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What's a $4000 Suit Worth?

nytimes.com

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Re: What's a $4000 Suit Worth?

#171

Post by fusiongyro »

pc86 wrote: post #169
fusiongyro wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Extreme" outlier may be going a bit far. I live in the Southwest (NM). I found myself at a formal, Conservative Jewish funeral a couple weeks ago and half of us were wearing jeans. I was slightly overdressed just in slacks and a nice button-up. One out of the last four job candidates that's interviewed here came in anything fancier than that. I've been to four or five weddings out here, and never seen a shortage of…

Maybe it's just me, but wearing jeans to a wedding or funeral and not wearing a jacket and tie to a interview immediately signal disrespect and that the guest/candidate is too lazy to put in the requisite effort.

It's not just you, but it's also not everyone else. It's a regionalism.

Re: What's a $4000 Suit Worth?

#172

Post by roc »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #166
wisty wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's a demand curve That's commonly believed by mainstream economists, as an article of faith. That there is a demand curve, and it always goes down. It's not always true, unless a huge number of axioms hold (none of which are true). It's most obviously not true for prestige goods, which go up in demand as price rises (and then go down as no-one is able to afford them). Demand curves can be wacky, even discontin…

You need only one axiom to get a demand curve: The universe of potential purchasers consists of a set of agents (i=1...N) and each agent has a reserve price R[i]. If a good is priced R[i], Agent[i] will not.

The problem is that demand is not as simple as "agents will buy goods below their reserve price." Real world experience shows us that there exist luxury and inferior goods.

We can quite simply see that there are (many) agents who could buy any number of walmart jeans, but would never set foot in the store. Another chunk of agents currently buy, say, Levi jeans, but likely wouldn't buy those either, if those exact jeans were a third the price and sold in a discount store.

Similarly there are agents who don't give Levi a second thought, but will line up for jeans of similarly quality, trivially variable style and 10x the price.

The real world demand curves for blue jeans don't look like the simple axiom suggests.

Re: What's a $4000 Suit Worth?

#173

Post by noahc »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #166
wisty wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's a demand curve That's commonly believed by mainstream economists, as an article of faith. That there is a demand curve, and it always goes down. It's not always true, unless a huge number of axioms hold (none of which are true). It's most obviously not true for prestige goods, which go up in demand as price rises (and then go down as no-one is able to afford them). Demand curves can be wacky, even discontin…

You need only one axiom to get a demand curve: The universe of potential purchasers consists of a set of agents (i=1...N) and each agent has a reserve price R[i]. If a good is priced R[i], Agent[i] will not.

I'm not sure this is correct. I remember in one episode of Mixergy, Andrew Warner said something to the effect of "X was the most expensive, so I bought it thinking they'd be the best and they sucked! Don't buy x."

Had X been cheaper, he wouldn't have bought it.

What am I missing?

Re: What's a $4000 Suit Worth?

#174

Post by yummyfajitas »

roc wrote: post #172
yummyfajitas wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need only one axiom to get a demand curve: The universe of potential purchasers consists of a set of agents (i=1...N) and each agent has a reserve price R[i]. If a good is priced R[i], Agent[i] will not.

The problem is that demand is not as simple as "agents will buy goods below their reserve price." Real world experience shows us that there exist luxury and inferior goods. We can quite simply see that there are (many) agents who could buy any number of walmart jeans, but would never set foot in the store. Another chunk of agents currently buy, say, Levi jeans, but likely wouldn't buy those either, if those exact jea…

I didn't claim the law of demand was perfect or that substitute goods don't exist. I was merely pointing out that wisty was wrong to claim the law of demand requires that "a huge number of axioms hold (none of which are true)." You need only one axiom which is, generally speaking, reasonably accurate.

Further, your example of jeans is trivially explained by noting that "jeans" is a broad category of goods, not a good itself. I.e., there is one demand curve for Levi jeans, a separate demand curve for hipster jeans, and a third demand curve for genuine levi jeans (not jeans that appear at first glance to be Levi, but sold by a shady discount store).

Your critique of the demand curve for jeans applies much better to various demand aggregates in macroeconomics, not the law of demand for specific goods.

Re: What's a $4000 Suit Worth?

#175

Post by Retric »

christensen_emc wrote: post #160
Retric wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am willing to bet someone that knew what they where doing could program a machine to cut fabric based on all those measurements thus saving time. That by it's self is scale. Next step, 3d imaging to capture some / all of those measurements automatically. Once you start down the path it's the classic R&D vs vs market size debate, but nothing says you need to diminish quality as you start to scale.

This may work for the initial fitting, but that is a relatively one. Some of the later fittings, particularly in the shoulder areas are more difficult and more trial/error.

Unless there is actual customer preference involved this is probably an area where more highly accurate measurements + a better formula + better construction could make this much faster. For people it's easier to fix it after the fact than do more up front calculations, but when a computer is finding the solution they can probably get vary close the first time.

Re: What's a $4000 Suit Worth?

#176

Post by pc86 »

fusiongyro wrote: post #171
pc86 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it's just me, but wearing jeans to a wedding or funeral and not wearing a jacket and tie to a interview immediately signal disrespect and that the guest/candidate is too lazy to put in the requisite effort.

It's not just you, but it's also not everyone else. It's a regionalism.

Maybe the weather has something to do with that as well? I live in a very temperate part of the Northeast.

Re: What's a $4000 Suit Worth?

#177

Post by huhtenberg »

robomartin wrote: post #112
patio11 wrote: post #60

Frew, who apprenticed with a Savile Row tailor, can — all by himself, and almost all by hand — create a pattern, cut fabric and expertly construct a suit that, for about $4,000, perfectly molds to its owner’s body. In a city filled with very rich people, he quickly had all the orders he could handle. You don't have to be Wall Street to figure out the bleedingly obvious solution to being a starving artist who has so m…

Most of the time proponents of price-elasticity make me laugh. And, I do say this with respect. I used to be one of these proponents. I inhaled business book after business book once done with engineering school. And, I played the game. And I got my ass handed to me. In the real world price elasticity works within a very narrow range that is industry and product specific and can --and usually is-- highly dependent on…

> Added features

Try removing features ;)

Incredibly in some cases this increases value, because it creates a product that is narrowly specialized and fulfills very specific need. People with that need would rather buy a product that does exactly what they need instead of something that also does it. Specialization and a higher price point serve as indicators of higher quality, and through that - a higher value.

Re: What's a $4000 Suit Worth?

#178

Post by roc »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #174
roc wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that demand is not as simple as "agents will buy goods below their reserve price." Real world experience shows us that there exist luxury and inferior goods. We can quite simply see that there are (many) agents who could buy any number of walmart jeans, but would never set foot in the store. Another chunk of agents currently buy, say, Levi jeans, but likely wouldn't buy those either, if those exact jea…

I didn't claim the law of demand was perfect or that substitute goods don't exist. I was merely pointing out that wisty was wrong to claim the law of demand requires that "a huge number of axioms hold (none of which are true)." You need only one axiom which is, generally speaking, reasonably accurate. Further, your example of jeans is trivially explained by noting that "jeans" is a broad category of goods, not a good…

The point of discussing multiple types of jeans was to compare and contrast their demand curves. My apologies if that wasn't communicated clearly.

I simply disagree that the one axiom gives us anything close to a reasonably accurate picture of what's going on.

The simple curve suggests that price is it. And it's quite clearly not.

Re: What's a $4000 Suit Worth?

#179

Post by enko »

nandemo wrote: post #152
pinaceae wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you get out of your tech-bubble, you'll notice this as very far from the truth. Suits are the work dress in consulting, financial services, pretty much anything where you're clients demand respect and are not in IT (IT and personal visual aestethics have an inverse relationship, in any big company you can easily tell who is in IT). Try to attend a management meeting in Europe, China, Japan without a suit. Within t…

> Try to attend a management meeting in Europe, China, Japan without a suit. You don't even have to go as far as management meeting. In Japan, if you have any sort of white-collar job (with few exceptions in tech companies and research departments), you wear a suit.

Not sure Japan is the best example - suits there, as worn by the salarymen you're talking about, are hardly treated as fashion - they're worn with all the pride and enthusiasm of any other uniform, i.e. not much. Morning on the yamanote-sen is a sea of miserable-looking ill-fitting suits, all seemingly in the same two shades ("boring blue" and "grim grey"), lifeless translucent e-z-care shirts and $5 ties. I haven't had too much cause to wear suits in Japan but when I did a $1500 Hugo Boss and a decent shirt made me feel like frigging James Bond.

Not to say I didn't see nice suits, I saw plenty, just saying that your average sarariman sure isn't buying $4000 bespoke suits and frankly I would doubt $400.

Re: What's a $4000 Suit Worth?

#180

Post by harryh »

jbigelow76 wrote: post #139
kamaal wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am guessing the customer base is already small. And given most of his business would come recommendations and leads. 'He just increased his price'- Is not very nice if you want to get new customers.

'He just increased his price'- Is not very nice if you want to get new customers. Raising prices may actually increase sales. I think some of the problem is a lot of us are seeing this relationship between the tailor and his clients through the lens of software or service providers. For any right thinking business person there is no pride in going into hacker meetup and saying "I just had to upgrade from the 28 dolla…

As patio11 often points out you're wrong about software & suits being in different worlds.

Any real software business is happy to upgrade from the 28/mo plan to the 39/mo plan if it gets even the tinniest benefit. I routinely approve those sort of expenses without spending more then 2 seconds thinking about them.

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