Custom-made clothing via Ridgeland and Beijing

Nell Luter Floyd | Clarion-Ledger correspondent

Men’s clothiers throughout North America, continental Europe and Central and South America rely on the software that a Ridgeland-based business provides and the factory it owns to manufacture custom-made suits, trousers, shirts, outerwear and formalwear for their clients.

Wen Nance, who grew up in Oklahoma, studied marketing at Mississippi State University and worked in the retail custom clothing business for six years, established Trinity Apparel Group in 2003. He previously operated Latham Thomas Custom Clothiers in Highland Village, which had retail and wholesale operations.

“I wondered why no one had tried to make custom clothing offshore,” Nance said, recalling the thought that initially intrigued him. “That idea turned into a research project. Three months later, I had a 40-page business plan. That’s when the whole idea took off.”

Among Trinity's core customers are specialty retailers with brick-and-mortar stores, independent custom retailers who see clients by appointment in their offices and homes, and enterprise businesses that sell to retailers with businesses online.

Proprietary software named iDesign Studio allows clothiers to compile “look books,” which they can e-mail to clients or have them flip through using an iPad so they get an idea about how completed garments will look on them.

“The iDesign Studio part of it is really cool because customers can see things made up,” said Charlie Mozingo, a former business partner in Trinity Apparel Group. He took over the retail end of Latham Thomas Custom Clothiers, which he rebranded as Mozingo Clothiers and operates in Highland Village in Jackson.

Thirty percent of consumers who buy custom clothing do so for fit, and the rest do so to get clothing exactly as they like it, said Nance, whose wardrobe, as you would expect, is almost all custom made.

Trinity Apparel’s exclusive software known as iDesign Workflo allows a clothier to enter precise measurements, specifications about fabrics, styles and other detail options to fulfill orders.

Monte Stewart, president of Wardrobe Management & Design in Memphis, sells custom-made clothing directly to clients and uses Trinity Apparel to complete 95 percent of his orders because it offers 13,000 choices of fabrics and its technology means orders don’t have to be completed on paper and faxed in. His custom suits begin at $895, he said.

“Their software technology is the best I’ve ever worked with,” he said. “Trinity is spot on with whatever measurements you give them ... That’s what’s coming in. If there’s a mistake made, it’s my mistake.”

Orders go directly to the garment factory in Beijing that Trinity Apparel owns and operates, with the software translating measurements into the metric system and details from English into Mandarin.

“As far as we know, iDesign Custom Clothing Factory is the only American-owned custom clothing factory in China,” Nance said.

The manufacturing ended up in China after Nance contacted makers of equipment needed for the cutting and sewing operation to ask where he would find their products in use.

“The cost to produce in China has gone up dramatically, so by the time we manufacture, air freight everywhere in the world where it needs to be delivered, there’s probably not a price advantage,” he said “The reason we’re there is the skill of the workers. Truthfully in America, we don’t have enough (people who sew). We’ve lost that skill to offshore. There are pockets of it here and there.

“From a supply chain standpoint, all of the thread makers, canvas makers… all of the support is there and manufactured there.”

Garments manufactured at the factory in China are exported to the U.S, Canada, the United Kingdom, continental Europe and Central and South America.

Just to be clear: You won’t find a suit manufactured by Trinity Apparel with its label in it because the business specializes in private-label brands. “We’re not a consumer brand,” Nance said.

Trunk Club, a Chicago-based men’s clothing service purchased in 2014 for $350 million by the high-end department store chain Nordstrom Inc., uses Trinity Apparel to manufacturer the private-label garments it sells.

“The management at Nordstrom is now opening shops in shops so there is Trunk Club custom within some Nordstrom locations,” Nance said.

Nance met earlier in December with another high-end department store chain to discuss a private-label, made-to-measure clothing line.

Private-label, custom-made clothing is attractive to retailers because it’s a way they can leverage their brand, Nance said.

“No one will ever undercut your prices for the same thing,” he said. “No one comes into your market to compete with you for that brand. It’s an increasingly popular business strategy to have private branding.”

Garments that fulfill orders placed in the United States wind up in Trinity Apparel’s warehouse space that is tucked away in a business park in Ridgeland. About 900 suits and trousers plus 1,400 shirts are received each week and sent out to Trinity’s customers.

“Air freight is very expensive,” said Nance, explaining why garments aren’t shipped directly to customers from the factory. “We don’t have the relationship with the consumer. Our dealers want to deliver their clothes and do the proper fit.”

Clothes for football, baseball and golf superstars as well as television sports announcers, movie stars and other celebrities pass through the Ridgeland warehouse, but that’s a detail they would never know, Nance said.

Just a few weeks ago, someone at Trinity Apparel overnighted a tuxedo for Scott Hamilton to a dealer in Nashville who would present it to him.

“We’ve made a bunch of clothes for Hank Aaron,” Nance said, particularly around the time when Barry Bonds was about to break his record and he appeared frequently on television.

Once described as “Silicon Valley meets Savile Row,” Trinity Apparel employs 350 people in China, 11 in Ridgeland, five across the U.S, one in Canada, one in England, and six in Costa Rica. It has about 420 clients, who have placed orders in the last two seasons, quite remarkable considering it began with 25 clients.

The company has grown from doing $500,000 in business in 2004 to an expected $19 million to $20 million this year, Nance said.

Nance began the company with financing from his own bank account and family. “Through the years, we did a little bit of bank financing here and there,” he said.

In 2013, Stonehenge Growth Capital announced it had raised $14.2 million to provide debt and equity capital to Mississippi companies, with investments ranging from $500,000 to $2.5 million. Trinity Apparel received mezzanine financing through Stonehenge, Nance said.

So, what’s next for Trinity Apparel?

In January, Trinity Apparel plans to take its distribution model into domestic China. “We’re launching the iDesign platform to custom retailers in China in 2016,” he said.

Nance foresees growing the business into a lifestyle company that also manufactures made-to-measure jeans, shorts and polo shirts and offers custom-made shoes.

“One of my favorite books is a book called 'Scaling Up,'” he said. “They reference a study about impactful companies. The two companies they reference are Apple and Starbucks. … They had 25 years to perfect their (business) model.

“We’re basically 12 years old. ... We’ve poured so much foundation in the last 10 years to realize ownership of our factory and the capabilities of what that gives us in the future. I think we still have some work to do.”

Contact Nell Luter Floyd at nellfloyd@bellsouth.net.