Brace(let) Yourself

Have you ever thought about bracelets? Like, really thought about them? They’re such a simple accessory, but they can say a lot about a person. What they like, what their style is, where they might be going, who they might be buying (or making) it for. Bracelets (and accessories in general) can represent a lot of things for many people, but what does it take to get them produced and distributed to those who would wear them?

For one of my assignments in the Parson’s Fashion Industry Essentials Certificate, I was tasked to design and make an accessory out of unconventional materials. The design was to be based upon a group of items I had lying around the house that spoke to me. My items consisted of a lot of dark colors, romantic reds, and a hint of punk leftover from my “emo days,” and in the end I was inspired to make a “zipper bracelet”, made from some leftover zipper materials I had from a prior sewing project (pictured below).

This sentence will probably date me, but I noticed that my design seemed to be heavily influenced by an old digital camera case from my pre-teen years that I had slapped a “Guitar Hero III” sticker on. While my style has evolved greatly since that time, I still keep a lot of elements from those good old days in my style and found that this bracelet actually fits a lot of the looks I wear now.

Photo Description: An arm adorns a black homemade zipper bracelet, inspired by an old digital camera case with a skull sticker that is pictured. A red arrow points from the camera case to the bracelet. A piece of camouflage fabric makes up the background, an a very small block painting sits on top of it.

But what if I wanted to share my super cool new zipper bracelet with my fellow former emo kids? Well, that was another assignment to explore.

Handmaking anything is slow and tends to be more expensive as you must pay for local wages and can only keep so much material on hand. Associated costs tend to be higher and the bracelets are harder to distribute. This can be good if you have a small consumer base or one who is concerned about sustainable practices. I got lucky with this design, because the zipper came from a roll of 5 yards of “make your own zipper” and came with 20 of its own zipper pulls. With this material, I can make around 20 bracelets without needing to buy more, and it was at a cheap cost ($9.95 for the whole thing). My thread is a pretty good quality thread, and this bracelet doesn’t need very much thread, so it would last a while in terms of production. My overall material costs were pretty low. Now, what I didn’t get so lucky on was my labor cost. As I live in a high-cost area, my minimum wage is extremely high, in fact on the of highest in the country. As shown in this chart, labor would be my highest cost:

Photo Description: An Excel chart breakdowns the costs per bracelet if I made them all by hand. The total production cost is $8.02, and with a profit margin of 20% the total cost plus profit is $9.62. The estimated retail price is $12.

Now, if I wanted produce and distribute on a greater scale, you can see where I might have some issues. I was tasked to try to halve my production costs so that a retailer could allowed some markdown room on leftover stock. I was able to find some thread which came with more bang for its buck, so to speak. I went from a thread spool that had 250m to one that had 365m for a better per meter cost. But the greatest slash I had to do was in my labor costs. In order to cut down costs, I would have to move my production facilities elsewhere in the country where minimum wage is much cheaper. Since federal minimum wage is about half what it is in my county, this is slightly easier to do. Additionally I was also able to refine the time it takes to make each bracelet, so a person could make 4 bracelets per hour instead of 2. So overall, my costs were reduced greatly:

Photo Description: An Excel chart breakdowns the costs per bracelet if I mass produced and distributed the bracelets. After moving to a cheaper area, the total production cost is now $2.51, and with a profit margin of 20% the total cost plus profit is $3.01. The estimated retail price is $12. Labor costs had to be reduced in order to make a greater profit margin.

Exploring these price points was an interesting experiment, as it showed me that sometimes you cannot simply get “cheaper” materials if you need to reduce costs. Sometimes, you actually do need to move somewhere cheaper, which can have an unfortunate effect on local economies. Luckily for me this was only a thought experiment, but it really made me think about how much work and materials goes into a bracelet. So much for being a simple accessory!