Naima
In. I’ve had somebody come up to me and say, I really want this skirt, but it’s $75, and put it back. Three minutes later, somebody else came up and bought that $75 skirt.
Zahiyya
Welcome to the Designers, Plans and Coffee Podcast, where we discuss how to succeed as a designer while staying true to yourself, finding peace in the process, and making money doing what we love. Subscribe on YouTube and wherever you get your podcast. Let’s get into it.
Naima
Welcome back.
Zahiyya
All right, Naima, this is you.
Naima
We survived our first episode.
Zahiyya
Yes, we did. Tangents and all.
Naima
Listen, technical difficulties, all the stuff you don’t get to see. But today, I am going to welcome everybody into this colorful world of Fearless Threats. Don’t look at me as inspiration. I did not bring any fearless threads with me today, but next episode, next episode. But we’re all wearing – I got some cover. I got a headband on. On. We’re wearing fearless threads. So fearless threads is my brainchild to take these African print fabrics and make them into something that is wearable, but is wearable for a person who is not so bold as they would put on full African print head to toe. I decided to go into accessories. I always get people who say, I really want to wear African African but I think it’s too much for work. I always say, start with earrings. Make your tote bag, your color statement. I have cultivated this baby. This baby has been two or three different things until I found exactly what my niche is. I found what my top products are. I did it. It took a long time to get here. It took some tears. It took some, I’m going to quit. It took took This is the power of divine intervention.
Naima
Every time I wanted to quit, something major happened. I was going to quit, and I got a call from one of my friends to do a collection for a museum shop, and they were going to do it outright. It was no commission. They were going to buy my products to sell in the museum shop. I was like, Okay, I’m not going to quit. I get it. I had to put together this presentation and go present it at the museum. I was… On the outside, I was On the inside, I was like, I’m going to cry in the car. But I left my mark. I was like, Oh, my goodness, my stuff is in a museum shop. I took the whole family, we’re extra. Then that just turned into this love of bringing this color and this culture. Everybody who knows me knows I love Black people. I’m rooting for everybody Black. I am all Black all the time. Ups and downs, and tribulations, I made it and I’m here and I’m not in Target yet, but that is my five-year plan. I’m going to start small and hopefully get myself into Amazon in the next year.
Naima
My mission right now is to see what product I want to put on Amazon Handmaid. That is easy for me to recreate since I still do all of the work myself. But that’s the next big thing is going to be Amazon Handmaid. Look out for it. Look out for it, everybody. Amazon Handmaid is coming in 2024. I don’t know when in 2024, but it’s coming. That’s a glimpse into the world of Naima and the world of Fearless Threads and what I do.
Zahiyya
If someone wanted to do what you do and they had no experience, how would you tell them to start?
Naima
If you have a product and you believe in your product and you know your product is good, find your space. I started out my very first business and how I got into doing pop-ups. I’m in the DC DC and there was a market called Fenton Street Market. And my mother, my ride-or-die, my road dog, my very first market, I had a a I had a convertible Beatle, right? I had a round roundtable. We went to Ames or somewhere that morning and bought a tent. No weights, no nothing. And at the time I was making baby quilts because that was going to be the next big thing. All this work, baby quilts. I was selling a baby quilt for $65. We won’t go into that. But I I went this was the before I – If you.
Zahiyya
Want to get back to that one, I’m going to bring.
Naima
Them back. Right. This was before I found my niche, though. Niche, though. Was before I started having exclusively African prints. But that’s where I started to develop this brand and cultivate this brand. In two years after that very first pop-up, I still have my very first dollar May dollar May my sister and I sat down and we decided to rebrand. We threw darts at the wall. We wrote words. Then I said, I like I but I want it to be soft and strong. It was Fearless Threads. Fearless Threads was born. We had this pink and black logo. A couple of years later, everybody knew me from this pink and black and black again, I jumped out there and I did these pop-ups. It was at one of these pop-ups, a shop was like, We want to sell your stuff. I was like, Okay, what you need? Take whatever you want off the table. We wrote on a piece of paper what they took, what the commission was. We signed it. I was in a shop. As shop. Started doing more pop-ups in the neighborhood, more and more people was like, You’re in such and such shop.
Naima
You’re the pink and black lady. It became this thing that I was this pink and black lady. I will say will look, roundabout way to get you all know I can talk, to get back to the question at hand is jump out there. You have to try it. You have to put your toe in. You also have to be prepared for, This costs too much. Why does this cost so much? Oh, my God. Can I get it for? Well, can you make you make it Well, why did you use this color thread? You have to have the will and the thickest skin ever to get in this business and to put yourself out there to talk to people in that way, because some people just don’t want to see you successful. I don’t think they do it intentionally. I think it’s just that mentality of they expect black businesses to not have quality.
LaTisha
Some of them do it intentionally.
Naima
I’m being politically correct.
Zahiyya
They a lot of- We got to.
Naima
Be real for the- No, keep it real. Okay, a lot of them do it intentionally. I have been at a pop-up, and I’ve had somebody come up to my booth and pick something up and turn around and tell her friend, Oh, you can make this.
Zahiyya
Make.
Naima
She did. I’ve had somebody come up to me and say, I really want this skirt, but it’s $75, and put it back. Three minutes later, somebody else came up and bought that $75 skirt. You can’t let that let affect you and it’s going to affect to and you’re going to cry. But you’re going to going and you’re going to write it in the sand and you’re going to let it wash it and you’re going to get right back out there that next weekend and you’re going to do it do and you’re going to keep doing it and you’re going to get a following. It’s easier now with social media. When I was doing this, I had to take flyers to different places and say, Fenton Street Market is this weekend. Come see me at Fenton Street Market. Now it’s a lot easier to put yourself out there. It’s just a lot of work. You have to be prepared for the work that goes into it. I was working a full-time job. I was coming home and I would saw until midnight, and then I would get up and go to work the next the next I’d have to stop and go to the grocery store.
Naima
And life still goes on outside of all of that creating. But the one thing for me is I have very, very good support system of family and friends who have been with me since day one. Day one. Through this brand, I’ve made new friends through this brand who are still with me to this day and who come to everything I do and who buy stuff even when they don’t. They have a million of that thing. You got to believe in yourself and you got to jump out there. You got to try.
Zahiyya
I’m going to circle back to the.
Naima
First thing that you did. I thought you would forget.
Zahiyya
The first thing you did that you charged $65 for a quilt that took you how long to make?
Naima
A crib size crib.
Zahiyya
That.
Naima
Was nine blocks. In quilting world, a block is that one square. So I would design each block, and I picked up quilting from my mother, my mother quilt. I would design each design and I would put it in. You got to do the do and you got to do the middle the and you got to sew through all those all and you got to bind it off $65 until a lady at my job asked me to make two quilts for her. And I told her the price and she said, That’s insane. That’s insane. Gave me $200. Exactly. And Exactly. Her own materials. But you have to not be afraid to price the things at what they’re worth. They’re worth. Was my thing. I’ve always struggled with pricing my pricing I’m like, Oh, my gosh, nobody’s going to want it. Then someone said to me, I think it was my sister said to me one time, The people who that don’t want to pay that aren’t your people.
Zahiyya
Exactly. See, that’s what I wanted to get to get my thing is pricing a quilt that took me I don’t I how many hours to make. Not hours.
Naima
Not hours. Days.
LaTisha
That’s.
Zahiyya
Not even not the fabric.
Naima
It takes about four hours just to cut it out. That’s not even intricate. You live and learn. You’re young and young and live and learn. I stopped making quilts very, very fast.
Zahiyya
Exactly. I don’t make quilts because of the time that it takes. I give it to people that do it because I’ve seen some intricate stuff, and they cost money.
Naima
I have a very dear friend who makes art quilts. That is her business. And she takes her quilted pieces, which she will sell the originals, but she makes print out of these quilted pizzas. You can see the texture in these prints that she does. Again, it’s all about Black people and things like that, but to watch her thought process, to me, is amazing. I told her one day, I’m going to curate a show for you. I don’t know when it’s going to happen. We might both be in a wheelchair, but I am going to curate a show for you.
Zahiyya
And does she do this as a full-time thing, or does she do this as a hobby? Does she sell the stuff?
Naima
Oh, she sells it. She’s like me. She’s a doer. So she works and then she does her art part-time. So the one big takeaway is, if you think your product is worth $250, you put $250 on that price tag and your people will come.
Zahiyya
I have a question. For someone who’s never done this before, if you buy fabric for maybe $5 a yard and you use about a half a yard of that fabric and it takes you about an hour to make it, what’s your markup? How do you charge it?
Naima
See, for See, it’s tricky because I am guilty of not paying myself. One of my smallest pieces takes the most work. I make a cross body, cross body probably has six pieces and a zip. And I’m doing that twice. So I’m doing the lining and I’m doing the outside of the bag and putting the zip the I’m putting the hardware the hardware I charge $50 for it. But I charge $50 for it because although it’s a lot of pieces, it’s scraps. So I’m not using actual fabric pieces. So I make a tote bag. The tote bag, I’ll say, is probably about three quarters of a yard. So we’ll say it’s a yard. I buy my buy my yards for $15, or $12 to $15, depending on the quantity that I buy. I’m running about $3 a yard. I’ll sell that tote bag for $25. It’s not the labor so much as to the amount of fabric that I’m using, because if I was to charge for my labor, and I also assembly line saw, so I can’t even really say it takes me an hour to make a tote bag, because I might I five outsides of tote bag an hour.
Naima
Then in the next hour, I might sew the next hour I might I the inside. And then the next the I might take two hours to put them all together. But that doesn’t even get into the labeling and the packaging and the ironing. The ironing. The ironing, I don’t know why I picked up hobby with ironing. It’s my least favorite chore. But even if you get into the minutia of it, I got to use interfacing. I got to buy zippers. You want to get really technical? I have to buy thread. To get into all those very fine details and say, I used 36 inches of thread off of a spool of 300 yards of thread. It’s just too much for me. The math don’t math in my head. I just charge what I want to charge and people pay what they want to pay. This earring that I have on, I’m going to take it off so we can hold it up. This earring, this is a scrap. This is a quarter inch piece of fabric, and I don’t know if you could see it. But with this particular one, I had some leftover whole leather, vinyl.
Naima
I said, I’m going to combine them. This is the biggest size earring I make. This is bigger than the ones you’re wearing right here. I charge $45 for $45 Yeah, this is the size of your head. I charge $45 for $45 for these.
Naima
I get carpal tunnel wrap in these things.
Zahiyya
Yeah, it’s labor intensive.
Naima
I had a lady ask me one time, how come the earrings cost more than a bag? I said, Because they’re more work.
Zahiyya
You got to charge for your labor.
Naima
Yes.
Zahiyya
No, get No, get stuff now before prices go prices because we got to talk.
Naima
No, actually, I calculate my labor differently than this hourly rate. I can’t say that I would, because quite honestly, in my professional life, I was making $60 an hour. An hour. Never going to compare to that. And because I love what I do and I know people are going to buy it, I price accordingly.
Zahiyya
You price what the market will bear.
Naima
A lot of times I will go on competitor sites like Etsy. I’ll look at look at and I’ll see what people are charging for something similar. And I’ll meet in the middle because some people will charge $10 for that same tote bag that I make, and some people will charge $50 for that tote bag that I make. So I’m going to meet in the middle because that’s because that’s for me. It might take me an hour to 40 minutes to make one if I made one. Now you have me thinking, I’m going to make one from start to finish in time myself and see how long it takes me to make one just because you’re on my butt right now. Now it’s different for the way I work, how I price my things. Find a good wholesaler. Do not go to go unless it’s absolutely, positively necessary. If you go to Joanne, wait for a sale and buy in bulk. So when the fabrics that I use for lining are 2.99, which they are this weekend, I’m going to buy 10 yards. I don’t have to buy lining for the rest of the season. Interfacing is 50% off.
Naima
I’m going to buy a boat. That’s 15 yards of interface.
Zahiyya
It’s not just the fabric that you buy in bulk and bulk and the not the notions and the hardware and stuff.
Naima
I buy zippers in bulk. I buy bag handles in bulk. I buy I I buy big spools of thread from the sewing supplier. I buy everything. I try to save so much money on the on the that I’m comfortable charging what I charge. I can always charge more.
Zahiyya
Aside from the pop-up shops, you do have a website?
Naima
I do have a website. It is
lovefearlessthreads.com. It’s open 24 hours.
Zahiyya
I’m saying get it now because our price is going.
Naima
To go up. Next episode, I’m going to come back with an actual time of how long it takes me to make a tote bag. Probably should be $200. At some of my events, I’ll do a do a design bag, where I have my Swatch book and people can actually pick what they want their bag to look like, and I will create that bag. I do not charge extra for design your own because it’s the same amount.
Zahiyya
Of work. It’s the.
Naima
Same amount of work.
Zahiyya
The word custom, bespoke, all of those things.
Naima
Demand.
Zahiyya
Is upsell. You have to charge more just because it’s custom. That’s why I stopped I for people.
Naima
That’s why I don’t I don’t sow I don’t.
LaTisha
Think people actually get the graphs, the full concept of what you can get, let’s say, a $200 dress in the store, you come to one of us, it’s not $200. The fabric alone is more than $200.
Zahiyya
It depends on the type of fabric you get.
LaTisha
It depends on the fabric you get, especially, let’s say, for these proms or weddings.
Naima
Weddings. That’s a $1,000 off the top for a prom dress. Not even a wedding dress is $5,000.
LaTisha
That’s the fabric. I haven’t even included what my fees are. So yeah, my labor fees.
Naima
We’ll say, well, my custom jackets, I charge. I do a custom bomber. Depending on if you get the full leather or not, they start at $200.
Zahiyya
That’s the starting price, depending on what you want to add to it.
Naima
Clothes for that reason because people don’t understand what goes into making clothes. When I teach adults, they’re like, Oh, wow, you have to do all these steps. This is what pants look like? Look like? What we do.
Zahiyya
Tess, would know, because it’s just like the fit to get the fit right. Fit so many versions of trying to get the fit right, because that’s why you do customs, because you want it because it fits your body the way it’s Because you want it to fit.
Naima
As women of color, a lot of my adult sewing clients are not small, medium, large, extra large. I have a lot of 2X, of 3X, if you can imagine, trying to fit a commercial pattern on a 4X. Now, 4X. Started including sizes 24, 26, larger sizes. One of them actually asked me, and this is at my part-time job, Can you ask them to do a do a class so we can learn how to grade our own things? I said, That’s a really good idea, and I will propose that idea to them. However, plug-plug, come to me for private lessons. That’s right.
LaTisha
Listen, teach you how.
Naima
To – Just gone mobile. Fearless Threads Sewing Academy is mobile. We’ll come to you.
Zahiyya
I mean, ideas are Ideas That’s what it what it you bring the machine and.
Naima
Everything to the people? A lot of my people have machines that they want to learn how to use. But I do always suggest to people before you buy a machine, take a sewing class to see if you actually like actually like ain’t just pushing the pedal down and sewing a straight line. I have adults that can’t sew a straight line.
Zahiyya
And you need to sew a straight line for your pattern your fit. Because all the cutting in the world and fitting in the world, if you can’t sew a straight line, you’re too long and it’s not going to fit you.
Naima
But I do love that people are getting more interested in making their own clothes. I think having to make masks made people a lot more interested in sewing again. I have a lot of people who say, who my grandmother used to sew, and she taught me, but I didn’t want to learn back learn back so now I want to learn. On the flip side, I get a lot of retirees who need something to do. They like to quilt. I don’t quilt. We’ve talked about my very brief career as a quilter, not for me. First of all, the pieces are too small.
LaTisha
Too I can get some beautiful quilts.
Naima
Oh, they make some beautiful quilts. A lot of the quilters that I work with at my part-time job are determined to make me quilt. I’m like, not going to have you want to see somebody throw a tantrum? Try to get me to quilt something. But I’ve done it. I tried it. I am one of those people who will try a craft. I also crotchet, Fearless Knits, on the on the website,
lovefearlessthreads.com. Right now, it’s just hats and scarves. I have made a sweater. It came out doll size, so we’re working on proportions. I ended up giving it to my mother because I was like, I don’t know if it was large that this pattern was supposed to fit, but it is not this large.
LaTisha
Oh, my God.
Naima
That is funny.
LaTisha
But you know what? I understand. I knitted. It was supposed to be a poncho. The opening was like the size for the neck. I’d like this. It’s just a little mistake. I stitched it closed. Now we have a blanket.
Naima
Exactly. I tell all my kids all the time, the sew on the inside of our fabric to hide.
Zahiyya
To hide and error, man. Trial and error. And error.
Naima
What It is a thing. I just made a jumpsuit for my part-time job. We’re pattern testing. We’re in testing stages right now. When I tell you that crotch was so short, we just got a good laugh out of that in the fitting. I was like, I don’t know who they made this for. Yeah, it’s fun. It’s funny that we can sit here and share these stories. I hope it’s inspirational that we can sit here and share these stories. I would love for people who are listening to send us send or if you have specifics about a topic or something you want us to talk about, I would love for you to send that to us. You can be a whole episode. Or if you want to come on as a guest, we may be able to accommodate you. I think the beauty of being able to do this is being able to share it. And I tell people all the time, I would teach anybody how to sell. If you don’t have money, it’s fine. I prefer money. But yeah, I think that it is imperative is imperative a transferable skill. And I say that because when the big C came and people couldn’t work, everybody was panicking.
Naima
I panicking. I I mess. I bulk a to a wellness center. I had that to fall back. But to get to selling those masks to a wellness center, I donated probably about 300. So I also believe in paying it forward.
LaTisha
Absolutely.
Naima
I went in my fabric stach and I had a lot of fabrics from before I went exclusively African print. I took all of that stuff that I don’t use anymore and I may mess. I just would walk around to the grocery store and just give them to anybody who anybody because they weren’t concerned about people who had to work in these public places.
Zahiyya
Yeah. I mean, when it started, nobody knew what knew what everybody was going around and the people that had to work had to work. It was unfortunate.
Naima
They weren’t even getting them partitioned. I made them, I washed them, I put on gloves and packaged them, and I would just would them out because it was a lot. It’s hard to watch. You expect me to be in this grocery store working with people breathing down my face with a disease that if somebody looks at me hard, I can catch.
Zahiyya
Exactly. We know more about it now, but at the time, it was scary. Right.
Naima
And me with elderly parents, it was like, What to do.
Zahiyya
You do? One thing I do like about what we’re doing here on this platform is when we were younger, you didn’t see us, women of color in the fashion industry. I’m sure they were there. It’s just that there was no social media. Thing is like seeing us now at the places that we are, you can do it too. Anybody can do it. Anything that you want to ask to make your journey any easier, we have altogether what, 75-plus years of experience, which is crazy.
Naima
Yes. We have very unique areas of expertise. We all know how to how to do the same thing. Right.
Zahiyya
Right. Everyone has their zone of genus, know what I’m saying? I’m saying? Everyone goes into the fashion industry saying they want to be a fashion designer, but there’s so many other things that you can do that don’t require being a fashion designer. We want to get into that stuff a little bit later, but everybody doesn’t have to be a fashion designer.
Naima
Exactly.
Zahiyya
And still use your creativity.
Naima
Because I know how to do technical design. Do I want to? No. I want to want
Keeping you in Stitches to make sure my fit is correct.
Zahiyya
I know how to do specs, but I don’t like to.
Naima
I’m like, Hey, Tish.
Zahiyya
I need.
Naima
You can do that. We talked about that. I write pattern instructions. You don’t want to write pattern write I.
Zahiyya
Don’t want to.
Naima
Put this thing together.
Zahiyya
Thing together. I’ll I’m going to.
LaTisha
I don’t want to design anything, any textiles. No.
Naima
I want a new print, exclusive print. I’m calling
Zahiyya at Cover Me Chic.
Zahiyya
There’s so many different things that you can do in this industry. Yes, it is. And make money.
Naima
Make really good money. We’ll like to say, though, we need to put the disclaimer out there. It’s not instant gratification. You’re going to have to grunt.
Zahiyya
It’s a lot of work. The thing is, especially in the industry, just in New York, people can really test you. My thing is like, we’ve all done it, but we want to keep the peace mentally. You want to make the money so you can support your family, but you also want to do it with the creative thing. That’s what we’re trying to tell the people. You can have it all, but it’s the way to go and navigate it.
Naima
The reason why I started Fearless Threads and I am a brand of one is because it’s really hard to find people who want to do the grunt. Everybody thinks they’re going to come in and just automatically make all this money and not have to grunt. I’m like, no, I need you to spend these three hours that you’re here with this rotary cutter and that fabric and that pattern that I just made. That’s what I need for focus on today. But they don’t want these youngsters. It’s the Instagram lifestyle. I think social media is a blessing and a curse.
Zahiyya
Exactly. Exactly.
LaTisha
They think it’s Project Runway. Listen, you all, it’s the a lot more that you need to know and you need to be able to do it.
Naima
That’s why we’re here.
Zahiyya
Join us on the next podcast episode. We’ll go into what each of us do and hope you come on a journey with us.
Naima
Send us questions, like, follow, share. Tish, you want to sign us off?
LaTisha
Until next time, we will see you all.
