Hey everybody, it’s Wes with Printful and today I am at the Bella + Canvas headquarters
here in Los Angeles.
I’m here with Carissa and she’s going to show us around, and let us see how the
magic happens.
Yeah, I’m excited to show you everything, so let’s get going.
So this is where everything really starts.
This is where all of our fabric lies.
Before this fabric even got to this point, it came in as a greige good.
All of our greige goods are sent out to our dye houses here in Los Angeles.
We have about six dye houses.
We dye everything here.
And all of our dye houses use about seven times less water as any other dye house in
the United States, which is so important to us, because we are an eco-conscious company.
We really take pride in having that culture.
Especially here in California where our water regulations are really strict.
Because of those strict regulations, we definitely align with everything that our customers value.
Yeah, one of your slogans is “Be different.”
“Be different”, yeah.
That’s really cool that you’re actually paying attention to what you’re doing and
putting out into the world.
That’s really cool that that’s a part of your whole system.
So step one is the fabric is dyed, now it’s here - what happens next?
Yes, once we receive the fabric, everything gets taken over to our cutting floor which
I’m going to take you over to right now.
We have the biggest state-of-the-art cutting floor in North America.
We have twenty five cutting tables on our floor right now.
We’re actually expanding and we’re going to have fifty cutting tables in about six
more months.
So adding twenty five more.
At a time on the table it cuts through about a hundred and fifty layers of fabric.
At a time it’s probably cutting about six or seven thousand units.
Crazy!
And then that’s the same on the rest of these tables here - which, like i said, we
have 25 of.
So this is the spool from earlier in the warehouse that’s laid out and there’s a hundred
and fifty layers.
Yes, this right here.
And with this is is going to be all larges or does it do multiple sizes at the same time?
That’s a really good question.
We actually do multiple sizes to make sure we can use the most amount of fabric at a
time.
Oh, cool.
It’s like a big Tetris piece.
Yes.
Mainly we’re laying patterns out by small, medium, large, and that actually allows us
to use the most amount of fabric.
We recycle everything, nothing goes to waste.
Everything that isn’t being made into a tee is loaded up in these recycle bins, and
it’s picked up daily.
So we have truckloads picking up all of our excess fabrics.
That also ties into our eco-conscious mindset.
We really take pride in making sure that we recycle everything and nothing goes to waste.
You saw how we cut everything, so everything is either being shipped to Central America
to be sewn, or brought over to our sewing floor just right across the street.
We have about two hundred employees on tour floor right here and each sewer specializes
in sewing a certain part of the shirt.
So one sewer might only sew the sleeves or the neck, or the side seams.
Whatever it may be.
But they’re really an expert at their craft and they’re sewing the exact same thing
every day.
So they’re able to actually move through so many pieces at a time.
And I’m sure that helps with the quality and consistency because they know what they’re
doing.
Exactly.
They’re moving through a ton of pieces.
You have more sewing facilities outside the US, right?
You’re a USA hybrid production company.
Yes, the hybrid is that we’re cutting everything here in Los Angeles, sewing some of our goods
here, shipping everything else to Central America, Nicaragua and Guatemala to be exact.
And each location is sweatshop free.
100% sweatshop free.
But the USA hybrid production is something we take pride in, and a lot of our customers
don’t really know how much we actually manufacture here, so it’s good that we’re actually
able to show you.
Once the shirt is sewn, it’s brought over to our trimming table.
This table is where they trim all the loose threads, making sure that everything is perfect
to be put onto our floor.
Once they look for the loose threads, then they’re taking it to the last round of quality
control.
Our quality control looks for any off-cuts, anything that’s died incorrectly, but mainly
everything’s being caught in the first round of quality control.
We just make sure that we take it through a last round before it’s being boxed up
and taken across the street to our fulfillment center.
Where are we at right now?
We’re here at our Bella + Canvas fulfillment center and this is where we stock about 50
million units on our floor, ready to ship.
It’s definitely really exciting for us to show you everything that we have here on our
floor and how we’re expanding.
So let’s go, check it out!
Yeah, this place is huge!
We have 50 million units on our floor right now and each row has a million units.
Yes.
So this row right here has a million, and as you can see, we have so many rows that
go all the way down to the end.
And we just expanded our warehouse, we’re adding so many more units by the day.
And we’re getting so many shipments in and out of here daily.
So these are all ready to go?
Yes, these are palettes that are ready to get shipped out.
Can you tell me how the fulfillment process works for you guys?
I actually have Alejandro here who’s the head of our stock team.
Hey Alejandro.
So he places the orders for us and then it comes to you guys.
Yes.
Once he places the order, what happens?
You guys actually place orders daily.
Yeah.
Alejandro and I are pretty close, we talk almost every day.
The process from when you guys send in your PO, when we input that order into our system,
the order gets sent over to our fulfillment center.
The order is processed and it’s sent to any of our pickers.
Each of our pickers has a scanner and the scanner will show the order confirmation with
the style, color, size.
And the scanner takes the picker to the exact location where this style, color lives.
So it makes it so easy for our pickers to find the correct style and color, and pick
that order in a timely manner so that we can get it shipped out, and you can put it on
your site.
Excellent!
State of the art!
State of the art, yes.
Thank you so much to Carissa and our friends at Bella + Canvas for showing us around today!
It was so cool to see how their shirts are made from the beginning to the end.
If you’d like to check out which products we carry from Bella + Canvas, we have links
in the description below.
And if you want to learn more about Bella + Canvas, there’s a link there too.
www.printful.com