With 15 years of experience, I was lucky enough to touch many parts of creative and one that I really enjoyed was designing gear/accessories. I also was able to get an understanding of the purchasing of the materials, warehouse storage, materials, and even the division of sizes for a shirt, pants, etc. I also worked with many vendors from Keezer Sportswear to CIA to Gator Cases. The purchaser George who I worked with knew everything and was willing to help me learn a lot about gear and accessories and really get me to think past the design and into the process that is behind it.

1. When you are creating gear that is on trend you are already too late!
   Every time we would see gear that was being sold by the biggest gear companies like Nike and clothing companies like Old Navy and Urban Outfitters we would start development of the gear. The problem being that from idea to selling there are many steps that lead that tending items to already be sitting in their clearance bin once you just launched it! The balance was also that you wanted to sell gear that appealed to a young audience but in reality, you had most of the people buying gear being in there 40 to 50s.

2. Sometimes the best-selling gear is when you just keep it simple.
When I rank even the gear that I created in the 10 years at Zildjian, they were the simplest designs or ideas. When I did one of my first shirts, it was a military green t-shirt with a stretched Zildjian logo with the Turkish logo. Simple not exciting and it was the biggest seller in the catalog for many years. Why, simple and color. It was the only green t-shirt in a sea of black, white, and grey. It stood out. A later example is the design I did for the Zildjian practice pad. Again using the Turkish logo and Zildjian logo with red and black for a creative that was simple but even as I write this, it is still selling and selling well.

3. Spend just as much time on the photography/marketing as you do the actual gear

It is a very common issue with marketing and launching a product. When you spend so much time on the gear/accessory, you quickly get photos/copy and you launch it. The problem is that the product could be amazing but not spending enough on description and photography that is more exciting, you are already putting your product at a disadvantage. You need to spend just as much time, if not more on those elements. Also marketing to consider people to promote, influencers, real people, real scenarios. Along with contests and other promotions to get the gear out there.

4. Way more variables than you would expect, even for a t-shirt

When I first designed gear, I was just thinking color of item, design on it, that was it. It is way more than that. Just using a t-shirt as an example, you are looking at material, cut, sizes, country of materials, country of manufacturing, printing ink, tags on the shirt, legal considerations, shipping/distribution, timing, and packaging. Just looking at material, cotton, cotton/polyester, acetate. Then cotton, Egyptian, Pima, etc. These factors also add to the challenge of getting the right materials, the right.

5. When you are getting feedback, it needs to be people who would actually buy the gear.

When you are a good collaborator, you are able to collect feedback and prevent designing in a vacuum but understand your sources. People in the office are good sounding boards but not necessarily the audience that is actually buying your gear. You need to connect with actual users of your gear. You can create a contest, promotion, or surveys that help know your audience and ask those questions. The toughest challenge is actually using that data. Sometimes it will tell you not what you want to hear and may cause you to hit the reset but it is better than going into production and then having to throw them into the clearance bin.