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Earlier quoted context omitted.
Its highly likely that those are in fact the same question.
Not when asked by me. http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=physiological+effects+of... My general sense: any health effects are likely to be weak at levels typically encountered, but I'm holding as plausible that thee may be some effects.
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…
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 a huge number of external factors.
Discounts are one of my favorite. Believe me when I say that I've played that game multiple times. I used to own an electronics manufacturing business that made products for industrial and professional applications. I had to face the reality of product from Korea and China entering the market at half my price and offering 60% of my value. The result, no matter what I did, was the huge sucking sound of sales leaving for the competition.
Lower your prices you say? Did that. Multiple times. In multiple creative ways. Eventually matching their prices and accepting lower profits. "We'll make it up in volume". Bullshit! Maybe I sold 1% more product. That's it.
OK, how about more value. Did that. Multiple times. Added features. Added mind-numbing technology. No-go.
We are talking about products costing thousands of dollars per unit here. The fact was that people, particularly as the economy got worst, wanted Walmart, not Gucci. And so the business went to what they perceived to be the cheapest they could get.
Don't get me started on Asian companies dumping to kill-off competition. Nasty.
OK, well, how about the high end. I had very high end product as well. $50K per unit and above. High performance. The best of the best. Volume, just like the taylor in the article, sucked. We could make these "Ferrari's" but it was sheer pain and suffering, financially speaking. The general theory was that we'd sell a high-end unit and also sell a lot more lower-end units along with them. Nice dream.
So, raise prices? Sure. Why not? The problem is that people are only willing to pay so much for what they are buying. The "how much" is a multivariable problem that is nearly impossible to solve. This is certainly true for a taylor who only makes a few dozen suits per year. He can't experiment with pricing too much as word of mouth would destroy his business. If customer B learns that he paid more for the suit that his friend, customer A bought all hell breaks loose.
I know I sound very negative about this. I am just looking at it from the perspective of having experienced failure in price elasticity due to the product I was pushing existing in a very narrow trading margin. Volume couldn't really scale at the bottom or at the top due to different factors and price at the top was limited by what people were willing to pay for the product category.
Perhaps he can charge more for additional services that he might not be monetizing. One example might be to extend the delivery time on his standard $4,000 suit and charge a $1,000 fee for faster delivery. In effect he would be raising his actual per-unit price, but it would be in the context of easily communicable value. In the prior example, customers A and B would have on issue with what each paid because the conversation would quickly identify that B got his expedited, which costs money.
He could also take in an apprentice and see about offloading some of the work. My family owned several clothing manufacturing plants and so I am also familiar with aspects of this business. There's a lot that can be done by less skilled workers if one is smart enough to setup systems to make this happen.
Finally, he might be very well served taking his problem to a local business school to see about getting help from one of their various programs. His business could very easily become the subject of a class and he could have a small army of consultants helping him move it out of the garage.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The real question is why hasn't he done this already? It's a fairly obvious solution. I suspect that there is some other force at work here, though I'm at a loss to guess what it might be. It's too bad that the NYTimes didn't raise this question.
Absolutely. I hate it when otherwise compelling articles fail to even raise a screamingly obvious question, much less answer it. The cynical me wonders if it is because the writers actually do know the answer, and it somehow weakens or distracts from their point. Or perhaps requires the telling of an impolite truth.
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…
Patrick, Just wanted to point out that was my first thought as well. Also, wanted to say that I make it a point to read your comment feed on HN. You're one of the 4 folks who I read regularly because of comments like this help me change how I view charging and valuing my work and others.
I'm on the lookout for more very high quality contributors; sticking to their feeds instead of the front page (I still check front and new, just not as often) has greatly increased the value of this site for me.
(Thanks Patrick, Thomas, and Paul!)
My Dad is a tailor, from ye olden days as well and cut his teeth measuring, marking and cutting. Yes, you can get a made to measure suit that's pretty much damn near perfect but when a truly experienced tailor works to produce a suit it's essentially a hand-crafted, one of a kind piece of art. And oddly given my love of tailored suits I generally buy off the peg ones as I'm way too hard on clothing to justify the out…
Yet another submarine: http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html The suit is dead for any number of reason, dittos bespoke clothing. $4000 is several times what I spend on clothes in a year. It's several times what I spend on clothes in several years. There's a far less expensive option that's highly satisficing. Suits, once an inexpensive, practical, standardized alternative to more ornate and expensive clothing, are now…
The suit is dead for any number of reason, dittos bespoke clothing. Why do you think the suit is dead? I wear a suit (not always, but often enough to have an opinion). I've never bought an expensive suit, but I nor do I buy cheap suits. I guess I generally spend around $500. I work with people who spend $2000 on suits though. These aren't bespoke, but are from nice fabrics and cut very well (eg, Hugo Boss etc). I'm n…
They wore incredibly well (for several years, I rotated the same 3 suits and 12 dress shirts on an every weekday basis).
There is also a huge difference in comfort between off-the-shelf and made to measure.
If I had much use for a suit these days, I would not hesitate to have a few made to measure, along with a new set of shirts.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Read the article more closely. This is about craftmanship trying to survive in an age where craftmanship itself does not scale. It's not about the "submarine PR" phenomenon that concerns the Paul Graham article.
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.
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…
No offense, but this could be really bad advice. Maybe the customers who'd pay 10k for a suit won't go to some guy's living room for fittings. Or maybe the price of top bespoke tailors in town is comparable, because they make better use of lower-paid assistants. Or maybe, to convince a bank to make the loan he needs to move into a nicer place, he needs to show the bank he has a large backlog of orders. Or maybe he's…
Yup. You'll get a beautiful bespoke (not M2M, truly bespoke) suit in an elegant showroom in Manhattan with fantastic customer service for the same money. I've bought basic suits for two-thirds the price, in fact. He might have an attractive pedigree via his apprenticeship, but that's not worth three times the price to me. There is real, legitimate, similarly credential competition here.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Patrick, Just wanted to point out that was my first thought as well. Also, wanted to say that I make it a point to read your comment feed on HN. You're one of the 4 folks who I read regularly because of comments like this help me change how I view charging and valuing my work and others.
patio11, pg, tptacek... who is the fourth? I'm on the lookout for more very high quality contributors; sticking to their feeds instead of the front page (I still check front and new, just not as often) has greatly increased the value of this site for me. (Thanks Patrick, Thomas, and Paul!)
>> I'm on the lookout for more very high quality contributors;
Even the richest customer simply has to wait — sometimes months — before the new suit is finished. No wonder so many pass up a $4,000 bespoke suit for a ready-to-wear Kiton version at twice the price. Isn't it pretty clear here that he should raise prices dramatically ? Clearly the demand is there (people spend twice the price on a inferior product).