Our Vision
We envision the Memphis of the Future as a thriving city where economic opportunities are available across all socioeconomic levels, enabled by technology and good information. We want Memphis to be firing on all cylinders economically. Known not just for our social history, music, food, or fine art . . .but also known as a center for cutting-edge product design & homegrown manufacturing.
How Do We Get There?
EDUCATION
If you lived in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, or Los Angeles - you would have at least 2 schools allowing you to pursue and learn about careers in fashion design, . We need this in Memphis!
Growing up in one of these cities, you would have had opportunities to explore the career opportunities available in the fashion and home design fields. You would learn that it takes more than ideas to get a handbag or pillow design to market. You would lean about the various skilled jobs such as patternmaker's, sample makers, sales reps, sourcing analysts that are all needed to go from idea to product. We need this in Memphis and ISM wants to be part of the solution for this!
MANUFACTURING
Culturally, we're seeing an awareness of the economic impact of an increasingly larger portion of the products we buy being made overseas. We don't think U.S. Manufacturing will ever return to the post-WW2 levels but we also don't think we should count ourselves out of the game all together.
Sustainable, profitable manufacturing definitely means working smarter and using technology to it's full advantage. Memphis is uniquely suited to this because of our location and our distribution network. We want to partner with local government to implement apparel and soft-goods manufacturing capabilities here in Memphis that we can sell to the world.
Resources
City Made; The Case for Small Urban Manufacturers