Like a lot of the best apparel brands, this one didn't start in a boardroom. It started with two dads who were avid fishermen and a kid who needed a sun shirt. When they couldn't find quality performance apparel that actually fit the youngest member of the family, they decided to make it themselves. A decade and change later, what began as a side project for the founders and their wives had become a beloved children's outdoor brand with a growing wholesale footprint and a fiercely loyal community of families.
But growth has a way of surfacing the cracks in your operations. By the time this brand came to MakeMine, their production volumes had outpaced what their original supplier could reliably deliver. They were beginning to suspect they were being misled on fabric quality. They needed a partner who could restore trust in the product, scale with their ambition, and take enough off their plate that the founders could get back to what they actually love: making great gear and getting kids outside.
Since the partnership began in 2019, the brand:
When a brand is growing, every weak link in the supply chain gets stress-tested. This one had an especially painful one: they weren't sure their fabric was what the label said it was.
It's the kind of problem that's easy to miss until it isn't. Parents buy performance apparel because they're promised real performance. Sun protection, softness, durability through the washer and dryer cycle no child's wardrobe escapes. If the fabric doesn't match spec, the brand promise doesn't match the product. And in a category where moms talk, that's not a gap you can afford.
On top of the quality concerns, the founders were running hot. They were designing, marketing, fundraising, handling wholesale accounts, and trying to manage a factory relationship across a 12-hour time zone gap. The volume they needed to hit kept climbing. The bandwidth they had to hit it did not.
They weren't looking for a vendor. They were looking for a team. One that could validate what they were actually producing, negotiate hard on their behalf, and take production and fulfillment off their plate so they could keep building the brand.
The first thing MakeMine did was pull samples of the brand's existing product and send them out for independent fabric composition testing. The results confirmed the founders' instincts: what the supplier had been telling them wasn't what they were actually making. That was hard news to hear, but it was the kind of clarity the team needed to make a confident move.
From there, MakeMine moved production to its factory partner in Dongguan, China—a facility MakeMine has worked with for years, sited right next to one of the world's deepest fabric markets. That proximity matters more than people realize. It means faster swatch sourcing, better leverage on raw material pricing, and no middleman adding days and dollars to every back-and-forth.
Because MakeMine consolidates volume across its client roster, the brand immediately benefited from better pricing than it had been quoted on its own. On that very first order, total production cost dropped from $500,000 to $400,000—a 20% reduction, without cutting corners on materials or construction. In fact, the new production came back with the fabric composition the brand had been trying (and failing) to get from its previous supplier.
MakeMine didn't stop at the factory. With the brand's US demand growing and their small team stretched thin, fulfillment moved to MakeMine's 3PL in Charlotte, NC. One inbound container, one team picking, packing, and shipping to wholesale accounts and direct-to-consumer orders alike. The founders went from managing a production partner, a freight forwarder, and a fulfillment operation—to managing one relationship.
"Adding MakeMine to our team cut my costs by 20% and improve our product quality. We can finally trust goods will be delivered on time."
With a factory partner they could trust and fulfillment off their plate, the brand put its foot on the gas. Between 2019 and 2022, annual production volume—measured both in dollars and in units shipped—climbed every single year.
That's a more than 8x increase in production value, a roughly 5x increase in units, and a 5.6x increase in SKU complexity over four years—all without the founders having to stand up their own production ops or warehouse team. Even in 2023, as the brand intentionally pruned its catalog after a record 2022, production volume held at more than 4x its pre-partnership baseline and style count continued to climb.
Beyond the numbers, the brand got back the thing most founders tell us they're missing: time. Time to build wholesale partnerships. Time to test new product categories. Time to focus on the mission that started the company in the first place—getting families outside and making memories.
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