Random Post 1- The Start of Calidum Aires

 Random Thoughts on Opportunity in Calidum Aires

Towards the start of my junior year, one of my good friends at USC, Max Spesier, and I created our own Hats for his surf company and my moving company. Both of our businesses are small, but we both wanted cool and unique hats that would stand out and that our friends could wear. We soon found out how big of a nightmare it was to order a hat with a small MOQ at a cheap price. It was impossible. 

In ordering something custom and unique online you have basically no options. Neither of us wanted to go down to the fashion district nor had the time to deal with that. Your options are either using AliBaba or an online company like Custom Ink. On Alibaba you will have an impossible time communicating with someone on the other side of the world because they will only respond at ridiculous hours or they won't understand what you are trying to say. If you want a sample of the product it will cost you a minimum of $50 and you really don't want to wait months for the finished product, especially when you don't know the quality that you are going to receive. For websites like Custom Ink you are dealing with a robot not a human and you have to design your hat yourself with the annoying online editor tool where your logo never looks quite right. With Custom Ink you will be stuck with very few colorways, fabrics, and customizable options and you are going to pay a fortune for smaller order sizes. There is just no good way to get customized hats on the market that is easily accessible right now. 

We somehow found a manufacturer in a place called Yiwu, China. Our only problem was that no one in the factory spoke English. I do not know how he did it, but my partner Max found someone who lived in the area and was willing to be our assistant, essentially who we deal with on WhatsApp. His name was Mark Sun. We would text Mark Pictures of the Fabric we liked in the area and he would buy them and bring them to the factory do all the negotiations and explain to us for a very reasonable price. After sending Mark a sketchy PayPal and hearing production would take four weeks, we really did not know what to expect. After three weeks we got a picture of the hats and a week later they were at our doorstep. They were extremely high quality with the most detailed system and were a fraction of the cost of anywhere else we were looking at. We had a new system and from there our new hat company Calidum Aires was born.