GOTS organic cotton hoodie from our upcoming Superlative Collection.

Detroit313 Clothing: Our Journey to Become a High-Quality, Sustainable Athleisure Brand

Hello Beautiful Souls! Happy Sweet November! 

We believe that it’s time to share a bigger part of Detroit313 (D313) Clothing journey & vision. In doing so we believe that it’ll provide you with your WHY for your continued support during this process of us working to become a high quality sustainable athleisure brand. On the other hand, sharing these details can attract new supporters. Either way, we are excited to lay out some of the many plans for our brand. 

To start, the Detroit313 Clothing name was chosen way back in 2016. Wanting an apparel brand, however, was birthed waaayyy (LOL) back in childhood. Which was later reignited sometime in 2011. It’s quite obvious that we have been working on the idea of Detroit313 Clothing for a good while now. Perfection takes time though, right? Except aiming for that perfection also held us back. Something we began to realize sporadically. An example being in March 2019, when a company similar to our chosen business name had a very public opening. Resulting in us finally registering our name with the state. Then with Print on Demand (POD) options gaining great success & more apparel brands opening, we decided something had to shake. Therefore on July 28th 2022, we did a soft launch of our brand and became official on September 30th, 2022. All without having everything how we wanted, planned or even had figured out. I must say we didn’t realize how much of a perfectionist we were until this time. Talk about challenging, having to let go of having things exactly how we envisioned before starting & even now. That said, we were certain after years of following this “new” & less expensive way of starting a brand via POD & then tirelessly researching different POD companies, that we were ready to rock n’ roll. NOT…..SMH….. WOOSAH!!

We started anyway. The thing is, the “convenience” of POD initially seemed too easy (for lack of a better word) for our liking & overall vision for our brand. Considering we don’t do “easy” either, the POD path brought great hesitancy delaying our movements again. Yes, moving smarter is great except when it compromises the integrity of our business. Quality has ALWAYS been & will always be our foundation. Quality is what we desire as consumers ourselves. Yet the expenses for the traditional way of starting a brand is exponentially higher than POD of course, and the way our bank accounts are set up LOL, had us reconsidering POD. To wrap this part up (WOOSAH) we thought the POD company we researched & communicated with for TWO years was “perfect” due to their branding options. SMH, however, after a lot of money spent, well wasted, on poorly made samples proved that after all that time, money & research they just didn’t honor their own company values & commitment to their “partners”. After months of expressing our disapproval with the initial POD company, we reluctantly changed everything over to a more recognized POD company through our platform. After testing their print, which was 1000% better quality, we were still reluctant due to the personal branding options not being offered, which of course is what we desired. WHAT TO DO? WHAT TO DO? WOOSAH! 

All of this caused us not to fully promote our brand, but we started right? We must admit some of the best advice we could’ve ever received as aspiring entrepreneurs was to just start. That meant starting where we were & with what we had, so we did. Again, a challenging thing to do considering now we no longer had the personal branding option. Now, the reason POD was even attractive to us was due to certain functions of the business not needing to be our priority starting off. Like concerning ourselves with inventory storage or having to pay for items until they were ordered. NOT, however,  attractive enough when the business we were building would be compromised. Leading us to another challenge of how to operate with POD & do our personal branding. Except there was no cost effective way at all. We unfortunately had a lot of back & forth with the POD decision. If you also couple another one of our goals of Sustainability & offering products at budget friendly prices it was more back than forth. Still not promoting our brand as we worked out these kinks, which was hindering our exposure of course.

NOW that we shared just a small glimpse of our journey, let’s get to a bit of our vision. Have you ever heard anyone say look at your childhood dreams & you will see exactly what your true passions are? Fashion, not the whole being a fashionista thing (as fun, stylish & cute as that is), but it has always been the quality of the fabrics, craftsmanship, intricacies & details that were always intriguing to our eye. Saying all that to say that’s what we are working to bring to Detroit313 Clothing. We are not building your average modern day E-commerce apparel brand. We are prioritizing SUSTAINABLE QUALITY athleisure garments that will elevate any style choice for any occasion. Allowing the most fashionable to the most relaxed individual to not only look & feel good outwardly, but to feel good inwardly because of their choice to support Detroit313 Clothing & our values. A brand that is determined to provide the quality you didn't know you were missing & at prices you wouldn’t believe capable of the superior quality our garments possess. I mean why should we have to spend $300+ for the known “luxury” brands T-shirts or hoodies chasing for the quality we all deserve, or is it the name alone?

 I mean grant it, most luxury houses have proven their brand to provide superior garments with superior craftsmanship & even superior fabrics. A lot of times those superior fabrics are very harmful to our environment & even our health, but that’s a topic for a different blog/time. I know, I know, so many of us are so enamored with “luxury” brands not even being aware that not all “luxury” is even high quality. Therefore nowhere near the worth of the price tag attached. Soon we will share why quality is important & what makes our garments high quality, so continue to stay tuned. 

One disappointment after another, fasting & prayer was the only way we knew how to handle the various curveballs that entrepreneurship threw our way. With The Lord proving to us, yet again, how faithful HE is to those who love HIM by showing us our vendor quite speedily. The vendor who has all the best certifications, the same certifications we will seek once we have better footing, AKA more capital. Some of those certifications being OEKO-TEX, GOTS® Organic Cotton, among other certifications & registered with Supima®. We were seeking the best quality fabrics & we found just that with our new vendor. It was also important for us to stay within the States for a vendor & with quality being our priority along with sustainability we found a perfect match. Although we haven’t abandoned the POD method completely & although we aren’t heavily enthused about no longer having the option to brand our product choices. Keeping with the POD method, for now at least, is a great way to test out new design ideas. Not wavering on our commitment to sustainability in our choices of a POD partner or blank apparel used. 

Our Superlative Collection has had challenges as well for similar reasons, but so many more. Yet we are pressing forward as always & trusting The Lord's timing, not ours. There’s also a lot of factors to consider to stay sustainable from the beginning to end of our product, including the packaging. There’s no greenwashing here at Detroit313 Clothing. We are committed to not negatively contributing to the known fashion industry waste that is extremely harmful to our environment & health. Once these items are added to our store, which will prayerfully still be by year end, the hope is to inspire people to see beyond the “luxury” names & realize high quality can be offered on a small business scale. Something we don’t always see, considering so many brands use the term “luxury” (hence why we have to place the terms in “”) & “premium” so loosely. Leaving us disappointed when we find out otherwise. We know we aren’t the only ones that have been excited for a product(s) we ordered to arrive & not only look cheaply made, but once it’s washed we discover it's totally useless/unwearable. That’s not what we represent.

What’s so amazing about our Superlative Collection is that the products get softer over time because of the quality of the fibers used. Don’t take our word for it, please fact check us. Although we are using a vendor & POD in our beginning stages, our ultimate goal is to be the registered & certified company. Allowing us full control to imagine & create items from scratch the way we want. D313 will also be a store that offers an array of accessories we love. Such as coats, bags, sunglasses, hats, scarves & so much more. Until that time we will have those conversational T-Shirts via POD & our Superlative Collection that will fall in the lines of quiet luxury for those of us who are not necessarily fans of graphics. Until next time, ♾️D313.

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