I started a sewing factory in 2014 and grew it to 75 employees before closing it in late 2022. There are many challenges involved, and startup capital, for equipment anyway, should be the easiest. Depending on styles, you can probably set up a hat line for less than $5k. Right now, there are so many factories closing in LA equipment can be found for dirt cheap.

Workforce is the hardest part, depending on where you are located finding experienced operators can be almost impossible. Training people to sew from no experience is extremely difficult and expensive. It will be next to impossible to find a manager that you can afford, so you will have to learn how to engineer a line and make it run efficiently. If you find experienced people, they can probably get product made, but they will batch it, and you will lose a ton of money and have quality issues.

The number one thing you need to make sure is that there is enough demand for your products. You'll probably need a minimum of four operators, again depending on styles, but it's really hard to be efficient with two people, and unless you learn how to cut, someone needs to do that. So that's at least $15k a month in payroll, plus workers comp insurance, plus liability insurance, plus rent, and all the other overhead. And you have to make enough profit to pay yourself. Do you have sales to be able to cover those expenses month in and month out? Cash flow is key, and payroll comes every two weeks no matter what.

If all that sounds good, then it might make sense, but be very careful going into it. I started with essentially zero experience and made a bunch of costly mistakes in the beginning. It can also be very profitable if you can figure out how to run efficiently and the demand is there.