What's a $4000 Suit Worth?

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/09/magazine/whats-a-4000-suit-worth.html?pagewanted=all

by gphil • 14 years ago

252 187 14 years ago

If he really does have mow siting list of months, you would think he'd raise his prices. He would make more money, some people wouldn't go to him for suits anymore, but that would just mean that others would get their suits more quickly

runT1ME• 14 years ago

I agree, unless he loses more than half his business, why not double his prices? Maybe he only makes one suit a month that way, but he would sure have a lot more free time...

heretohelp• 14 years ago

Some people just really love what they do, love being busy, and want to be able to share their gift with more people.

The certainty of constant sales/deal-flow has a value all its own too.

But don't let that stop you parroting the same advice to every self-employed/contractor/business-person who claims to be popular/keeping busy that we see on every. single. thread. on. HN.

graupel• 14 years ago

One of the first things I did when I got my first 'real' job was get a custom-made suit from a place in our neighborhood; it was $1000 and he did like 25 measurements and said it would be 2 weeks until it was ready.

Turns out he was sending the measurements to Korea where the suits are custom made then shipped back, and then they do final alterations in the US.

I've ordered 3 more since then by just sending an email & choosing a color - don't think I could ever go back to an off-the-shelf suit - custom fit is so much more comfortable.

enraged_camel• 14 years ago

I've thought about doing this too. The problem is my weight and body composition keeps changing a lot as I pick up different sports, so a thousand dollar suit I buy today may very well become too small or too big six months down the line.

slantyyz• 14 years ago

If you get a custom suit (you don't necessarily need to spend 1k), usually they make it with enough fabric that you can adjust it in or out by at least an inch or so.

lanstein2• 14 years ago

Could you say, are you in SF? Also, your email isn't visible in your profile unless you put it in the 'about' box.

thomaspaine3• 14 years ago

If you're looking for a bespoke tailor in SF that does this, visit Spoon Tailor in Chinatown. Hong Kong tailors are some of the best in the world, and I believe suits start at $700+ depending on fabric.

dredmorbius12• 14 years ago

What I'd kill for isn't a suit, but a decent set of casual clothing that actually fits (see my post elsewhere on this post). I rarely-to-never wear suits. While not completely fashion-averse, I'm pretty pragmatic when it comes to clothing: it should cover my nakedness, not be uncomfortable, be easy to care for, and look reasonably well.

Jeans or khakis and button-downs work well for me, a washable wool could also work (dry cleaning really isn't an option). Contemporary clothing styles simply don't agree with me, and the made-to-measure and bespoke alternatives are still rather steep.

Though I'm increasingly tempted.

antonioevans• 14 years ago

Can you PM the contact. Love a good suit.

gmazzotti• 14 years ago

me too please

djahng• 14 years ago

That's a made-to-measure (MTM) suit, which is a completely different animal than a bespoke. I get MTM suits for myself, but I have a cousin that buys bespoke. They're so nice...

ghshephard• 14 years ago

If there was _every_ a task ideally suited (no pun intended) for automation, this is it. Plunk the 16 measurements required and you should have a high quality bespoke suit.

mason55• 14 years ago

There are plenty of companies that already do that (Indochino, Modasuite, Black Lapel, etc). No one who cares much about fashion believes that they will overtake a good bespoke suit any time soon.

For example, measurement is not as easy as "wrap a tape around your arm". You have to take multiples to make sure you get people as they add water weight, you have to take it at the right spot which might change for each person, etc etc. Then, machine sewing still isn't as good as hand sewing. If each pattern is different then it's difficult to automate the sewing. Lots of little changes in each suit make it tough to both automate and maintain high quality.

gknoy• 14 years ago

The skill in measurement is an entirely different skill from that of doing the sewing, however. If you had a machine that could sew as well as a human, we could have an army of measurement experts sending them to the machines, which would churn out custom-made suits.

I think the bigger question is how to automate the sewing. If we could do that, I imagine it would make it much more scalable.

stusmall2• 14 years ago

That's slightly different. That's called made to measure. Its where you have one stock design and then its custom made to your body. For every M2M suit of a style, the patterns will match, label style will match, pockets will match. Its just the size that is different. I hear indochino does a pretty good job of making affordable M2M suits. For their prices I'd imagine a lot of the process is highly automated.

When you get a bespoke suit made, you walk in and sit down with consultant and you figure out every little detail. He helps you pick a pattern that matches your coloring, label width that matches your body size, number of buttons that match your personality. You end up with a suit that is 100% unique to you.

philh• 14 years ago

> number of buttons that match your personality

I'll bite: what correlation is there between your personality and the number of buttons on your ideal suit?

exhaze2• 14 years ago

What you described on the bottom is not unique to bespoke, these details can be just as easily adjusted on a made to measure suit.

What's unique about bespoke is that the tailor (technically, the cutter) will make a brand new pattern just for your body, which will be based on a much greater number of measurements. Also, the fitting of a bespoke suit involves multiple fittings (http://www.thesimplyrefined.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/B...), using each iteration to ensure a perfect "fit" in accordance with the tailor's vision.

Made to measure suits, on the other hand, involve a single fitting. After the fitting, the suit is made, and can only be altered to the same extent as, say, a standard size suit that you bought at a store.

xentronium• 14 years ago

That's already happening. A good suit is more of a status attribute, like a good wrist watch.

jcromartie• 14 years ago

Come on!

(sorry)

dag11• 14 years ago

I get the reference, but I think this better belongs on Reddit.

westicle• 14 years ago

For a reference that good, maybe he considers it karma well spent.

T_S_• 14 years ago

Why can't the TSA make me a suit? They already have the measurements. I'm barely half joking here. Seems like this is one of those unsolved "solved problems".

stcredzero2• 14 years ago

You may have something here. You wouldn't even need millimeter waves to do it. Just a 3D scanner setup, which can amount to an old projector and some webcams. We should be able to use technology from 3D motion capture to build a physical model of someone's skeleto-muscular system. The hard part would be the domain knowledge. Someone would have to work closely with a tailor to convert his/her specialized knowledge about fabrics and seams and how clothing hangs off the body into algorithms. (And even then, you'd probably need a trained operator with a sense of design.)

lancewiggs2• 14 years ago

X-rays used to be very popular for shoe fitting. I strongly suspect that millimeter waves have similar long term health issues. And I don't see many getting naked in front of a 3D video camera set-up.

rz2k• 14 years ago

The Brooks Brothers on Madison Ave got a "digital tailor" setup about five years ago.

ralfd• 14 years ago

"Cut for you" in Berlin uses a 3D body scanner:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRdTSugYdjc

Shenglong• 14 years ago

Went through extra scanning at the airport and are angry? No worries, here's a lottery ticket for a Bespoke suit!

lmm• 14 years ago

Would we really be better off in bespoke suits? It doesn't sound like this Frew has a very good life if he's having to work in his living room and can't afford his own suits. Wanting to have a someone personally spend 75 hours on your suit seems terribly egotistical; if they do it for the love of it then fair enough, but honestly I'd feel more comfortable in a suit I knew hadn't consumed so much human life energy.

gdubs• 14 years ago

Right, because the clothing industry at large has always been good about how it 'consumes human life energy'. While I get where you're coming from, I think it's more egotistical to deprive someone of their job because you think it's too hard for them, or that they'd be better off doing something else. It's his job. Plus, he's making 50 grand a year. Which is more than most teachers in the U.S.

rhplus• 14 years ago

Not mentioned in the article, but if you're willing to wait, some of those Saville Row suitmakers will produce a bespoke suit for much cheaper than $4000. The trick is to add a 4 week wait time and ship the measurements off to India. And of course, if you can make the trip to India yourself (or plenty of other countries in SE Asia), then a bespoke suit will cost you less than $100.

eshvk• 14 years ago

I have often been tempted to go get a suit from these guys ( http://www.syedbawkher.com/) who promise a bespoke suit as good as Saville Row. However, the number they quote ~ $1000 is not exactly cheap enough for me to experiment.

shimon_e• 14 years ago

Bespoke and a made to measure pos for a $100 are two completely different things.

greghinch• 14 years ago

I bought a couple $100 suits in Vietnam when I was there. The fit was good but the quality was low. They fell apart within a year. That was the experience that everyone I talked to who bought made to measure clothing there had. You get what you pay for.

leothekim• 14 years ago

$4000.

lancewiggs2• 14 years ago

In my opinion it's a lot of money, but can be very well spent.

A fantastically fitting and well designed suit is a powerful weapon in business, politics and life. Trends come and go, but suits always seem to come back into vogue, and you can really tell the difference between the highest quality bespoke suiting and shirts that the CEO/HNWI/high ranking politician wear, and the ones that lower levels are wearing.

Like it or not I've found that suits really work to project "rank" (whatever that means) - working on me and (sometimes) for me. So it's worth the money to invest in at least one very good one. Some say we should dress for the job we want next, or in ten years.

Add-ons beyond the initial investment can add up, including a range of shirts, ties, multiple work suits and suits for other purposes such as formal events and outdoor events in summer. However purchasing well means that these can last for years and years. Suits for men are a lot easier, cheaper and last longer than business clothing for women, who have another order or two of complexity to deal with.

It's the same with "casual" clothes. Some people wear casual clothes that are not so casual or cheap on closer inspection.

nicholassmith• 14 years ago

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 outlay (even with a family discount).

tomkinstinch• 14 years ago

Beyond the skill of art, I would imagine that an advantage of a practiced tailor is also that you get to benefit from their knowledge of which styles or cuts would work well for your particular features, intent, and life story. Software can get the geometry right, but it's hard to program taste.

mbell• 14 years ago

I bought a suit when I graduated and was looking for a job, wasn't custom tailed just off the shelf. It worked (I guess) I got a job as employee 4.

I haven't worn a suit in _years_. In fact if someone were to judge me by my uniform I'm fine with saying "sorry, this isn't a fit" (pun intended).

gjm11• 14 years ago

From http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html ...

Why do the media keep running stories saying suits are back? Because PR firms tell them to.

mherdeg• 14 years ago

Graham also says in that column (and this is weird that I remember it, not having read it in five years!) "we never managed to crack the print edition of the Times."

fecklessyouth• 14 years ago

It's not the suits are back...it's that they never really left.

emmapersky2• 14 years ago

this.

thomaspaine3• 14 years ago

What does this have to do with anything other than that both articles happen to use the word "suits"? This isn't a story about the suit making a comeback, it's about old world artisanship struggling to survive in a 21st century economy.

dredmorbius12• 14 years ago

In fairness, Adam Davidson's usually not quite so crass as your typical fashion reporter.

Usually.

lobster_johnson• 14 years ago

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.

Retric2• 14 years ago

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.

dredmorbius12• 14 years ago

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 expensive, frequently impractical attire. The lead time to purchase is too long. And a far lower grade of tailoring is more than sufficient for virtually any occasion. That's basic facts.

There are exceptions -- people for whom the expense is neither extravagent nor unneccessary. It's a pretty small crowd, well within the top 1%, and probably more like the top 0.01%. Then divide by two, because, well, very few women wear suits (though women's fashion is its own discussion).

As TFA notes, bespoke tailoring doesn't scale. And it strongly suggests a rather fragile relationship between the garment and the wearer -- I can change in multiple of 25 separate measurements within a few months to a years time -- does this render a suit poor-fitting?

The made-to-measure alternative exists, and for many or most, it's a more-than-acceptable alternative for either formal or casual clothing. With correctly chosen measuring points, and if necessary, some additional tailoring, garments can be made to fit quite well. Cloth is pretty fungible. Sticking to conservative fashions, styles, and cuts means you'll have something that will wear well for years. And in a world in which off-the-rack sizing is increasingly problematic (aggressively styled cuts with little sizing leeway result in more frustrated customers), it's increasingly an option. There are a few vendors in the space, though I feel it's still waiting for its true visionary.

majormajor• 14 years ago

This article doesn't read like a subtle "the suit is back!" pitch to me. It's a pretty interesting look at the economics of a couple of different ways of making better-fitting suits.

I agree that the interesting changes will come out of the made-to-measure world. Considering the difference in comfort (not to mention look!) that properly-fitting clothing provides, I'd be extremely interested in getting a nice made-to-measure suit if I had the sort of job or social calendar that would give me opportunities to wear it... and while I don't expect to ever be in the sort of job or circles that would require a suit regularly, I definitely look forward to an economical, quick(ish) way of getting a nice-fitting suit. Last time I bought a suit I had to wait over a month for alterations to be done at the department store anyway, so if someone can come up with a way of reducing made-to-measure turnaround to a month...

And then let me gets khakis and less-formal shirts made that way too... I buy a lot more of those than suits.

dredmorbius12• 14 years ago

Yes, the article is, if you'll pardon the term, a cut above the usual "suit is back" PR hack job.

It doesn't make the suit any less dead.

And as much as I'm fashion averse, I've also found myself increasingly frustrated by the state of the fashion industry and lack of reasonable alternatives to actually take a mild interest in the article.

thomaspaine3• 14 years ago

The reason you see made-to-measure more so with suits as opposed to more casual wear is because suits are highly structured garments. They have to fit correctly in a lot of different places, whereas knitwear like t-shirts and polos stretch and the same size can accomodate a wider variety of body types. There are lots of places that will do MTM casual button ups.

I have several MTM shirts and suits, and honestly I don't think it's really worth it. For a couple reasons, I'm much happier these days finding a brand that fits me off the rack and having it altered if necessary.

1. The grand promise of MTM is the perfect fit, but your first one or two attempts are almost certainly going to leave you with a garment that doesn't fit. At best, this requires more fittings, trips to the tailor, and time. At worst, you're stuck paying for a garment that you will never wear and cannot return.

2. MTM will always be more expensive. For example, Indochino suits are pretty cheap ($400), but for the same level of construction and fabric you're looking at a a $200 suit from Men's Warehouse. J. Crew sells $130 Thomas Mason shirts, and to get the same shirt MTM from my Hong Kong tailor costs me $200.

fleitz2• 14 years ago

In Vancouver it's hard enough to find french cuffs on shirts, or even a super 150.

No one wears suits anymore and those who do just want cheap garbage, that's pretty much the point of the article.

The bespoke suit is the new Mac Pro, cheap to those who value it and overpriced to those who have no use for it, hence virtually no bottom line. (Mac Pros aren't a $24B business, but to those who desire them there is no substitute).

Get your t-shirts tailored and you'll start to see the value tailors can provide if you're the sort of person willing to spend money to look better.

cperciva• 14 years ago

In Vancouver it's hard enough to find french cuffs on shirts

I've had no difficulty finding french cuffs here -- have you tried Moore's?

nl5• 14 years ago

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 no suit expert, but I can tell the difference.

I can't say I've seen any particular decrease in suit wearing over the past 15 years I've been working, although ties are less common that they used to be.

In my experience location and field of work makes a bigger difference to suit wearing than anything else.

pfedor• 14 years ago

Why do you think the suit is dead?

Don't know about other places, but at least in NoCal high status people don't wear suits. Since the only function of a suit is status signaling, it seems just a matter of time until everyone else catches up and suits will be replaced by bike jerseys or whatever.

gonzo• 14 years ago

Back in the late 90s, I had a dozen made-to-measure dress shirts and 3 made-to-measure suits made by Ascot Chang while in Hong Kong.

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.

emmapersky2• 14 years ago

You don't wear a bespoke suit to fit the minimal requirements for a given occasion, you do it because of the way it makes you feel - there is nothing quite like wearing an item of clothing that is perfect in every possible way. It's really not comparable to a made-to-measure which tends to follow one of a set of patterns, none of which might be perfect for you.

If I wore suits I would have a bespoke one made, but as it is, bespoke women's clothing is more complicated financially - you simply wouldn't wear the same dress as often as you would the same suit, probably by an order of magnitude.

Lastly. Men in suits. Hot. Men in bespoke suits. Blisteringly so.

stan_rogers• 14 years ago

Women tend to be very underserviced compared to men in any case. Or at least that used to be so -- men have, for some inexplicable reason, come to accept a rather low level of basic service when buying clothing these days. Perhaps it is because casual attire is much more casual than it once was; dungarees were something one might have worn for rough or dirty work at one time.

I grew up in suits, or at least in jackets and ties. I've worn bespoke when I could afford it, including (then) casual tweeds. But in my youth, I was a more-or-less off the rack kind of guy. "Off the rack", in those days, meant that somebody would spend the better part of an hour with a marking chalk playing with the lay of the collar, the rotation of the shouders, the vent(s) and armholes (to the extent possible), and so on -- and that's in addition to the expected tweaks to the sleeve length, moving cuff buttons, hemming and cuffing trousers, altering the waist and stride to fit, and so on. That was part of the price of a $400 suit in the '80s, even at a chain men's wear store. Extra-cost alterations were things that went right down to the structure of the garment.

I was absolutely shocked to see what my wife had to put up with. Not only were the prices way out of line (at the same price level, things like seam finishing and so on are nowhere near as well-attended-to in women's wear as in men's wear, even if the garments themselves are comparable -- say something like a blazer). Then everything was extra, including the stuff that absolutely has to happen, like hemming a skirt or a pair of slacks. Ridiculous. You ought to throw yourselves a little revolution.

ImprovedSilence• 14 years ago

>> "The suit is dead for any number of reason, dittos bespoke clothing."

Barney Stinson would beg to differ: http://vimeo.com/17152345

jbigelow763• 14 years ago

    bespoke tailoring doesn't scale.

I think you under minded your own point, in fact the practicality and levelheadedness of your entire post under minded your own point.

pinaceae• 14 years ago

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 the suit world people from the US are also highly visible as the art of fashion seems to have been lost. While the rest of the world went with tighter forms, US men still wear balloon shaped trousers, as if the 80s never stopped. And the number one tell are the shoes. Italians shape the shoe world, pointy and long have been the way to go for some time now - but US men go in with big black round things, often not even polished properly. This goes up to CEO level.

There are certain elements of a push-back right now in the US as well, the first one being the success of the tv-series Mad Med which is a big advertisement for fashion and representative clothing. The second being a resurgence of elegant, masculine fashion - see blogs like the Sartorialist for a glimpse into that: http://www.thesartorialist.com/

A well-fitted suit does not signal money, it signals TASTE. Which is very hard to talk about in tech circles. Like looking at a well set up VIM instance, it tells you about the owner's habits.

nandemo• 14 years ago

> 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.

christensen_emc4• 14 years ago

It may only be the top 0.01% but there are also only really a handful of established tailors who offer full bespoke. I really doubt there are more than 100, maybe 200 tops. They serve all the oil money playboys, the Chinese new wealth, the business magnates, all of the world's wealthiest customers. Often these customers purchase suits in large quantities too (The measuring process gets significantly less intensive each time you purchase a new suit) and have the ability to fly the tailors to their homes. I think a lot of people here underestimate the sheer quantities of suits these 0.01% purchase. The average person here may have two or three suits, they may have two or three closets of suits.

If anything, bespoke clothing is doing better than it has in almost a century. China's incredible boom has led to a whole new crop of millionaires with an insatiable desire for western luxury goods. Suits, purses, jewelry, wristwatches, everything. LVMH's spectacular profits are a good proof of this.

People have been saying "the suit is dead" for a number of years now. Yeah, maybe it is, maybe we will never go back to Mad Men days of suits in the office and dinner jackets at night, maybe the suit as a consumer good is on its last legs. But the bespoke suit, the suit as a piece of craftsmanship is doing better than ever.

pc863• 14 years ago

No offense, but just about everything in your comment is wrong. Your argument that suits are dead is way off the mark. Maybe in San Francisco it's not expected to wear a suit to a job interview or to meet with clients, but in every job I've ever worked at the men were expected to wear a suit and tie more often than not.

Your 1% comment doesn't make any sense to me whatsoever. Are you saying that only households making over $340k a year[1] would spend that much on a suit? My first job out of college was for $28k a year in a city. I had to spend much of that first year buying $600-800 suits because that's what I was expected to wear. I have friends that make what I make now and gladly drop twice what I would on a suit. It doesn't have anything to do with income.

I believe this was mentioned elsewhere, but a $4,000 suit isn't mainly about income or wealth, it's about taste. Pick up any $4,000 suit from a custom clothier and hang it up next to a $350 suit from Men's Wearhouse. You will absolutely be able to tell the difference from the other side of the room.

[1] http://www.bankrate.com/finance/taxes/top-1-percent-earn.asp...

mrinterweb• 14 years ago

Not directly related to the article, but I was immediately reminded of the Arrested Development episode where the value of Gob's suit kept going up. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81Nl7VYFEaI

BrianGaffney• 14 years ago

If you're in Australia Vinspi.com.au are an online tailored/bespoke suit shop.

You provide the measurements and build a suit design online. 2 week turnaround.

They only ship to Australia at the moment and suits themselves are made in Bangkok.

misterbwong• 14 years ago

Interesting. I wonder how the foreign suit makers affect this business. I have a few friends that visit Thailand regularly and get custom suits made (cost is <$200 USD). For the price of one of these suits in NY, you could fly to Bangkok (in Business Class!) AND get a few custom made suits.

gtuckerkellogg• 14 years ago

Those <$200 USD suits made in Thailand are unlikely to be top shelf. There is a huge business in southeast asia on rapid turnaround custom suits. It's not targeting the same market as real bespoke tailoring.

I have a weakness for bespoke suits. I live in Singapore, and have gone to the same tailor for seven years. He's superb, but you can tell from working with a great tailor why even "made to measure" suits can be disappointing. When I started with this guy, I would go back for two fittings after my initial measurements, and before the suit was done. The fittings would be done with the partially constructed suit. Many details were checked and little adjustments made: asymmetry in my body, the sway in the back, where I pocket my phone, how to adjust the jacket for my wallet, and making sure the right sleeve accomodates my watch (I'm left handed). I thought it was overkill. But worn, his suits are flawless and so comfortable the idea that a suit would be uncomfortable is a distant concept.

After the first few years we reduced it by one fitting.

patio112• 14 years ago

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 much work they have to turn work away. Raise the prices. Then raise the prices. Then when you're done with that, raise the prices.

At some point you'll be too expensive for the typical businessman, which will make you absolutely crack for a certain type of person common in New York, thus defeating all efforts at being less busy. So it goes. I guess you will have to raise prices.

ovi256• 14 years ago

As I was reading the article I hoped I'd find a dose of common sense in the comments, and indeed, here it is. Good as always, Patrick.

Guys, take notes, this also applies for contracting.

aidenn0• 14 years ago

Indeed if he makes $50k off of 48 suits a year, he could nearly double his income by raising his price by 25%; if he is turning away customers that seems like a no-brainer.

harryh2• 14 years ago

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.

sopooneo2• 14 years ago

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.

kamaal3• 14 years ago

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.

vidarh4• 14 years ago

Quit possibly it is ignorance or fear.

I know an African woman who used to go to the living room of some lady that charged her 20 pounds for work that she could easily charge 50 for - African hair can take a lot of work. This lady never raises her prices.

But she gets booked full 3 months in advance, and everyone who goes there raves about here and thinks she is ridiculously cheap.

Now, granted, a lot of those clients would disappear if she charged 30 or 40 or even 50. But she could afford to lose a lot of them, and even at 50 she'd still be cheaper than most similar quality competition in the area.

Simple solution to testing the prices? Hold back some time slots and offer a "rush" service to those willing to pay extra. Use a sob story about how this is family time she is giving up for you. Worst case she books slightly fewer slots for a while, and gives up on it.

But she is too scared to even try because she is terrified of customers going elsewhere... Despite the fact that people are willing to schedule 3 months in advance to get their hair done in her living room instead of walking into their local salon the same day.

asr2• 14 years ago

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 in the middle of following your advice, just raised his price, and will shortly raise it again because he's still getting enough orders.

I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm just saying we don't get nearly enough information to decide! And that's ok, because that's not the point of the article.

noahc6• 14 years ago

And maybe it just might work...

He doesn't have to jump from $4k to $10k. There's a demand curve and by raising prices from $4k to $5k and up he'll figure out where he can sit.

More importantly, he's already at $4k. The person that spends $4k on a suit isn't going to sneeze at $8k. The person who spends $120 for a suit, throws a fit at $240.

patio112• 14 years ago

Totally not offended by that comment, but I strongly disagree.

It is entirely possible that he's found the correct price for a suit: two hours' labor for his core customers. It is entirely possible that the devs who tell me their clients won't pay more than $20 an hour for Rails programming are accurate, and that they're correct in thinking that they're not skilled enough to work for better clients. It is entirely possible that the Rampaging Monster of Doubt actually understands how banks do loan underwriting better than e.g. the banker who you could confirm or reject that hypothesis in a five minute phone call.

But that is not the way I will bet. We're pathologically bad at this. Hiya, freelancer on HN: to a first approximation, you don't charge enough. Seriously. No information required to make that call. (This is said from a place of love. I don't charge nearly enough, either.) This guy, who produces things which rich people love and try to shove money at him for, so much so that he cannot afford to even talk to the rich people to take their money because he is so busy? This guy has our problem, too.

Starving artists who are starving because they produce something nobody wants to pay for are one problem. Starving artists who are starving because they think that they are a precious snowflake immune to Microeconomics 101 are an entirely different problem. They just need business sense.

The point of the article is to cry a bit about how the market economy is making true craftsmanship economically non-viable. (It practically tries to club you over the head with that conclusion.) The article is wrong. It has identified a problem to which there exists a trivial solution that will work.

ibejoeb• 14 years ago

>Or maybe the price of top bespoke tailors in town is comparable

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.

noahc6• 14 years ago

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.

fooandbarify• 14 years ago

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!)

felipemnoa• 14 years ago

It seems like the obvious solution. There must be a reason why that has not happened. People will pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for a Ferrari mainly because they are so (artificially) scarce. And still they will have to wait a long time (two years) to get it. Incredibly enough the best advice to get your ferrari a little faster than other people is to suck up to the dealer. Could it be that a big part of his problem is branding and awareness?

sopooneo2• 14 years ago

I agree, and that was the first thought I had. However, I have found that when people act in bizarre ways, it is sometimes because they are crazy, unintelligent, or ignorant. But much more often it is because they know something you don't know.

robomartin2• 14 years ago

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 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.

vidarh4• 14 years ago

> 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 agree he would need to be careful. But in this case because there are so many trivial ways in which he can differentiate the products in ways that will sufficiently justify price differences:

* Use more expensive materials. And mark it up heavily. * Provide a luxury service: Visit the client for measurements with a couple of pretty assistants instead of having them come to you, and make the service look more upscale. Send someone over with samples and pictures to get feedback a couple more times than usual. * Make things take longer to give the impression of more effort. There's a shoemaker in London that takes 6 months to produce your pair of shoes. They can optionally provide additional pairs to the same measurements, for a measly additional sum of 500 pounds per pair - the price for their first pair is not listed. I'm sure there are more - that's just one I stumbled over. But this one presents the long time it takes as a mark of quality and status: Most people just go to a store and buy shoes, but you, your shoes take 6 months to be ready. Of course it costs. * Add on lots of stuff that indicate higher quality but that the client has no idea of the real cost/effort for: Finer stiching; more complicated patterns; more detailing inside. etc.

As you point out, he could also charge extra for faster delivery (on top of making his new "premium" service take longer by default, even), or flat out state that due to the demand, there is a waiting list, but a limited number of "rush" order will be processed if you pay a substantial premium.

This is very different from most technology products - suits, or fashion in general, is a very visible status symbol, and beyond a certain quality level, a higher price will often make the product more desirable even when there are no quality differences other than minor visible visual cues that lets those in the know realize that you've paid twice as much.

lsc• 14 years ago

I think the economics of pricing your labour are different from the economics of pricing something you manufacture. I mean, yeah, in this case, he's manufacturing something, but his whole value proposition is that something constitutes an enormous amount of labour.

Yeah, he can hire underlings, but managing people is a completely different skillset. (I mean, to manage skilled people, you need to have a pretty good knowledge of that skill... but you also need to know how to manage people.)

Under those conditions? eh, I think that raising prices when you are turning away business makes a lot of sense. I mean, right now, I'm doing the same thing with consulting type work. I apologize and usually hand out referrals when I quote a price, but eh, I don't need the work. If I scare off the customer, good.

I think people are also more understanding about you changing the price of your labour than about you changing the price of a mass-manufactured good. Most people understand that you have busy times and not so busy times.

also note, in most expensive things? customers pay different amounts based on their negotiation skill and perceived ability to pay. I mean, I'm trying to sell co-location, and, well, mostly failing using the 'here is the price on the website; everyone pays this price' model. I even lowered existing customer's prices when I lowered the price for new customers. Nope. Nobody cares. In co-location, if you want to sell, you give 10%- for the life of the customer, including upgrades to the salesguy. (mind you, for the small fish, my customers, this guy just throws you an email and you take it from there. He does no work ongoing) Obviously, as my margin on the larger co-lo packages isn't all that much more than 10% (which is completely reasonable; it's not that much work for me... most of it goes to the data centre owner. I mostly just handle the network.)

Anyhow, I guess my point is that most customers, when buying expensive things, are absolutely used to the situation where you spend two weeks fucking around on the price, where everyone pays a different price and nobody knows what the renewal price will be. Sometimes, in fact, it seems to me like they prefer that model.

huhtenberg• 14 years ago

> 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.

jacques_chester2• 14 years ago

I believe that is was from you I learned about a book, "The Strategy and Tactics of Pricing", which I think everyone in this thread should read.

Why speculate about how to set a price when you can apply some structured, thoughtful analysis to the problem?

It turns out that pricing is at once a slightly mysterious art and yet can be grasped in a few hundred pages. And that almost nothing else has as much leverage over profitability.

The book was actually overkill for the reason I bought it (settling on prices for a SaaS project); but I've started recommending it to every small business owner I know. It's that good.

jonnii2• 14 years ago

My best friend from highschool has ended up in this world through his passion for all things sartorial (http://www.thearmourystore.com/).

He was involved in creating a wonderful documentary that follows suit makers of Naples called O'Mast (http://vimeo.com/16443611), which even for someone like me who knows nothing about suits was really interesting. I suggest checking it out as it'll give you an idea of the kind of skill required to make a custom made suit.

No matter what you may think about spending $4000 on a suit, it's a shame to see this kind of craftmanship dying out =(

exhaze2• 14 years ago

Is Mark your best friend? I had the pleasure of seeing the documentary when it was screened in San Francisco and meeting Mark and Gianluca. It was pretty eye-opening to talk to people who really live and breathe men's tailored clothing.

jonnii2• 14 years ago

Indeed. I was the best man at his wedding.

nl5• 14 years ago

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).

mikescar• 14 years ago

Huh?

The whole point of paying twice as much is that you spend a fraction of the time defining product specs, and don't have to wait.

If so many pass up a 50% discount to get immediate satisfaction, they aren't likely to change their preference for waiting once the product they already didn't buy becomes dramatically more expensive.

nl5• 14 years ago

The whole point of paying twice as much is that you spend a fraction of the time defining product specs, and don't have to wait.

Raising the price stops you competing in the whole "I need a new suit" market. Now you are in the custom luxury good market, and there the time to buy isn't an inconvenience, it is a feature.

The whole pay-to-pick-my-Ferrari-up-in-Maranello takes a lot longer than the normal Ferrari ordering process (and is hugely inconvenient) and yet still is used by a reasonable number of orders.

You don't buy a Ferrari for transport, nor do you buy a luxury suit to cover your nakedness.

If people can sell $500,000 watches[1], then a $20,000 suit seems reasonable, especially when it comes with custom consultations etc..

[1] http://www.luxist.com/2010/04/10/richard-mille-rm027-rafael-...

cynwoody• 14 years ago

Kiton is in an altogether higher tier. According to the Wikipedia, their ready-to-wear line ranges from $5500 to $8000, and their bespoke suits command $20K to $50K. They sell about 20,000 suits a year.

nl5• 14 years ago

That more or less proves the point.

Clearly pricing below their ready-to-wear line only gets customers who are looking to save money, and people trying to do bespoke suits in that price bracket will get squeezed from below (premium made-to-measure (not the same as bespoke) suits) and low-end ready-to-wear suits from premium manufactures like Kiton.

waterside81• 14 years ago

Indochino.com is your friend. Bought a few suits there, and two shirts, fantastic fit & quality. You take about 20 measurements yourself at home (you need a partner to help) upload your details on their site, and boom. Free shipping, free alterations. Not affiliated with them, just a happy customer.

Plus Steve Nash is an investor; an NBA MVP can't be wrong, can he?

noonespecial3• 14 years ago

"...there is now a large difference between what is monetizable and what is actually valuable."

There's my gem of the day right there.

Game_Ender• 14 years ago

There is one economy of scale which eventually hit the bespoke suit industry: robotics/automation. Eventually you will be able to make tailoring robots to do each step of the process, much like they do in car factories. With the proper software you could step into a booth, get a 3D body scan and have the suit finished in hours or minutes.

christensen_emc4• 14 years ago

This may work for crude made to measure suits, but bespoke is often more about trial and error than incredibly precise measurement. It also has a lot to do with the preferences of the client, particularly with regards to the shoulders and armholes.

As for automation, a large number of MTM tailors currently email the measurements to a factory in Asia where the suit is cut by a worker getting paid pennies. The cost isnt necessarily in the making of the suit, its more the measuring and interactions between the tailor and the client that can take hours. For this reason alone I dont think we will see tailoring robots anytime soon.

astrojams• 14 years ago

A $4000 suit is worth $4000. No? Oh wait, this isn't Reddit.

williamle8300• 14 years ago

"Oh yea, me! The guy with the $4000 suit! C'MON!!"

joewee• 14 years ago

Please do not order a suit off the internet. That is the worst idea ever.

I own eight suits and half dozen blazers. My first suits and blazers were all off the rack, including the high end brooks brothers. And they all fit me horribly. I never wear them now.

I didn't realize how horrible they fit until I went to bespoke suits and shirts. So from someone who wasted a lot of money do yourself a favor, go to the best shirt maker in your city and have a custom shirt made. Be prepared to spend up to $300 for the shirt (though $200 is more reasonable). Then use that as your template and send it to a tailor in hong kong who will make duplicates of the shirt with the same measurement for $30 each in the fabric selection of your choice. Best investment ever. I recommend http://www.jantzentailor.com/

For suits, I can't help you if you are in America. But if you are going to order a suit in the USA try to get a british cut, the style that Frew uses. Just don't order something off the internet. Lots of factors that go into what makes a quality suit that can't be expressed online.

kamaal3• 14 years ago

There is huge demand for special clothing and believe it or not Suit today is a special clothing. The point is really people's idea of dressing has changed. There were times when costly clothing automatically meant something. Those days are gone. I find it difficult to imagine, people wearing suits to work these days. Most of them look like 'Odd ones out'.

I don't like to wear a suit, nor does anybody around me unless they are getting married or they are about to meet somebody powerful and rich. There fore clothing industry is 'optimized for the common case'. The only clothing I find worth buying these days is rugged jeans and polo T-shirts. Anything else and I find that to be focusing on ornament more than the substance. Therefore the demand and supply moves in that direction.

The place for bespoke suits today is the distinction that tailored clothing carries. So they continue to remain clothing for 'special occasions'. Needless to say if you want to maintain that sort of distinction, you can't use machines to scale. Because that would mean you that sort of clothing no longer carries that distinction.

Its not that these artists/tailors can't make money other way. They can probably get a job else where and live in better conditions- if they want to. But sometimes people stick to what they do and how they do for unexplainable reasons.

jcampbell1• 14 years ago

This article is offensive to me. Frew is a talented craftsman and a recent immigrant who single-handedly makes more than the average household in the US, and is in the top 1% of the world in terms of income. He has his own business that is all his through hard work, and has aspirations of becoming a famous designer.

There is no need to insult Frew about his work clothes or his choosing not to make a suit for himself. Frew is rich, and should be applauded.

I don't pay attention to politics, but I used to roll my eyes when right-wingers would talk about "new york times liberal elitism", but in this case I agree with the rednecks.

jacques_chester2• 14 years ago

Revenue != Net Income.

pessimist• 14 years ago

This problem is as old as the Industrial Revolution, not exactly news.

I moved to India and here I can afford tons of household help. For example, I have a chauffeur, who comes from a community of highly skilled weavers who make traditional fabrics like this: http://bannacreations.blogspot.in/2012/02/ilkal-story.html.

Basically, there is simply not enough demand for those skills. So he chucks his skill - handed down from father to son for generations - learns English and driving, and moves to the city. He now hopes to soon move out from his slum to a real house. I wish him luck - he is ambitious and hard-working, and is making a niche for himself in a challenging world.

xlevus• 14 years ago

To me, my $4000 Savile-Row suit is worth twice as much. It's not bespoke, it's made-to-measure. Sort of half way to bespoke.

I don't need to wear suits, I never really have. I've always worked for relaxed companies, never been to a wedding (well, apart from the one I bought the suit for).

But I'm a skinny guy. Even the slimmest of fitting shirts and suits on the rack didn't really fit. My suit? It's like a glove. I put it on and feel awesome. And this is why my suit is worth every penny.

Tichy• 14 years ago

So what is it that makes the tailoring impenetrable to automation? For example why couldn't pieces be cut with a laser cutter? Why can Chinese workers create a suit in 30 minutes and US workers only in 10 hours?

I wonder if modern machines wouldn't be able to do completely different things, too. Why does cloth have to come in flat sheets? Maybe modern machines could produce cloth that already has shapes (like knitting machines, only more fine grained?). No more sewing required?

matthiasb• 14 years ago

The shoemaker's children always go barefoot. Les cordonniers sont toujours les plus mal chaussés.

stupandaus• 14 years ago

Spending a significant amount of time in Shanghai the past few years, I've frequented the Shanghai fake market many times. While some portions sell knockoff goods, the fabric section is quite spectacular. I can get a bespoke 2 piece suit for $100 or 3 piece for $150. I get custom dress shirts for $10. The material and craftsmanship is high and the primary market is expatriates (read: non-Chinese) living in Shanghai.

The way it's set up, is there are maybe 50-100 booths set up in the fabric market area. Each of the booths is rented out by a proprietor, and they are in business for themselves. Most operate by relying on an economy of scale behind the scenes. The sole proprietor would take your measurements in the shop, then send them to a behind the scenes system which processes hundreds of suits a day.

It is not uncommon to have your custom clothing done within 24 hours and shipped directly to wherever you are staying. Very interesting way to manage the economy of scale.

marcamillion• 14 years ago

I wonder what would happen if he created a marketplace for his services. So rather than taking orders, people would bid on his time.

I guess the downside to that is he is still fighting the 'time to delivery' problem - of people wanting it now.

What's a $4000 Suit Worth?

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