I want to start my own clothing company?

So much ingenuity and ambition however the technical side usually stumps most of us. The following is a list of business and legal topics/terms one should keep while operating an apparel based business.

1. How to Brands survive Retail either e-commerce or in-store

2. Changing consumer dynamics

3. Cultural trends and fashion

4. The shifting powers of brands

5. Technology and logistics

6. A complete understanding on a daily basis of everything from preschoolers to grandparents, tweens, teens, and the ever increasingly individualistic mass mar-ket

7. Copyright, trademark, and patent legal issues

8. Brand/label registration in the U.S.A.

9. Code of labor compliance and ethics agreements

10. Rights to import and export

11. Fiduciary responsibilities

12. Royalties

13. Licensing, licensor, licensee

14. Managing agent

15. Licensing agent

16. Merchandising, marketing, and advertising

All of the above items must be part of your knowledge base in order to build a brand, purchase a brand, or license a brand. The Chinese in most instances are buying brands for whom they were the private or OEM manufacturers, and desire to go direct to the retailer and eliminate the so-called middlemen. The other way is to license a name brand that will be well known by the consumer, but not necessarily in your specific product arena. You can build a brand by using all the above, but be prepared to put up a lot of monies to build a branded product.

Do your homework and research first, in orderto know the levels of market for the product. In the marketplace there are many labels, but to build a BRAND with national or global recognition is a very costly process. Licensing a brand and paying royalties seems to be the best way to enter a specific retail to consumer area. There are many recognizable brands in one sector that might be the least costly to license and distribute into the market.

Many brands are losing their market share mainly because of large age group shifts, and many new potential brands are coming from other industry sectors that might be applicable to build on, with the least amount of monies. NIKE tried to enter the surf industry for over five years and lost millions of dollars. They finally bought Hurley instead, and now have great sales and distribution.

Know what you can produce, understand your customer, and then seek the most straight forward approach.  Just make sure you have controls in place to allow for expanded sales revenues!

Source: Advice from Bruce Berton, Professor at Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising.

A copy of the proposal of this right sent to the Canadian government can be found here

Here is an excerpt from the TechDirt Article

The basic idea of the proposal is that a new right would need to be created under copyright law, the digital transmission right, that would replace the mishmash of copyright rights that currently cover online music (generally reproduction, distribution and performance rights). Basically, this transmission right would cover any and all music transmissions online and any license fee would be paid by the transmitter, not the transmittee. Thus, anyone could download or stream any music they want on their computer with no penalties at all and no need to secure a license. However, you would not then be able to share (transmit) that same music to someone else without a license. But this wouldn’t matter so much (the theory goes), because a large service provider could pay for the transmission rights, absolving the individuals. In other words, with such a system, in theory, The Pirate Bay or a Napster could pay the transmission rights, and users would be free to both download and upload via those services. The theory is, of course, that it would be worthwhile for those sites to pay because they would get many other benefits from all the users flocking to them for sharing:

This “digital transmission right” would be a new right, not an additional right. It would replace the parties’ now-existing reproduction, public performance and distribution rights (and, where applicable, the making available right and the right of communication to the public). These would no longer have separate or independent existence for purposes of digital transmissions of sound recordings or the musical works embodied in them.

The only act that would require a license, or payment of a license fee, would be the digital transmission of recorded music. Every transmission that is not subject to exemption would require authorization. This does not mean that separate payment would be due for each transmission of each recording; only that, regardless how license fees may be calculated, all non-exempt transmissions would require authorization. 

Licenses would be made available unconstrained by the concerns that have driven the industry's failed campaign to salvage its sales-based revenue model. The determinative consideration would be whether or not recordings had been digitally transmitted, not whether transmissions result in sales, promote sales, or cause sales of recordings to be lost. 

Licenses would be issued without regard to whether recordings are streamed, downloaded, or transmitted by some means not yet devised; whether music programming is interactive or non-interactive, or contains this, that or another recording; whether the service accepts user-generated content, operates as a P2P or social network, or otherwise retransmits or further transmits recordings that originate from other sites or services. The number of copies necessary to effect transmissions and the type of transmission technology used would not affect the availability of a license.

There are a lot of other details, and Lincoff has clearly put a lot of thought into the proposal and tried to cover many of the bases that people would likely critique. Compared to our current system, it certainly sounds like it makes more sense. He definitely does an excellent job describing that the only real problem is one of the industry’s own making in still thinking entirely in the context of the old way that music was “sold.” But the proposal still has a variety of problems. First, it’s incredibly complex and not easy to understand. This is, of course, also true with existing copyright law. But replacing one super complex system with another one isn’t necessarily a great thing either — especially if that level of complexity isn’t needed.

Second — and this is my really big problem with it — is that it still involves a huge and totally unnecessary bureaucratic nightmare in the middle that represents tremendous economic and societal waste in terms of managing the licenses, monitoring the usage and the transmissions of content and collecting and distributing the money. It’s bureaucracy that isn’t needed. We’re already seeing over and over and over again that if you take out the unnecessary bureaucracy, artists can create business models that are much more direct, whether directly between the artist and the fan who wants to buy something or between an organization representing the artist. This is a much more efficient system, whereby there are plenty of opportunities to pay artists for various scarcities, rather than making up a totally unnecessary license for an abundant good which the market has already decided should be priced at zero.

As soon as you set up this bureaucratic structure, what really happens is that much of the money that could have gone directly to the artists (or to the artists’ business partners) goes instead into the massive overhead required to keep the “collection society” working in the middle. This isn’t a solution that helps musicians. It’s a solution that helps bureaucratic middlemen.

Image: www.myownspunk.com/

Cell phone users who hack, root or jailbreak their Phones DO NOT HAVE TO BE afraid to go face to face with their cellular phone providers.  Yes, the Federal Government has found that  independently created applications used on At&T, Verizon, T-mobile and Sprint is not a violation of cellular contract. Most notably Apple alleges that jailbreaking an IPHONE is copyright infringement.

The DMCA (Digital Millinium Copyright Act) is federal enforcement which criminalizes steps taken to violate digital right management DRM which control access to copywritten works. For example, when IPHONE users jailbreak their phone and access software that would violate the terms of use, Apple says that this violates the DRM. However, the DMCA has decided that making cell phones “interoperable” with other programs is legal under the fair use doctrine.

“When one jailbreaks a smartphone in order to make the operating system on that phone interoperable with an independently created application that has not been approved by the maker of the smartphone or the maker of its operating system, the modifications that are made purely for the purpose of such interoperability are fair uses.” source
Read the entire decision here

With all this excitement I began to call up cell phone companies to see what the consequences would be if I were to jailbreak, hack into or install independently created software.

The folks at At&T:

The customer service representative naturally became irritated with my plans to jailbreak an Iphone and used scare tactics: He stated that it will ruin power management, it overclocks the battery, and the cell phone may even blow up! They stated that the warranty will be void but he was was not sure that the AT&T insurance will still cover the phone if it breaks. He referred me to att.com/insurance.

Verizon Wireless-

Ahhh yes, what else would I expect from the notorious control freak of Mr. Verizon Wireless. Right off the back the representative stated that it may not be a good idea to discuss this with Verizon! I assured her that I simply wanted to know what would happen to me if I used unauthorized software on my phone. She stated that Verizon usually will not find out however it will void my warranty and insurance!!! She then stated that she felt uncomfortable talking to me about this topic and ended the phone conversation!

T-mobile-

After informing the representative that I simply wanted to purchase a HTC HD2 and replace the Windows operating system with Android 2.1 the rep naturally became upset and tried selling me an Android pre-installed phone. He then stated that T-mobile really does not care what you do as long as I do not adjust the “smartlab” internet access setting. I asked him if installing Android on the Windows based phone would ruin the warranty or insurance. He put me on hold for a frustratingly long amount of time and I hung up

Sprint-

(rumors of bankruptcy aside) The customer service representative was not familiar with rooting a cell phone and did not care so much as to even discuss it with me. He did not speak english too well, and simply stated that once you pay the insurance monthly fees no matter what happens to your phone, Sprint will replace it.