I think it's great you laid this all out, it's an inspirational road map but I'm not sure it's a go and I won't insult your intelligence by presuming you don't know that already. Laying it all out is a useful way of thinking through the process. My key question is, what do you want to do, really? You wrote:
Finally keep in mind the main purpose of this group is not just about making money... this group is to share our knowledge, industry contacts & workforce and combine it all together too fast track the entire process... I bet if you took all these brands I mentioned from their original owners, and left them with nothing… I bet they could launch another brand & have it up and running within 1/10th of the time than anybody else or a newbie... This is the main goal & purpose of creating this group
In this context, it seems you want a nurturing support group, an incubator or sorts. That's a laudable goal, one I strive towards daily. How does one go about that? I don't have the answer -and I've been working on it for five years. This is not sour grapes or a passive aggressive way of suggesting you can't do something I haven't. I truly want to know. Here's my thinking, you already have three brands you say are doing well; why not infuse the group into building those into formidable entities? It's always easier to add on than to build anew.
You don't define what you want people to bring to the table beyond $73-$100, 10-14 hours of weekly labor and computing skills that most young people who habituate forums would have. Arguably, if you want to incubate, the primary need is passion and commitment -which is something you did mention so key on that. If you have passion, it can carry you through everything else.
It is common for people to mention the direct costs attributable to scale as a matter of competitive advantage. Consider:
... all these big brands ...get their tee’s manufactured, screenprinted, labeled, tagged, bagged, shipped and imported into Australia for under $1… this is simply because when they go to a manufacturer in China...
But there are considerable costs to effect a $1 direct cost, what you call "hidden" costs. Specifically, these are (minimally) transaction costs and overhead. These are usually much higher than direct costs which you admitedly hope to surmount with institutional knowledge acquired through group members. But if members are newbies themselves, how can they bring this capital into the enterprise? The singular advantage established brands have is that they acquire the means to buy institutional knowledge (usually via salaries), values that are then transmitted to everyone else. Which brings me to sales. It's one thing to have the money to affect a $1 direct cost purchase and another thing entirely to have the means to place it and sell it.
Returning to the matter of direct costs, people do the math. They see the product at retail -say $30, subtract the dollar and think the balance is pure profit or nearly so less those pesky hidden costs you mention. The problem is, sales do not equal profit. In most healthy successful companies, actual profit is closer to 1 or 2 percent. If that. This means that while your direct product cost is $1, you'll have to spend or abdicate an additional $27 or $28 per shirt. For a tiny company without economies of scale, 1 to 2 percent is dirt. It's a different game altogether.
Fact: smaller companies are more profitable than large ones mostly because their transaction costs are lower. With fewer owners (presumably not a public company such that all your examples are), there's better return for each owner. I'm not saying you should not aspire to be a big brand but I am saying you're better off using a small business model (and goals) until you are solidified and can leverage the cache of your brand into something better.
And speaking of "better" (depending on how you define your values), all of your examples of big brands are actually owned by somebody else. They were acquired by other larger entities into a stable of other brands they own. These larger firms bought these labels and brought in their own institutional knowledge to take them to another level to become the examples worth mentioning.
Again, if this is the model you aspire to, that is a personal decision. My advice to people who want to do this is to (usually) aspire to become acquired. Become a company that someone wants to buy. That's where the money is. At that point you can roll into the larger firm who buys you out and acquire yet more knowledge of workings on that level or you can bow out to start all over again. Personally, that is more attractive to me. I'd rather be a serial entrepreneur and start a new company and begin the process anew.
Lastly, in formulating your plan, keep a wary eye on confirmation bias...
