After previously starting the development with another supplier the lovely Max approached us in late 2022 with his design and prototype with the view to having us manufacture it for him.

We had an initial meeting with Max to look at his current prototype and tech pack and it soon became very clear the advice and work he had received to date was incorrect. The fabric chosen although suitable for purpose was way too expensive for the target price, the tech pack was incorrect, size chart incorrect and we discovered that the garment could be made a lot better and more cost effectively. They needed a lot more development and research to produce an effective garment…..

We went off and sourced a more suitable fabrics, re-worked the tech packs and proceeded to proto sample in one of our UK factories...unfortunately given the unique nature of the garment and it's special seams they misunderstood the brief and could not actually achieve what we wanted. We worked very closely with them to develop a number of iterations to see if they could get the flat seams required without the correct machinery but these also failed.

We then tried another of our UK factories which did achieve the look we wanted but the price was too high to achieve their target price to make the tee accessible for all.

So off we went to one of our factories in Portugal and although they did achieve a beautiful garment, again the price was too high, so we had to go back to the drawing board.

We sourced a new factory specially for Comfa in Turkey this time and the price was finally workable. Unfortunately as is just 'production life' it took us a long time to get the factory to understand the concept and get those tricky seams right. We also had the fabric remade in Turkey but on arrival in the UK and after testing we discovered that in fact the composition was completely incorrect to our specifications. It was very interesting to note that not one of us in the office or factory could feel the difference to our original fabric but Max could (should we give him a Job as a fabric tech?) but official test results don't lie so back to the drawing board again!

We decided to use the original Portuguese fabric and ship it over to Turkey as we knew that fabric was perfect, and in the mean-time source a new fabric supplier for future collections within Turkey. The less said the better about getting fabric from Portugal to Turkey the better....but it taught us a lot of lessons (Mainly don't do it!)

Developing and getting the specialist poppets produced was also a challenge (as is always the case with new products) but we got there in the end and had them sent over from China to Turkey (again DONT do it!) to be put into Max's T-Shirts.

We finally got everything right and Max signed off the final samples in Jan 23. Production (again as always) was fun...delays due to bad weather, staff illness, the t-shirts taking way longer to sew than anticipated but we finally delivered the garment to Max and his family.

As the garments were on route Max and his dad made an appearance on This Morning (see video below) to showcase his genius invention and within minutes of going live they sold out! Luckily as we always do we have learnt from our lessons and have a fabulous new factory on board for repeats and will be producing everything within Turkey for them to minimise customs issues.

To sum up...although this project was long and presented many challenges it has been a project that we have thoroughly enjoyed. From meeting Max, learning more about the neurodivergent community to engineering a brand new patented garment it's been a wild ride. We are super honoured to have been a small help in Max achieving his dream, and are very excited to work on future collections with him.

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If you like what you see you can purchase your very own tee HERE, and follow them on Instagram HERE!