Trunkist takes indie fashion designers’ ideas to market, even helps crowdfund

Trunkist helps designers focus on the business of being creative

Starting a new business in any industry isn’t easy, but fashion designers have a particularly challenging time cracking into the market. Designers often have inspired ideas, but lack the resources to produce even a single design, much less an entire fashion line. Besides which, many designers have a knack for cutting a dress, but have little expertise when it comes to launching, managing, supplying, and marketing a collection.

Enter Trunkist.com. It’s much like crowd-funding sites Kickstarter and Indiegogo, but aimed specifically at fashion designers. Trunkist allows customers to pre-order garments from fashion designers, who receive 100 percent of the design profits.

Trunkist began as a collaboration between a visionary, a designer, and an expert in the fashion industry. Dustin Hindman was a saltwater fisherman who wanted to design the ideal fishing shirt. He teamed up with fashion designer Kim Irwin and with Wendy Dittmer, who was “experienced in supply chain and corporate responsibility.”

How Trunkist works

Here’s how it works: designers contribute fashion ideas, and the “in-house design team” selects the most unique designs that are also feasible to produce and market. The design team then helps the designer choose fabrics and notions, and find a manufacture. Trunkist is committed to producing fashion in, in their words, “the right way,” which means they are committed to using fair trade fabrics and garment manufacturers who make a minimal impact on the environment.

Trunkist has a sample of the design produced, and sends it back to the designer for editing, or to style, accessorize, and photograph for marketing purposes. Then, through Trunkist, the designer sets up a crowdfunding campaign.

Customers can even pre-order garments

Customers can then pre-order garments. Their credit card is charged, and they receive the garment, after the designer has met the minimum order quantity required for production. Taking pre-production orders reduces the costs of over production. Trunkist takes care of the production of the garments, and packs and ships them to the customers.

In other words, the fashion designers can focus on their creative process, while leaving the details of manufacturing and order fulfillment to Trunkist. Meanwhile, customers get a unique garment that has not been mass manufactured, since each design is only produced once. And unlike other crowdfunding sites, fulfillment and satisfaction are guaranteed when you buy clothes from Trunkist.

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