Some Lessons Learned

Well, it has been a very intense autumn - not just because of the business side of my activities, but also because I have had a moderately heavy teaching load at the university. Tomorrow I give my exam and then, aside from the corrections of the latter, I'll be "home free".

On the business end, it has been a very busy time with a lot of lessons. I will need more time to harvest them all, but here is some of the learning. In retrospect, I was rather naive about how the online sales would work out. It has been explained to me that because my product is viewed as "new", that my company operates with the product development cycle typical of high tech companies and products - that is, that a few "innovators" will buy the first generation of the product, following which a larger percentage of "early adopters" will buy, but that the mainstream is only accessible later when the "early majority" buyers see the product enough in and around town that they become interested. So our marketing model needs to be aimed at those who are more adventurous in their purchase decisions.

Secondly, we have found that a typical "trying on" session may take about 30 to 40 minutes. It takes that amount of time for the potential client to really understand what the garment does for them, and typically this involves trying on 4 or 5 combinations (although some people got the combination right the first time and then needed to try on 2 or 3 other combos to double check their choice). Once a person understands the garment, then the use of the web site becomes a powerful tool for ordering, but until the garment is properly understood, the website alone is inadequate. So I am rethinking my marketing strategy towards placing the garment in relatively high end designer boutiques and/or market specific boutiques (such as travel-oriented sales points) which will give the garment the attention it needs to sell, and towards the possibility of organizing direct-to-consumer sales (i.e. independent sales reps, or the "travelling salesperson").

I shall also be looking into the possibility of videotaping a "trying out session" to give online customers a better feel for how the garment is worn. In a lot of ways,

I'm quite pleased about these changes in marketing strategy, because it puts us closer to the client, and I believe that contact is essential to our eventual success with the garment and its sister products. I have some ideas about developing garments which are "designed to be adjusted" so that they may be semi-custom fitted to clients, with the final adjustment carried out by local seamstresses and tailors according to the needs of the individual clients.

However, coming up with a viable and sustainable business strategy that serves these needs is a major challenge for me. Furthermore, money is a bit tight until I can extend our sales, so my ability to manoeuvre is quite limited. I'd like to design and develop several new items, but right now the priority is marketing the existing products so that they can sustain the company and give me some breathing room to develop the next set of products. I have found some additional help to do this - in particular, a micro-financing outfit in Quebec City has agreed to help me with my marketing requirements. What is great about this is that they offer direct business coaching which has already been a huge boon.

Although the challenges in front are huge, the territory covered to date is also huge! Within less than 12 months I have developed a company, a product line (well, two product lines, actually), an online boutique and a network of partners that should see us into the future. I've had to reduce some of our scope in order to keep the funding under control (this has meant letting go of my salaried assistant and the fabulous workshop space I set up), and am now gearing up for a series of marketing initiatives that will take us through to spring 2012. Over the November-December period we have sold fewer products than I had hoped, but we have nonetheless sold several dozen and our ability to sell should increase over the next few months as I work to improve our marketing program. So a pretty good end-of-year bilan, all things considered.

Tango, Tango, Tango

Well, I'm just back from the Tango Conference! I gave a presentation on the history of the relationship between tango and fashion, followed by a small fashion "show", using music from the early part of the 20th century (the tango music of Erik Satie and Igor Stravinsky) as a background. I presented two outfits, a black dress based on the one shown in the July 1916 Vanity Fair cover from my previous post, and a harem outfit loosely based on the one shown in the January 1915 Vanity Fair cover (I shall show photos of the fashions in a couple of weeks, once I have organized a photo shoot). The fashion show was a huge success, despite its brevity! The clothes were stunning in presentation, and my young model was perfect. I added a scarf ("écharpe" - the French word is more interesting here) to each outfit to complete the aesthetics.

It took, however, one "measurement" session and two "fitting" sessions to get the clothes adjusted to fit, and the final fit wasn't verified until the show itself, for lack of time! I prepared muslin shells of all the garments, but in retrospect, this was perhaps not necessary. Either I misunderstand how to take the right lessons from the muslin fitting session, or the clothes fit close enough anyway that they need to be adjusted directly in the final fabric on the person, I'm not sure. I've been using Aldritch's blocks to develop garments now for more than a dozen people, and although there are usually small adjustments to be made to get the fit right for each person, overall her blocks seem to work extremely well at getting the fit more or less right to begin with. I'm beginning to think that I could skip the "muslin shell preparation" and work with the fabric right away for many of the garments - this would knock about 25% off the preparation time and reduce the need for so many fitting sessions.

I am extraordinarily pleased with this production. Up until now, I've been producing one garment, on average, every three weeks, although not completely finalized in terms of adjustments. For this project, I produced four garments, completely fitted and adjusted, including drafting and layout as well as doing the muslin shell and sewing and finishing the final garment, in one month. I still did this working weekends - in the week, I am busy with my "day job". So almost a fourfold increase in production capacity. In addition, I believe these two outfits are the first garments of "high quality" I have produced - the beginnings of what could become a real offering, a portfolio collection.

For my next major fashion project, I plan to continue to develop clothes for dancing tango (and perhaps other styles of dance - I have a request to develop clothes for belly dancing), based on or inspired by historic fashions (1910s, 1920s, 1940s) and do a more sustained fashion show, in collaboration with the tango community, later this year.