Where Do You Find Your Fabrics?

I have had several customers ask me where I find our super cute fabrics. That is a very good question because it has a very hard answer. Our fabrics, especially knit fabrics, are very hard to come by! Out of all I have to do to run Elliot's Preemie Tees I would say this is the single most difficult task. I am telling you this not to scare you but to help you have an appreciation for the quality and number of fabrics that we carry!

The first thing is I had no idea how hard it is to find knits. Most fabric stores don't carry them and if they do the selection is very limited. I quickly came to know if I see it and I like it - I better buy it - RIGHT NOW! I cannot tell you how long and hard I looked for suppliers of knit fabrics, I even traveled to Los Angeles to the garment district, which gave a me few good leads.

It is not by accident that we carry a large number of prints to choose from - we did that on purpose! We wanted you to have choices!! When I set that goal I didn't know how hard it would be to achieve. You see, fabric mills do not want to deal with someone as "small" as I am. You have to be Wal-mart to get most of them to even talk to you. I am not kidding! I had so many people laughed at me I was starting to get a complex. When you call a fabric mill the conversation goes something like this -

"Hello, I am the owner of Elliot's Preemie Tees and I would like to purchase knit fabrics from you wholesale."

"How many yards are you planning to purchase of each print?"

"About 25 yards."

"What? Are you kidding me? We don't sell less that 500 yards per print!" (Some of them won't sell less than 100,000 yards! That is a LOT of Preemie Tees!)

And then they hang up! That happened to me about a dozen times, but undaunted I persevered and we now have several vendors who sell to me in much smaller quantities. This is the main reason that most places who care preemie clothing do not carry more than a few prints or colors. It is just too expensive to carry more when you have to buy hundreds of yards of fabrics to manufacture the clothes. And this is how I began to understand that this had to change.

There are several good things our customers enjoy because of the way we buy our fabrics. 1) More fabrics mean more choices! 2) Smaller yardages mean you are purchasing limited editions! You will not find your preemies clothes everywhere and because you pick the designs, fabrics and snaps - not everyone will have exactly the same outfits, so we really are "designer" in every sense of the word! We purchase no more than 25 yards of any one fabric and when that fabric is gone - it is gone. (The only exception to this is the solid colors.) If I try to repurchase a popular fabric later it is gone 99% of the time so I can't even get it if I wanted to so our fabrics turn around constantly. You may want to remember this when ordering - it might not be there when you come back later - when it is gone - it is really gone! 3) Lower prices for the customer because we sell directly to you the middleman is cut out and we can afford to offer lower price even with paying higher prices for the fabrics.

We really are on the cutting edge in Preemie Fashions! Nobody else does what we do - because they can't. Sometimes it is better to be small! But when I get bigger I still have plans for doing business just like I do now. I found a place that will let me design my own prints in smaller runs. I am looking forward to having my own designs - made just for Preemies. I think it is ironic that a small company would have the solutions for societies smallest customers - it is a perfect fit - a Preemie Fit!