Our sewing room

And so it goes…

Hello! Unfortunately, this time we are greeted with different news than usual. In this newsletter, we would like to tell you how we learned a “hard” lesson in our business this summer – we lost more than €12,000.

After repair

Beginnings

First of all, I would like to stress that we are quite young and we do not shy away from taking risks in order to reach higher and higher goals. And so it was this time…

We have been working in a targeted way for 6 years now, and each year we have improved significantly. But this year was different…

In recent years, with the growth of the team and increased production volumes, our relatively small premises have become cramped. The production floor was 120 square metres, which made it very difficult to fit us in. Despite the fact that we had a separate warehouse of 60 square metres and a showroom of 30 square metres, we decided to look for a bigger space, as it was becoming more and more difficult to work in the existing one.

Some photos of what our sewing room looked like:

Urgent decision

At the beginning of this year, we received an offer from the owner of the leased premises to rent another space in the basement of the building, with a total area of up to 400 square metres. Without much thought and, so to speak, without hardly having seen the premises (there were other tenants in the building at the time), we accepted the offer because the rent was really attractive. However, we did not enjoy this unexpected success for long… It soon became clear that this decision was a big mistake.

The day came when we got the keys to the new premises, and only then, when we saw the real situation, did we realise that we could not work in such premises. So we started renovation work without waiting:

• We installed ventilation systems (heat recovery) in the rooms;
• We’ve replaced all the electrical wiring;
• We installed the air conditioning;
• We painted the rooms.

In addition, there were many other smaller jobs that required a lot of time and money, as we did almost all of the repairs ourselves.

In fact, we had a bad feeling about the quality of the rooms from the very beginning of the work, as we felt there was too much humidity. It soon became apparent that the raw materials we use to make clothes (fabrics, threads, rubbers, etc.) would immediately become saturated with moisture, which is critically bad. The premises were suitable for any other activity but ours.

That was the main reason why they didn’t suit us. It is at least good that we realised this before we actually moved in, as we did most of the renovation ourselves and therefore had the opportunity to assess the actual suitability of the premises for sewing work. So, in a way, we were lucky and prevented even bigger losses in the future.

All this cost us over €12,000. If we add in the cost of setting up the other premises (because we’re moving out anyway), it’s even higher. So today we can safely say that we “sold” our time and energy for nothing this summer.

BEFORE AND AFTER. What we rented and what we left behind.

Grateful to the owner

We are grateful to the owner of the premises for understanding us in a positive way and for an amicable parting. Although it is clear that both sides have suffered in this situation. However, we take full responsibility for our youthful risk-taking.

Our other new sewing room

The premises are located at 43 Panerių Street, Vilnius, on the territory of Lelia (one of the largest sewing factories in the Baltic States).

Our future premises have a total area of 300 square metres. I think this space will be enough for at least 2 years. Time will tell.

As always, you will be able to see and try on our products in person at this sewing shop. If you’re curious enough, we can even show you the process of making the garments.

You can also pick up your order online for free at a sewing shop at a time convenient for you.

End

In the wake of these events, it is clear that this summer, like the last few years, has been a loss-making one for us, with sales falling drastically. We are now hoping to emerge from this crisis of our own making. After so many years of work, it would be very painful to stop…

So I hope to tell you about how we are doing in the new sewing room in the next newsletter. Thanks for reading, bye.