Category: Press

Softline Brand Partners Expands Capabilities with Acquisition of Daylight Factory in Detroit, Michigan

Minneapolis, MN – Softline Brand Partners, a leading manufacturing company, is thrilled to announce its acquisition of Daylight Factory. A prominent high-end manufacturer based in Detroit, this company serves designers and brands, including but not limited to Ghurka and Tandy Leather. This strategic move marks a significant milestone in Softline Brand Partners’ expansion plans. Additionally, it strengthens its position as a leader in the industry.

Softline Brand Partners Expand Capabilities with Acquisition of Daylight Factory in Detroit, Michigan

Daylight Factory has built a strong reputation for its innovative sampling approach, automated cutting equipment, and production.

This acquisition aligns perfectly with Softline Brand Partners’ growth strategy, leveraging the synergies between the two organizations. Softline Brand Partners’ extensive global reach and resources combine well with Daylight Factory’s sampling and development. The partnership aims to deliver greater client value and expand its market presence.

Welcoming Daylight Factory to Softline

“We are excited to welcome Daylight Factory into the Softline Brand Partners’ family,” said Adam Blitzer, CEO of Softline Brand Partners. “Their exceptional creative capabilities and deep understanding of automated cutting equipment complement our existing strengths and enable us to offer our clients more comprehensive and impactful solutions.”

Clients can expect a seamless transition and an enhanced suite of services as Daylight Factory integrates with Softline Brand Partners’ resources.

“I am excited to fit into such a strong organization and access their well-developed infrastructure and partnerships. I am also excited to leverage my background in education and work with the staff to create an even stronger base of skills,” said Darrin Brouhard, Founder and Creative Director of Daylight Factory.

Before opening the factory, Darrin was a Senior Pattern and Sample Maker at Shinola. He was also an adjunct professor at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit.

The acquisition of this company is a testament to Softline Brand Partners’ commitment to growth and innovation in the manufacturing industry.

About Softline Brand Partners

Softline Brand Partners is a leader in soft goods manufacturing. Softline offers flexibility and scalability with domestic and overseas factories, benefitting companies of all sizes seeking cut and sew. Additionally, Softline Brand Partners empowers organizations to build strong, meaningful connections.

About Daylight Factory

Daylight Factory is a sampling and cut-and-sew operation based in Detroit, specializing in design, development, sampling, and production. With a passion for innovation and a commitment to delivering exceptional results, this company has established itself as a trusted partner for local and national clients.

For media inquiries, please contact:

Rayna Tan

Softline Brand Partners Phone: (844) 468-4260

Email: press@softlinebrandpartners.com

Softline to Manufacture Medical Masks for Coronavirus (COVID-19) with Love Your Melon Partnership

3M doubles production on N95 surgical masks, and manufacturers of everything from computer gear to wood veneers jump into producing face shields for healthcare providers. However, Love Your Melon focuses on the customers at the heart of its mission: children battling cancer. That is why it has employed the help of Softline Brand Partners and others to produce medical masks for young cancer patients and their families.

Love Your Melon Protects Young Cancer Patients from COVID-19

The Minneapolis-based knitwear brand, which rose to popularity on its mission of donating beanies to pediatric cancer patients, makes cotton fabric face masks designed to defend against COVID-19 for young patients and their parents. The company pledged 50,000 masks over the next two weeks. These donated masks go to children’s hospitals, care facilities, and nonprofits around the country that support high-risk children with cancer during the coronavirus pandemic.

Why Love Your Melon Cares About Medical Masks

“As PPG (personal protective gear) is scarce for health care workers, it’s nearly inaccessible for patients. It’s important for us to provide these, not only because of our mission to help children battling cancer, but also because we have the capability based on manufacturing products at volume in the U.S.,” LYM co-founder and president Zachary Quinn said. “Our manufacturers are proud to support these efforts and are doing them at cost while employing people who would otherwise be unemployed right now.” 

LYM’s manufacturing partners include Minnesota Knitting Mille, Softline Brand Partners, Maine Heritage Weavers, 212 New York, and others. 

Over the past two weeks, as coronavirus cases have mounted in the U.S., Quinn said the LYM team has been trying to find a way to help. Its current capabilities don’t meet medical-grade requirements. But M Health Fairview suggested patient masks.

“The cotton face masks we’re making are the best we can provide at this time,” Quinn said. Made with tightly woven cotton, the masks are machine washable and reusable. “They’re added protection from droplets and provide comfort and security to kids and families.”

“LYM will continue to monitor hospital needs,” Quinn said. “The company is thinking about ways it could transition into production of items for frontline health care providers.”

Other Ways Love Your Melon is Helping

Along with face masks, LYM ships care packages filled with coloring books, LEGOs, and superhero costumes to kids stuck in the hospital at a time when activity centers and playrooms are closed and visitors are limited due to Covid-19. A newly created page on the LYM website features educational programs, apps, and resources to keep kids engaged. 

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE

Softline Acquires the J.W. Hulme St. Paul Manufacturing Operations

St. PAUL (October 10, 2018) — J.W. Hulme Company announced today that Softline Brand Partners will acquire its St. Paul manufacturing operations. Softline will consolidate the 113-year-old leather goods company’s manufacturing operations with Softline’s operations in Minneapolis.

As a result of the transaction, J.W. Hulme will transition from in-house manufacturing to sourcing from a variety of high-quality manufacturers, including Softline. Softline plans to acquire equipment and interview all manufacturing operations employees from J.W. Hulme.

History of J.W. Hulme

Founded in St. Paul in 1905, J.W. Hulme has a rich design, craftsmanship, and customer service history. “This move will ensure that we will be able to continue to deliver on our brand promise of making heirloom-quality leather and canvas goods going forward,” said J.W. Hulme CEO Claire Powell.

Softline’s customers include some of the country’s most recognizable brands: Room & Board, Love Your Melon, Allen Edmonds, and Red Wing Shoes. The company, headquartered in Minneapolis, has plants in the USA and overseas.

“All of us at Softline Brand Partners have been fans of J.W. Hulme’s products, commitment to quality, and long-standing reputation for decades,” said Kellen Groves, COO of Softline Brand Partners. “We are excited to expand our business and team with the talented artisans from J.W. Hulme.”

“We are thrilled to have a partner in Softline that continues to grow its manufacturing operations in the Twin Cities,” said Powell. “J.W. Hulme will maintain the consistency and high quality of its products, ensuring that we continue to meet the standards that our discerning customers have come to expect.”

About J.W. Hulme Company

J.W. Hulme Co., with its rich history, has been known for its distinctive design, classic styles, and superior craftsmanship of top-quality leather goods and other men’s and women’s accessories since 1905. For more information, visit www.jwhulme.com.

About Softline Brand Partners

Softline Brand Partners is a manufacturing and supply chain company offering full-service manufacturing solutions. Headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Softline’s team is comprised of designers, sourcing specialists, project managers, and production team members. Softline works with the most recognizable brands, from startups to Fortune 500s, and has American and overseas manufacturers. Learn more about Softline here.

How Love Your Melon Scaled To $40 Million Selling U.S.-Manufactured Clothes

Softline loves seeing our partners in the news! Congratulations to Zach, Brian, and the whole Love Your Melon crew on their success. We enjoy being a Love Your Melon manufacturer and are excited to continue supporting their mission.

(By Elizabeth Macbride via Forbes)

How Love Your Melon Scaled To $40 Million Selling U.S.-Manufactured Clothes

Soon after Brian Keller and Zachary Quinn founded their $20 million company, Love Your Melon, Quinn had a conversation with his parents that helped create the company’s identity.

The duo already knew they wanted to create a company with a mission, supporting kids battling cancer. They knew they had a winning idea: Within hours of putting a post about what had been a business school project on their personal Facebook page, they had 400 likes, and they’d sold out of a batch of hats in two days. For every beanie they sold, they gave one to a child battling cancer. Then, they were looking to scale.

“We were looking for the manufacturing, I found samples made out of China,” Quinn says. At a family dinner, he remembered: “My parents were like, ‘You can’t make that outside the country!’”

Raised to be an activist child of two small business owners, Quinn changed direction.

Minnesota-based Love Your Melon, which now in addition to beanies makes scarves, mittens, caps and T-shirts, among other things — is about delivering a product, and about creating a community. In Facebook and other social media, Love Your Melon found the perfect advertising vehicle. Its typical return on a Facebook ad is seven – for every $100 it spends, it sees $700 in orders. 

“We consider ourselves as having grown with social media,” Quinn says. He added, “As more people were getting on the platform, our ability to advertise grew.”

Love Your Melon Origins

Love Your Melon started sourcing its manufacturing in Portland, eventually built capacity in Minnesota and now works with about 40 different suppliers, including Minneapolis-based Softline Brand Partners and Minnesota Knitting Mills in St. Paul. Community became a key part of the company’s identity and its branding, much of which it does on Facebook and other social media.

Of course, companies with the best branding have always created communities – but listening to Quinn talk about Love Your Melon’s identity and its use of Facebook made me realize how much easier and faster doing so is with social media. Love Your Melon – a consumer product company – was able to scale nationally in less than five years.

Founded in 2012, the company expects to more than double its revenue this year to $45 million, and to expand from 18 to 24 employees. It spends $3-5 million a year on Facebook; it also is able, through social media, to tap a network of 14,000 ambassadors — who are compensated with Love Your Melon gear and event opportunities — on college campuses. As volunteers, they deliver hats to kids battling cancer and who are obviously great customers too. 

Facebook Strategy

Facebook remains the heart of the social media strategy. During October through March, it spends $20,000 a day on Facebook, and it’s not unusual to spend a few thousand dollars boosting a post. As Facebook as grown as a channel for news, Quinn said, it’s become more difficult for product marketers to be seen: It is a pay to play platform. “We have something like 650,000 followers,” Quinn said. “If we don’t boost a post, we’ll get no more than 1,000 views.”

It has had success on Lookalike Audiences, which Facebook introduced last year: If they have a source audience, businesses can upload a list of emails, which Facebook uses to target different, but similar users. Love Your Melon’s sweet spots are college age females, 18-24, and mothers 35-55.

Its most successful posts have been those that celebrated the company’s milestones, like the day it finished delivering hats to every child battling cancer. After that, it switched to a model of donating 50% of net profits to organizations including CureSearch for Children’s Cancer, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Be The Match, Make-A-Wish America, Ronald McDonald House Charities.Love Your Melon’s community apparently appreciate’s irony. Its most successful Facebook post ever was when it bought its first billboard. “Which is really odd,” Quinn said. “What was a standard ad on the side of the highway, was most effective on social media.”

7 Tips for Scaling a Company with Facebook

Here are seven tips for scaling a company using Facebook:

1. Pay attention to ROI.

In order to produce the highest ROI we use different strategies across different types of ads. When prospecting, we use canvas and video ads in order to educate and engage the user.  Then we are able to create audiences based on anyone engaging with the Canvas or video to retarget them in the future with types of ads that convert at a higher rate,” said Brian Keller, Love Your Melon’s co-founder. He added that dynamic product ads have had a return on ad spend of 8.2 times over the last 6 months. “We also serve website link, carousel, and collection ads to our retargeting audiences because they convert the highest once a user has been introduced to our brand and knows the story. These types of ads being served to our retargeting audiences have seen a return on ad spend of 8X and during the holiday season, up to 11X.”

2. Be authentic.

Regardless of how many advertising dollars you have to spend, the aim isn’t to sell a product, it’s to establish a relationship with your community. The irony is that when you shift your focus away from selling, you will sell more. “Everything we post needs to be happening then, needs to be relevant to our community,” Quinn says. Its biggest advertising hits are milestone posts – for instance, when the company successfully gave a beanie to every kid battling cancer.

3. Keep it simple.

The company rarely tinkers too much. “If we’re setting an audience for a boosted post, it’s people who like our page or who are their friends,” Quinn says. Similarly, it rarely tinkers with the audience information it gives Facebook for Lookalike Audiences.

4. Create good content.

“Quality eats everything else, especially in this day and age,” Quinn says. “They see so much, and their attention spans are so short.” If you don’t invest in quality, you might as well flush your money down the tube. “We do five photoshoots a week all around the country, which turns into content for social media and advertising.” A third of the employees work on the manufacturing; a third work on operations, and a third work in marketing – which is mostly the content creation.

5. Experiment and shift. 

Consumer tastes change. For a time, Quinn says, click-bait articles were the most effective strategy, though he added that Love Your Melon didn’t use them. High-quality photographs have been powerful for a while; now, Love Your Melon is shifting resources to video. “We’ve found the most effective is six-second videos,” Quinn said. But the secret isn’t any specific medium; it’s being in tune to your customers’ tastes. So the content Love Your Melon creates might be about an event at a local restaurant, or a post about one of its college ambassadors on a trip.

6. Do it yourself.

Quinn advises against hiring a marketing agency. In the rapidly changing world of social media, “nobody knowns what they’re doing,” he said. It takes more time to coordinate an outside agency than it’s worth; his inside team which is immersed in the company’s culture can do the same work by experimenting.

7. And maybe, listen to your parents.

“Mine are the most supportive any entrepreneur could want,” Quinn said. This year, in part because his parents had always talked about the Aspen Ideas Festival, Love Your Melon was a sponsor. Quinn spoke on a panel about U.S. manufacturing. His parents, who are restaurateurs in St. Paul, are joining him in Aspen for the second half of the week. “My parents go to work every day still, and they are almost 70,” Quinn said. “You will find them in Café Latte and Bread and Chocolate. My dad will be bussing tables and my mother will be tweaking recipes.”

Who is Softline?

Softline Brand Partners, a soft goods manufacturing industry leader, offers integrated design and manufacturing solutions. Softline Brand Partners ensures each detail is crafted with precision and quality, perfectly embodying your brand’s identity. Contact us for expert assistance in developing patches and labels that resonate with your brand’s message and appeal.