A company like Seabreeze thrives on experience. So when we went looking for a ‘new kid’ and found Galina to be our new pattern maker, we couldn’t have been happier. She added decades of experience to our already skilled team
Tue March 8th 2022
Galina hasn’t been at Seabreeze long, but she says it is “the perfect job”. She enjoys the flexible, interactive nature of her work and that she gets to use much more creativity than in previous roles. An experienced pattern maker, she has been updating her impressive hand-making skills with new CAD-based methods.
A skilled pattern maker like Galina has a talent for deconstructing existing garments to see how they work, and for working out intricate garment construction techniques. She works closely with the sample makers on our sewing team, who put together one-off samples to check how the patterns work in real life. For our fashion clients in particular, it’s an invaluable set of skills to have, bridging the gap between their design and the finished garment.
In addition to pattern making, over the last 15 years, Galina has worked with large scale garment checking and troubleshooting. This included liaising with international production suppliers and big brands like Farmers, The Warehouse and Postie Plus, focusing on quality assurance.
Galina understands the value of experience and how it can make a difference for clients. “I can suggest something based on my experience; ‘this is not going to work, and if we do this, it will work.’ It’s easier for production, and it's cheaper for the customer, because it's not as complicated consumption wise.” There are real cost savings that come from knowing the best way to approach a problem, and these get passed on to the client.
Galina came to New Zealand 25 years ago, from Belarus. The small, open and friendly team at Seabreeze is a world away from Galina's previous working life. She says the company she worked at for many years is now quite small, but when she was there it was huge. “We had two and a half thousand people,” says Galina, “making orders for the Soviet Union which were like 50,000, 60,000 garments, even more.”
At Seabreeze, she enjoys being able to interact more with clients, especially the smaller ones who are more open to her suggestions and advice. And to us, that’s the true benefit of experience: it’s not just about doing the job well, it’s about seeing new ways to do the job better.
