Built from the workroom floor

It started with a Google Sheet.

At FIT — the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York — I was developing handbags. Real ones, with patterns, materials, hardware, lining, and all the cuts in between. To price them properly, I needed to know my actual yield: how much leather was really ending up in the product versus what was being wasted. No software did that. So I built a calculator in Google Sheets and made it work.

That spreadsheet became the idea.

Later, during my MBA in Footwear & Apparel Production Management, the problem came into sharper focus. The industry runs on complexity — BOMs, landed costs, FOB, duty rates, supplier margins — but the tools available to small-batch makers are either hobbyist apps or enterprise systems with six-figure contracts. Nothing in between was built for the actual workroom.

So I built it myself.

Makers Yield started as a simple cost and yield tool. It grew into a full PLM — not because I planned it that way, but because every problem I solved revealed the next one. Mobile-first data capture so you can log a batch yield on the floor. A web interface for the tech pack and costing. Reports that tell you your real margin, not the one you hoped for.

This is not a tool built by engineers who guessed at the workflow. Every screen reflects a decision that was made on a production floor, in a sample room, or at the end of a sourcing meeting where the numbers didn't add up.

We're still building. But the foundation is the same one that started in a classroom — the belief that small makers deserve the same precision as the big ones.