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Designing for Kids: Behind the Scenes
"It’s fun designing for kids! You can really pull from the kid world around you. Animals, flora, fauna, things kids like…camping, food, toys, mythical creatures… The list goes on and on," – Emmily, designer at Jan & Jul
Each new season brings with it fun new designs and prints. Here at Jan & Jul we love the excitement that surrounds new releases. You may be counting down the days until spring and summer officially arrives but, behind the scenes, we are already hard at work designing for Spring/Summer 2025. Yes, that’s right! All of our gear and prints are designed right here at our Richmond, Vancouver headquarters by our talented design team! And it takes approximately one year for a product to go from conception to ready-to-wear. Here's a little sneak peak on how we bring our designs from concepts to the gear your kids love!
Inspiration & Development
Every new design season starts off with Kelly, our in-house illustrator, giving us a trend forecast for colours and themes for the upcoming season. Her report inspires our colour palette for the season – for our solid colours and in our prints. The Design Team then sits down to brainstorm new products and improvements to current products. This is where feedback from you, our customers, and parents is invaluable! All the members of our Design & Development team are moms themselves and have a lot of helpful insights and ideas. The team often draws inspiration for their designs from their own kids.
Production Process
Once a product idea has been developed, our design team puts together a technical package with all the details and measurements. We send this information to our team in China, headed up by Mei, the sister of Jan & Jul founder Florence. Our designer, Iris, works closely with our team in China. Together they ensure the fit is perfect and make any necessary pattern adjustments.
Back in China, Mei and her team work to source the best factories and suppliers to create our products. We produce many of our items in Nanjing, China, hometown of Jan & Jul founder, Florence. We are proud to support women in China with living wages, a positive work environment, and annual bonuses.
Product Testing
Once a design is completed, it’s time to bring it to life with prototypes! There will often be several prototypes before our team is completely happy with the final design. Then it’s time for the fun part: testing the gear out in real life situations! Our designers often use their own kids to help us with fitting and testing of gear – it’s pretty handy having fit models always available. We also have an incredible team of outdoor-loving kids and parents on our rep team that push our gear to the limits and help us ensure that our designs are comfortable and functional.
Designer Favourites
Designers Emmily and Iris shared insights into their kids' design process. Given their close involvement from start to finish, it’s natural they have favourite products. With so many beautiful colours, prints, and designs, choosing just one was a tough decision!
Emmily worked closely with Florence to design the Toasty-Dry Booties, one of her favourites. She loves seeing how well they’ve done and how many parents and kids adore them. She was also excited to meet customer requests for brightly coloured, sun-safe swimwear with the Crabby Crab print.
For Iris, choosing one favourite was difficult due to the thought put into each product. She was thrilled with the successful launch of the new snow gear collection, knowing it met customer needs. The continuously improved Toasty Dry Puffy Winter Boots are also a favourite of hers, as they are refined to become the perfect snow boots.
What’s Next
Our Design Team is always working to create new prints and products to meet the requests of our customers. We're producing our Fall/Winter 2025 gear right now! A few exciting new additions to our are our adorable Fleece Animal Hats and beautiful new prints including Polar Pals, Winter Sun, and Neon Peaks. And there’s many highly requested soft neutral colours that are great for mixing and matching. Stay tuned for more because we can’t wait to show you what new designs our team have cooked up!