On Friday, May 30th, six apprentices from NEXT participated in their off-the-job training at Fashion-Enter Ltd’s (FEL) head office in north London.
The morning session was led by Caroline Ash, the Production Director at FEL. Caroline provided an overview of the cutting docket and demonstrated how FEL carries out this process in the factory.
Caroline also covered the ‘Design to Production’ process, outlining the journey from design initiation to final production. Caroline addressed the challenges encountered during the design phase, emphasised the importance of effective communication with suppliers, and discussed common issues related to garment fitting, along with their cost implications.
Following this, FEL’s Technical Director, Claire Solley, led a session on tech packs. She detailed the specifications and proper presentation of working drawings necessary for professional manufacturing, as well as the crucial information to include in a tech pack.
Claire then conducted a fitting session with the apprentices, which included peer assessments focused on analysing the fit of garments and related topics, such as:
• The sealing stages
• Checking the sealed spec against the pattern and the sealed sample
• Checking the graded spec
• Cutting sample in bulk approved fabric (PP)
• Checking PP & Factory sample
• Creating production comments/factory tech pack
• Sending the ‘first off’ sample (otherwise known as the Gold/Production Sample) to the customer for approval to ship
In the afternoon, the apprentices participated in a tour led by Naeem Riaz, the Founder of Loop Kinetics Ltd and Co-Founder of Maeknit Inc (US).
The tour covered several key topics, including:
• The process from yarn to fabric
• Various types of fabric are utilised in production
• The product development process (comparing the new approach with the traditional methods)
• An overview of the accessories manufactured at Maeknit
• A Q&A session
The discussion with Naeem Riaz was highly engaging, particularly regarding his use of digital tools to accelerate production.
Feedback included:
“Overall, I enjoyed the session and found it very informative.”
“It was great to learn about Maeknit!”
“I appreciated how more interactive it was, especially regarding fitting on models and the various aspects of knitting.”
“I learned about the fitting and tech packs process, which helps identify issues. The session with Claire was really good.”