Sock people to the core, we love what we do. Part of that love is sharing the how’s and why’s of the way we work. There is a lot of work that goes into our process of crafting high-quality socks. We find that empowering our customers with the option to learn more about the details of sock manufacturing and our specific processes builds a shared common understanding and better partnership for both sides.
This article's focus is on the Style Change process.
A style change is simply the event when a machine is changed from knitting one program to another. One of the details many people are unaware of (even long-time sock people), is that there is a significant time investment with a highly experienced machine technician when it comes to preparing a machine to knit a style. The more complicated the sock design, the more complicated the machine setup is.
Style changes are not just a matter of loading up a knitting program. When a new style is put on a machine, in addition to threading each yarn color on the machine, a technician must run many tests to make sure that the machine is producing the style, size, and cross stretch to the exact standards laid out in the master spec sheet that was established once you approved your sample(s). If the production needs to run on multiple machines, the technician needs to do the same testing and calibrations on each machine.
To improve our efficiency we took an intensive look at the amount of time we were spending on style changes. It was no surprise that we could drastically impact our ability to meet the growing demand by decreasing machine downtime that is spent on style changes. The ultimate outcome is that we need to run machines longer on each style. We determined that five hundred pairs are the ideal minimum to knit.
A color change is not a style change. While we do have to change all the yarns feeding into a machine, this is not nearly as time-intensive as a style change. As such, we are happy to do a single color swap within that 500 pairs.
We do have an Emerging Brands program. If you are a small business but see significant growth in the future of your sock line, we would love to work with you. Our Emerging Brands program allows for you and Sunnyside to partner together with a focus on growing your brand to the stage where you can graduate out of the Emerging Brands program and easily meet the 500 MOQ requirement. Note that spots in this program are limited. Please do not hesitate to contact us to learn more about working together.