensed, have fair labor practices and will provide good quality. He said many designers don’t realize that if a factory isn’t playing by the rules, it’s not just the factory that faces fines. “You, as a brand, would get fined,” Smith said.

Marketing and brand building are part of what inspired Mossler and Taler to found the Stitch Factory in 2012. The duo met as buyers at Zappos, and both were surprised at how unprepared some brands were for the marketplace.

“People were trying to be everything to everyone or didn’t have cohesive brands or didn’t understand that you need to have terms or discounts and systems set up to be online — all these things that they are not aware of because they’ve never done it,” Taler said. “So the idea is to kind of help bridge that gap.”

For more information on the Stitch Factory, visit stitchfactory.com or call 702-476-5552.

Contact View contributing reporter Ginger Meurer at gmeurer@viewnews.com. Find her on twitter:@gingermmm.