How we're choosing who makes it

We don't buy a container of stock and hope it sells. The plan is small numbered editions. We make them only when enough people have reserved one. That is a different kind of request for a factory, and it decides who we can work with.

The bar

Every request for a quote we send asks the same basic questions:

• Print that lasts. The canopy must keep the artwork sharp. No wrinkles at the seams, no colours that don't line up, no colour bleeding in the rain. This is the first thing we check.
• A frame that lasts. Real wind resistance. Ribs that don't bend out of shape. A mechanism that still opens smoothly after a season of use. Pretty but fragile is worse than plain but solid.
• Small, mixed batches. Can they make a few hundred units of one design, then a few hundred of another, without the price per umbrella getting too high? A factory that only works well for 5,000 units of one design is not a good fit for us.
• Cost for each design. What is the real minimum order for one artwork? How much does a new canopy mould or a different head cost? And what does the total cost to France look like, once printing and import duties are added?

What we'd pay more for

The cheapest quote doesn't win by default. A supplier with an already-proven ultralight frame, a ready head design we don't have to build from zero, and a faster path to a first sample — that can be worth around €3 more per unit than the lowest price. But past about €5 per unit, the gap adds up fast. A couple of thousand umbrellas means €10,000 or more. At that point, we'd go back to other options.

What "made to order" demands

If we only make what people reserve, the factory has to accept a few things. Commitments come late: we choose the artwork with the pre-launch list first, and the production order follows the deposits, not a forecast. Output has to stay numbered — each run is an edition, № 001 of a design carries the name of the artist who made it, and the rest are numbered after that. And sometimes a design that sells well comes back as a second edition, so the tooling and the files need to survive between runs.

We are still working on this part. When we pick our suppliers and have a first sample, that will be its own post.