Selfmade Modal

public source · not yet founder-confirmed · Dec 2021 · 🇻🇳 Vietnam (Da Nang) · Manufacturing · founding team

Low-minimum clothing manufacturing in Da Nang

A factory that takes small orders; the first customers were referred by one old friend in Australia, and the local market turned out to be the wrong one.

Business
Clothing manufacturer with low minimum order quantities (Yoke Apparel Manufacturing)
Founder
Jesse James (with his wife)
Started
June 2019
Start-up capital
US$20,000
Revenue
US$23,000/month (December 2021); about US$276k/year
Team
30 employees (2021)

Numbers are ranges or the figure the source published; we never publish a founder's documents.

Source, pinpointed

Starter Story — We Moved To Vietnam And Started A $276K/Year Clothing Manufacturing Business
founder interview (Starter Story) · Dec 2021

Cross-check: no second public source found yet; a Starter Story or press snippet is added when one exists.

First customers — the part nobody publishes

Channel: A friend's referral, then his referrals

What didn't work: Serving the local Vietnamese market (uncompetitive); early fabric, pattern and sizing mistakes.

“A good friend in Australia that I hadn't spoken with for a long time contacted me about making stuff for his company. From that, he referred most of our original customers.”
— Jesse James (with his wife), founder interview (Starter Story), Dec 2021

Starter Story, December 2021: the founders moved to Vietnam, hired at-risk local women through community partners, and were running within fifteen days. Servicing Vietnam locally was uncompetitive; international small-batch orders were the business.

Would it work in…

The same idea, other markets — our read from the database's country filters, not a forecast.

  • Jakarta — likely — Bandung's garment cluster is the equivalent
  • Manila — maybe — labour cost higher, export logistics thinner

Similar ideas in the database

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    Verified with the founder where marked · numbers as ranges · founders anonymised on request · corrections to [email protected] · ← the database