Tie manufacturers are made up of many different entities.

Tie manufacturers can refer to production points only which simply make up ties from fabric supplied to them by other tie manufacturers. These are generally called CMT operators who are also tie manufacturers because one of the items they make are ties, hence they are called tie manufacturers.

Tie manufacturers can also exist as companies who are not actually tie manufacturers in the true sense of the word but pretty much control the whole process of design and fabric up to the point of manufacture and then they hand over to the next tie manufacturer who makes up the garment but has not had control of any other part of the process.

Then there are tie manufacturers who use several print points, fabric points, design points and also production points but at the end of the day, their label goes onto the tie as tie manufacturers.

So actually, it isn't easy to ascertain who are tie manufacturers and who are not.

I for one believe that all of the above qualify for the simple reason that tie manufacturers do not have to fully control every area of their production process.

Manufacture is just one part of the process of being a tie manufacturer.

The design element is equally important if not possibly sometimes more important than the role of the actual tie manufacturer because if the design is not up to standard then the tie will never get to the point of manufacture, never mind anything else- the panels will not be printed, the fabric will not be woven.

In the olden golden days of the tie manufacturers, one of the most important elements was and still is the element of design and because of this, especially in Italy and France where many of the ties worn were designed and manufactured by tie manufacturers with the help of what was then called design studios.

Design studios were there simply to provide a service of design and in many cases, the team of designers would design several ties and then sell the designs to the tie manufacturers.

The tie manufacturers were also often under contract, so they would pay the design studios to design and design all for the benefit of the customer who was contracted or vice versa to the tie manufacturers.

This is quite interesting because in those days the process of tie and scarf design for that matter was a much different story to today where there are computer programs available to assist the not-so-good designer to become a fairly good designer, whereas in the past before we had all of these things, the design and quality of the design was completely reliant of how good the actual designer was at their jobs.

The better the designers, the better the designs and so the more successful every new range of ties became and in turn, the brand itself grew as well as benefitted from the great designs.