I really should be sitting in my room sewing custom hoodies right now, but it's a beautiful 70 degree day outside and I'd much rather hang out on my porch and pretend that I'm working.
Even my cat agrees. She's sitting on the couch next to me licking her butt.
Actually that's a lie, she follows me around all day no matter what I'm doing. This is what happens when you are a cat lady and you work from home.
Anyways, I have a couple random things to talk about so this is just going to be a general February update.
First: I finally restocked some of the small punk rock patches and added a new section of embroidered/woven patches. The selection isn't great but it's a lot harder for me to buy wholesale patches these days. Three out of four of the companies that I used to buy from are pretty much ignoring my orders, which is understandable when I'm only trying to buy one hundred patches and not t-shirts or other merch items. I try to sell only licensed patches so I'm not going to get into the business of printing them myself. So I will try to get a better selection, but for now what's on my website is all I have.
If any Sacramento locals are looking for a better selection, I sold my entire patches stock to Phono Select records on K Street last December. I'm not sure if they are sold out yet but the owner of the shop was talking about getting more patches from a friend of mine who prints them.
I don't have any new clothes to add to my website this week, but next week I plan on making a couple new one-of-a-kind items to put up for sale. Within the next week or two I plan to do another photo shoot with my friend/model Laura. She recently moved from Oakland to Santa Cruz so now it's a three hour drive to hang out with her instead of a one hour drive. But at least now I have an excuse to crash at her place for the night and have some fun doing whatever it is people in Santa Cruz do. (All I can think of is hang out on the BEACH! With BEER!)
So that's it for current updates. Now on to the BIG, SCARY FUTURE...
Last May I posted a long rant about graduating from school and wondering what the fuck was going to happen next. At the time I was freaking out about my decision to stop going to school full-time. I was wondering whether it was a bad decision to leave school after getting only an AA degree. I was afraid that if I tried to work at Deranged Designs full time, I would slowly go broke and never really get this thing off the ground.
I'm not freaking out so much about it anymore. My income has definitely gone up since last May and I'm finally at the point where I can pretty much support myself. I still don't make very much money and I have the advantage of super cheap rent, but being self-sufficient has been a goal of mine since I was seventeen. I hope this trend can continue and I can gradually start living better and running my business in a more professional way.
I also realized how much more relaxed and content I am when I'm not in school full-time while trying to work part-time. I feel like I was running at 110% energy for five years straight and I wasn't really able to slow myself down until a couple months ago. I like having a million things to do every day but I'm also very prone to anxiety and stress. Right now I'm taking only one class in school (accounting! fun!) and I only work about 30 hours a week. It feels GREAT. I know that small business owners typically work a LOT more hours than that, but I feel like it really wouldn't hurt to take a breather for a while and continue this relaxed pace for...let's say, the rest of the year! Fuck yeah!
Noticing how much more relaxed I am also made me think about my general priorities in life. Time is more important to me than money. It would be great to have lots of money so that I could support other small businesses but I'm pretty OK with the type of bare-bones lifestyle that I'm living right now. I probably won't want to live like this forever, but I don't expect that I will have to. I'm simultaneously optimistic and pessimistic about the future. It seems like the economic situation in this country will never get back to how it was in the past, but it's comforting to know that I can be happy with just the bare minimum.
At the same time, I don't want to get lazy and let my business fall behind. I know that slow growth can kill a business. When other companies are trying so aggressively to grow and kick you out of the market, slow growth just isn't enough to survive. I'm going to stay on top of things and try to be smart and cautious with my decisions. I figure that once my slow sales season hits (April to June) I can work on trying to figure out more efficient ways of running my business, so that it can stand to grow a lot more before I need to hire anybody or move the business out of my house. I plan to get as much mileage as possible out of this cheap rent! Right now I'm trying to educate myself more about accounting and financial analysis. Over the summer I'll probably buy some accounting software so I can streamline everything and have a better idea of the financial standing of my business.
I guess I'll shut the hell up now, this is getting pretty long. Right now things are better than I even dared to hope last May when I was so worried about the future. I'm not so worried anymore. I know there is still a good chance that my business will fail, but I don't obsessively dwell on this fact. I apologize for the cheesy cliché, but life is more about the journey than the destination, isn't it? And right now I'm having one hell of a journey.
Friday, February 17, 2012
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Sacramento Stuff #2
Another Sacramento Stuff blog post! A lot of people say this town is a shit hole, but I love living here and I have a lot of respect for the people who have stuck around to make this a better place to live. It's great when the artists and musicians and people who get things done decide to stay here instead of giving up and moving to Socal or the Bay Area.
This is in no particular order and it's mostly just links to articles about friends of mine/people who are fucking awesome.
-There's a great interview with artist/musician Kepi Ghoulie over at RanSACked Media. He's constantly touring the US and Europe and I'm jealous of how many places he's seen!
-The punk rock artist Paul Imagine is selling stickers to raise funds for some valuable items that were recently stolen out of his van. Originally the entire van was stolen, but it was recovered after people shared the story on Facebook a bazillion times. Another RanSACked Media article tells the whole story and gives his contact info.
-The band Rat Damage is raising money to fund their upcoming LP. You can help them out by buying some records from FYBS Records on eBay. They are also playing a show in my basement on March 3rd. The full line-up hasn't been officially announced yet, but it's going to be fucking nuts. My only hope is that my house is still standing after that show. My roommates'/friends' new band Well Red is opening the show, which should be hilarious. (For anyone who may know who I'm talking about, it's Mikhala singing with Vince, Natalie, and Austin. They will probably be even drunker than usual for this show.)
2/20 Update: the show has been announced!
-So many other awesome shows are coming up... the full updated list is always shown on the Sacramento Punk Shows blog!
-The artist Skinner is selling a new book of his artwork. I met this dude when I was 16 while hanging out at one of my first Sellout Buyout (craft/trunk show) events. It was pretty cool to hear him compliment my crazy punk rock clothes.
-The Sizzling Sirens burlesque troupe was featured in the latest SubMerge Magazine. I've got a friend who dances with them and they organize some really fun events.
-Pro-skater/drummer for the Storytellers Matt Rodriguez was also featured in that issue of SubMerge, but I can't find the article! The Storytellers used to practice in my basement and I've always enjoyed listening to their music. For a while I didn't even know that their drummer is a famous skater. I wish I could find the link, dammit! All I remember is that it mentioned that he also runs a skate shoe line and that he's been in several new skate videos recently.
That's all for now... if any Sacto people have links I should add to this, feel free to leave them in the comments!
This is in no particular order and it's mostly just links to articles about friends of mine/people who are fucking awesome.
-There's a great interview with artist/musician Kepi Ghoulie over at RanSACked Media. He's constantly touring the US and Europe and I'm jealous of how many places he's seen!
-The punk rock artist Paul Imagine is selling stickers to raise funds for some valuable items that were recently stolen out of his van. Originally the entire van was stolen, but it was recovered after people shared the story on Facebook a bazillion times. Another RanSACked Media article tells the whole story and gives his contact info.
-The band Rat Damage is raising money to fund their upcoming LP. You can help them out by buying some records from FYBS Records on eBay. They are also playing a show in my basement on March 3rd. The full line-up hasn't been officially announced yet, but it's going to be fucking nuts. My only hope is that my house is still standing after that show. My roommates'/friends' new band Well Red is opening the show, which should be hilarious. (For anyone who may know who I'm talking about, it's Mikhala singing with Vince, Natalie, and Austin. They will probably be even drunker than usual for this show.)
2/20 Update: the show has been announced!
-So many other awesome shows are coming up... the full updated list is always shown on the Sacramento Punk Shows blog!
-The artist Skinner is selling a new book of his artwork. I met this dude when I was 16 while hanging out at one of my first Sellout Buyout (craft/trunk show) events. It was pretty cool to hear him compliment my crazy punk rock clothes.
-The Sizzling Sirens burlesque troupe was featured in the latest SubMerge Magazine. I've got a friend who dances with them and they organize some really fun events.
-Pro-skater/drummer for the Storytellers Matt Rodriguez was also featured in that issue of SubMerge, but I can't find the article! The Storytellers used to practice in my basement and I've always enjoyed listening to their music. For a while I didn't even know that their drummer is a famous skater. I wish I could find the link, dammit! All I remember is that it mentioned that he also runs a skate shoe line and that he's been in several new skate videos recently.
That's all for now... if any Sacto people have links I should add to this, feel free to leave them in the comments!
Friday, February 3, 2012
New Hoodie Design Process
Another sewing nerd post! I promised a couple days ago that I would write up a post about the design and sewing process for my new hoodies. Since I wanted to make these available in different sizes and lining variations, the process was a lot more complicated than if I was just making a one-of-a-kind hoodie. The sizing has to match up to the clothing sizes on the rest of my website and the patterns have to be perfect and easy to sew. The price also has to match up with the time and materials that it takes to sew a hoodie, and the quality level has to match up with the price.
About 18 months ago I bought a wonderful book called The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Sewn Product Manufacturing. Since reading this (and following the blog that goes along with it) I've been trying to change my business and sewing practices so that Deranged Designs can be more like a professional clothing line than a DIY line. Most of the steps that I'm about to describe came straight from the book and the blog, and I'd recommend it to anybody who has an interest in starting their own clothing line.
So, here are the general steps that I took to come up with my new hoodie designs. It will be difficult to include everything but let's hope I don't forget anything important. Finishing all this has taken me a long time, but now that the work is done it will be much easier to come out with new design variations every month.
1. Decide what kind of product to make. This part is easy. My animal print hoodies have been popular for the past several years, so I decided to start making new and improved versions. I didn't really think of a target market to make them for, because my hoodies have been popular with many different types of people. This can make the sizing part complicated (different markets tend to have different body types) but I am still able to make small size customizations on hoodies if people need them. I decided that the new hoodie would fit smaller sizes best (the typical X-Small to Large) and that in the future I will come out another version with larger size options.
2. Find fabric and zippers. This part was already halfway done, because I've been buying animal print fabric and zippers for years. I don't go through the fabric fast enough to buy it wholesale, but I do have a good relationship with a Southern California store that buys it wholesale for their own manufacturing purposes and sells it to me for a decent price. They ship it out within 24 hours of my orders, so if I run out of one print faster than expected I will have more fabric in the mail within 3 or 4 days. In the future I'd like to go through enough of this fabric to be able to buy full 60 yard rolls.
I also needed a new type of fabric for the trim (cuffs and waist). For the past couple years I've been buying black trim fabric from a textile converter down in Southern California with minimums of only one roll. It might take me a year to go through the entire roll but the wholesale price is worth it. For this new hoodie I wanted something more than plain black rib knit. I wanted a fabric that could be used for the trim and the lining, because in the past people have requested cotton fleece lining. So I asked for some samples of stretch fleece and ordered an entire roll after I decided which fabric would work best.
I also purchased basic black lining from Fabricdirect.com (decent wholesale prices) and I found a roll of easy-knit interfacing at the Jo-Ann website for half the regular price. Zipperstop.com sells me zippers at wholesale prices and they have a good selection of jacket zippers, so I chose to make this hoodie with a simple molded plastic zipper. They sell reversible zippers for a good price too, so I decided that I would need to make a reversible version of the hoodie.
3. Fabric Testing: I already know how the animal print fabric, lining fabric, and interfacing behaves in the wash, but I still had to test the new cotton fleece. It had about 7% shrinkage in length- TOO MUCH- so I decided that for now I would make do with pre-washing it 15 yards at a time before cutting into it. If I had a larger volume of sales this might not be a very economical thing to do, but for now it works out OK. In the future I'll need to find pre-shrunk fabric, or make patterns that have shrinkage allowance.
4. Design: When I started this process I had barely any experience with making lined clothing, so I knew that figuring out how to make the lining look great would take just as long as figuring out the fit for a new design. To save time I opted to just make a very simple design, and add features on to it once I get used to sewing it up. A short cropped hoodie is a look that I haven't sold in the past and it is simple enough that I could make tons of practice hoodies without wasting too much fabric. More complicated designs are in the works!
This cheetah hoodie was a practice hoodie. Work still needed to be done on the neckline seam, but I figured it would be OK to use it for the photoshoot because the seam is barely visible.
5. Pattern and fit: I adapted my basic hoodie pattern to have a closer cropped fit. I improved the hood from a two-piece hood to a more fitted 3-piece hood. I followed the directions to pattern lining from the book that I mentioned previously. I made several samples to get the fit right.
The inside stitching of the red zebra hoodie still wasn't perfect, but I've made several samples since this one and they keep turning out better and better.
6. Seam specifications: This step actually came first, but it makes more sense if I describe it here. Before starting work on the new hoodie I borrowed about half a dozen hoodies from my family and I also purchased 4-5 cheap hoodies from a thrift store. I did this to see what types of seams were typical for a basic hoodie pattern. In the end I compared seam types and quality levels of at least 10 different hoodies. The zipper and neckline seams were the most complicated. I wanted to find a seam type that would be easy to sew with the limited amount of equipment I have, while also looking professional on the inside and out. I took apart several hoodies to see the order of operations of the more complicated seams.
In the end I decided to make a full hoodie lining that was finished more like a jacket than a typical cheap hoodie. This required another trip to the thrift store to see how zippered jacket linings are sewn up. Here's the (super ugly) jacket that I took apart to see how it was sewn:
7. Sewing order: after analyzing how the lined jackets were made, I wrote up my best guess on the sewing order and got to work. I changed a couple things around after the first sample was sewn and I also timed myself to see how long it would take to make one hoodie. I took notes on any problems I had while sewing and fixed the pattern so that the problems could be avoided.
One thing I like to do to make timing myself fun is to listen to the same record each time I sew a hoodie. After sewing enough hoodies I can time myself based on which song is currently playing so I know whether I'm speeding up and improving my skills or not making any progress. Listening to fast-paced punk rock is also a good motivator!
8. Pricing: this was actually a step that I had in mind while going through all the other steps. I tried my best to price this hoodie like a real clothing line would and also tried to make the quality level match the price. I know that people are used to artificially low clothing prices (due to markdowns and retailers ripping off clothing lines) but there still seems to be enough people who recognize the real price of manufacturing clothes, so I'm confident that these hoodies will sell. Fabric and production worker wages make up only a small fraction of all the work that goes into a new garment design. Anyways, I added the total fabric/materials cost to the time it took me to sew (while trying to pay myself $15 an hour for the sewing work) and then added my own markup. If I was selling my clothing wholesale, I would add my own markup to cover my costs and then the retail store who buys from me will mark clothes up 2 to 2.5 times to cover their wage and overhead costs and hopefully make a profit. I ended up with several different prices based on quality and hoodie features. The simple partially lined hoodie is $60, the fully reversible hoodie is $90, with a couple other quality and price levels in between.
9. Pattern grading (making patterns for every size): in the summer of 2010 I had my old hoodie pattern graded by a professional patternmaker. Since the new cropped hoodie design is so similar to the old design, this time I opted to do the grading myself because I already had the grading specs. I used paper that had a grid on it and I tried to be as accurate as possible. Now most clothing lines will have their patterns graded in a CAD system (computer-aided design) which makes double checking measurements and adding grade rules easy. The paper and pencil method takes longer but I didn't mind doing it myself this time. I still need to trace out all the sizes and cut them out on thick oak-tag paper.
The book I mentioned says that it is risky to grade your patterns before you get any sales, but since I'm making these to order I don't really have a choice. If I was selling wholesale to other retail stores, the smart thing to do would be to wait to grade the patterns and start production until I got a confirmed wholesale order.
10. Photoshoot: my friends Laura and Mary modeled the hoodies for me and I retouched the end result myself with photoshop. I use a basic DSLR for all my pictures.
11. Adding new hoodies to website: I added all the new hoodies to my website and tried to show as much info as possible. I know that most people won't read the entire item description, but they will hopefully at least pay attention to the sizing info. I still have to add these to my eBay store, where I get more hoodie sales than my website. I also made a new page describing all the characteristics of velboa fur. I tried to answer every single question I've ever got about my hoodies and I'm sure some people will find it useful. My website is easy to update because it has different forms for price, description, etc. But I still know basic HTML to make things look better.
I think that's all for now. I also test-washed all the samples to see how they hold up. I'm wearing one of the samples myself and I plan to thrash it in the washing machine as much as possible to see if the new trim fabric holds up well. So far so good! I've bought sweater fleece from a retail store before and it started pilling within two washes, which made it basically worthless. Fabric shopping can be so aggravating. My wholesale fabric source seems to have much better stuff then the crap you find at retail stores.
Another step that a bigger business would add is marketing and advertising. So far people find me well enough on Google and eBay, so I haven't spent anything extra on advertising. I will probably have to do this in the future though. One thing at a time!
Oh yeah, and tags... my clothes still don't have brand, size, or care/content tags. That's also on my to-do list. Whew.
So, what are you waiting for? Go buy a fucking hoodie!
About 18 months ago I bought a wonderful book called The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Sewn Product Manufacturing. Since reading this (and following the blog that goes along with it) I've been trying to change my business and sewing practices so that Deranged Designs can be more like a professional clothing line than a DIY line. Most of the steps that I'm about to describe came straight from the book and the blog, and I'd recommend it to anybody who has an interest in starting their own clothing line.
So, here are the general steps that I took to come up with my new hoodie designs. It will be difficult to include everything but let's hope I don't forget anything important. Finishing all this has taken me a long time, but now that the work is done it will be much easier to come out with new design variations every month.
1. Decide what kind of product to make. This part is easy. My animal print hoodies have been popular for the past several years, so I decided to start making new and improved versions. I didn't really think of a target market to make them for, because my hoodies have been popular with many different types of people. This can make the sizing part complicated (different markets tend to have different body types) but I am still able to make small size customizations on hoodies if people need them. I decided that the new hoodie would fit smaller sizes best (the typical X-Small to Large) and that in the future I will come out another version with larger size options.
2. Find fabric and zippers. This part was already halfway done, because I've been buying animal print fabric and zippers for years. I don't go through the fabric fast enough to buy it wholesale, but I do have a good relationship with a Southern California store that buys it wholesale for their own manufacturing purposes and sells it to me for a decent price. They ship it out within 24 hours of my orders, so if I run out of one print faster than expected I will have more fabric in the mail within 3 or 4 days. In the future I'd like to go through enough of this fabric to be able to buy full 60 yard rolls.
I also needed a new type of fabric for the trim (cuffs and waist). For the past couple years I've been buying black trim fabric from a textile converter down in Southern California with minimums of only one roll. It might take me a year to go through the entire roll but the wholesale price is worth it. For this new hoodie I wanted something more than plain black rib knit. I wanted a fabric that could be used for the trim and the lining, because in the past people have requested cotton fleece lining. So I asked for some samples of stretch fleece and ordered an entire roll after I decided which fabric would work best.
I also purchased basic black lining from Fabricdirect.com (decent wholesale prices) and I found a roll of easy-knit interfacing at the Jo-Ann website for half the regular price. Zipperstop.com sells me zippers at wholesale prices and they have a good selection of jacket zippers, so I chose to make this hoodie with a simple molded plastic zipper. They sell reversible zippers for a good price too, so I decided that I would need to make a reversible version of the hoodie.
3. Fabric Testing: I already know how the animal print fabric, lining fabric, and interfacing behaves in the wash, but I still had to test the new cotton fleece. It had about 7% shrinkage in length- TOO MUCH- so I decided that for now I would make do with pre-washing it 15 yards at a time before cutting into it. If I had a larger volume of sales this might not be a very economical thing to do, but for now it works out OK. In the future I'll need to find pre-shrunk fabric, or make patterns that have shrinkage allowance.
4. Design: When I started this process I had barely any experience with making lined clothing, so I knew that figuring out how to make the lining look great would take just as long as figuring out the fit for a new design. To save time I opted to just make a very simple design, and add features on to it once I get used to sewing it up. A short cropped hoodie is a look that I haven't sold in the past and it is simple enough that I could make tons of practice hoodies without wasting too much fabric. More complicated designs are in the works!
This cheetah hoodie was a practice hoodie. Work still needed to be done on the neckline seam, but I figured it would be OK to use it for the photoshoot because the seam is barely visible.
5. Pattern and fit: I adapted my basic hoodie pattern to have a closer cropped fit. I improved the hood from a two-piece hood to a more fitted 3-piece hood. I followed the directions to pattern lining from the book that I mentioned previously. I made several samples to get the fit right.
The inside stitching of the red zebra hoodie still wasn't perfect, but I've made several samples since this one and they keep turning out better and better.
6. Seam specifications: This step actually came first, but it makes more sense if I describe it here. Before starting work on the new hoodie I borrowed about half a dozen hoodies from my family and I also purchased 4-5 cheap hoodies from a thrift store. I did this to see what types of seams were typical for a basic hoodie pattern. In the end I compared seam types and quality levels of at least 10 different hoodies. The zipper and neckline seams were the most complicated. I wanted to find a seam type that would be easy to sew with the limited amount of equipment I have, while also looking professional on the inside and out. I took apart several hoodies to see the order of operations of the more complicated seams.
In the end I decided to make a full hoodie lining that was finished more like a jacket than a typical cheap hoodie. This required another trip to the thrift store to see how zippered jacket linings are sewn up. Here's the (super ugly) jacket that I took apart to see how it was sewn:
7. Sewing order: after analyzing how the lined jackets were made, I wrote up my best guess on the sewing order and got to work. I changed a couple things around after the first sample was sewn and I also timed myself to see how long it would take to make one hoodie. I took notes on any problems I had while sewing and fixed the pattern so that the problems could be avoided.
One thing I like to do to make timing myself fun is to listen to the same record each time I sew a hoodie. After sewing enough hoodies I can time myself based on which song is currently playing so I know whether I'm speeding up and improving my skills or not making any progress. Listening to fast-paced punk rock is also a good motivator!
8. Pricing: this was actually a step that I had in mind while going through all the other steps. I tried my best to price this hoodie like a real clothing line would and also tried to make the quality level match the price. I know that people are used to artificially low clothing prices (due to markdowns and retailers ripping off clothing lines) but there still seems to be enough people who recognize the real price of manufacturing clothes, so I'm confident that these hoodies will sell. Fabric and production worker wages make up only a small fraction of all the work that goes into a new garment design. Anyways, I added the total fabric/materials cost to the time it took me to sew (while trying to pay myself $15 an hour for the sewing work) and then added my own markup. If I was selling my clothing wholesale, I would add my own markup to cover my costs and then the retail store who buys from me will mark clothes up 2 to 2.5 times to cover their wage and overhead costs and hopefully make a profit. I ended up with several different prices based on quality and hoodie features. The simple partially lined hoodie is $60, the fully reversible hoodie is $90, with a couple other quality and price levels in between.
9. Pattern grading (making patterns for every size): in the summer of 2010 I had my old hoodie pattern graded by a professional patternmaker. Since the new cropped hoodie design is so similar to the old design, this time I opted to do the grading myself because I already had the grading specs. I used paper that had a grid on it and I tried to be as accurate as possible. Now most clothing lines will have their patterns graded in a CAD system (computer-aided design) which makes double checking measurements and adding grade rules easy. The paper and pencil method takes longer but I didn't mind doing it myself this time. I still need to trace out all the sizes and cut them out on thick oak-tag paper.
The book I mentioned says that it is risky to grade your patterns before you get any sales, but since I'm making these to order I don't really have a choice. If I was selling wholesale to other retail stores, the smart thing to do would be to wait to grade the patterns and start production until I got a confirmed wholesale order.
10. Photoshoot: my friends Laura and Mary modeled the hoodies for me and I retouched the end result myself with photoshop. I use a basic DSLR for all my pictures.
11. Adding new hoodies to website: I added all the new hoodies to my website and tried to show as much info as possible. I know that most people won't read the entire item description, but they will hopefully at least pay attention to the sizing info. I still have to add these to my eBay store, where I get more hoodie sales than my website. I also made a new page describing all the characteristics of velboa fur. I tried to answer every single question I've ever got about my hoodies and I'm sure some people will find it useful. My website is easy to update because it has different forms for price, description, etc. But I still know basic HTML to make things look better.
I think that's all for now. I also test-washed all the samples to see how they hold up. I'm wearing one of the samples myself and I plan to thrash it in the washing machine as much as possible to see if the new trim fabric holds up well. So far so good! I've bought sweater fleece from a retail store before and it started pilling within two washes, which made it basically worthless. Fabric shopping can be so aggravating. My wholesale fabric source seems to have much better stuff then the crap you find at retail stores.
Another step that a bigger business would add is marketing and advertising. So far people find me well enough on Google and eBay, so I haven't spent anything extra on advertising. I will probably have to do this in the future though. One thing at a time!
Oh yeah, and tags... my clothes still don't have brand, size, or care/content tags. That's also on my to-do list. Whew.
So, what are you waiting for? Go buy a fucking hoodie!
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