Ellie Kai is a Chinese made-to-measure company. The first challenge for Ellie Kai when it opened in 2011 was to convince the supply chain in Hong Kong and China that small minimums on raw materials and finished goods and a much faster turn time on production were needed.
The consumer was already there. The model was to cut-and-sew on demand to scale. Ellie started doing 50 garments a week and has scaled up to 1,400 garments a week within a few years. Ellie Kai can go from made-to-order direct to consumer in three weeks.
The actual production time cycle is about ten days and the company is able to have the order on a plane to the customer usually within 24 hours after it’s off the production line. The goal is to get the full cycle under two weeks. It took close to two years to find supply chain partners in China to be able to meet the quick response requirements and production standards the brand needed. Ellie Kai is sold through sales consultants who run social shopping trunk shows and then work directly with clients to select and customize each style. The garment is then ordered online and sewn on-demand to a client’s specifications.
