Proposal email 2/2020

The following is a new business concept for your consideration as a client, investor, or benefactor.  

What we offer are custom bench-made suits delivered directly to our clients. If you are familiar with clothing like Brioni, or Kiton,  you may know what bench-made signifies, and that a true handmade suit is a very different garment. Our proposal is to build a shop in central Pennsylvania that can produce a true bench-made tailored garment for our investors, as well as provide more common custom and ready to wear options to our client base. What our concept involves is using open source technology to collaboratively administer business entirely online, and by doing so assuring quality for our clients while outpricing competitors.

Our History 

In 1968, my father and I opened a tailor shop in Atlanta, where we made custom tailored clothing. Thirty years later we built a workshop in Chile with a retail outlet in Atlanta, to provide custom tailored clothing for a U.S. client base. My eldest son was going to the Wharton Business School, where he submitted a proposal based on my business of making handmade men's suits in Chile. He won the entrepreneurship prize that year and Wharton provided resources for him to start up his business in Philadelphia, to exclusively sell the product we made in Chile. Unfortunately, the business in Chile went under during the 2008 recession, but much was learned & this proposal is built from those lessons. 

We had incorporated online database technology into the custom process. Since there are a lot of variables to consider when making a custom garment, we built a method to take measurements and specifications in the United States, and then have these appear as an order in Chile. This is easy today, but this was before the internet had come to Chile. The hope was to have a plotter take the order data and plot a specific pattern for each client, then track the piece work sewing, inventory, & the final delivery of the garment-- all on one single online platform.  

The technology we used to build the database was open source, and had characteristics that could be applied to management & investor relationships. We realized this technology could be used to govern business in a way that would give the consumer greater control of what they purchase, and provide greater economic efficiency for both investors and consumers. Essentially, it allows us to conduct our business transparently online and-- by extending administrative authority to our clients-- in a manner that assures both the finest quality & the best price. 

About the Garment Business

Once all clothing was locally made. Today, there are very few tailor shops that can make you a suit themselves. Tailoring is a specialized & complicated trade that is disappearing, not because there is a lack of demand, but because of ineffective manufacturing and delivery. Tailors overlooked the dynamics of their trade, and they lost their client base because they did not adapt production methods to compete with low cost offshore mass production. Quality custom clothing requires a great deal of hand work, and is less affected by mass production technology.

I found that a shop of five specialized craftsmen can compete against any large factory. They can be more cost effective because it can sell directly to the client, and will avoid much of the overhead of retail ready-to-wear. Small size & generations of family experience make it an ideal operation to put our business concept to use.

Advantages of this proposed business:

1. The finest custom handmade quality.  

2. Shopping convenience for the client, as the tailor can come to the client with cloth samples. 

3. A larger selection of styles & fabric choices.

4. The client is fitted directly by the tailor that will cut the cloth, creating a custom paper pattern. 

5. A consistent garment is made, one that always fits properly & with less alterations.

6. No high-cost inventory of "ready-to-wear" to finance.

7. A direct sale with less shipping & retail cost. 

8. The value & quality of the garment is assured by the client-administrators.

There are two general aspects of our concept...

1. The micro-manufacturing of custom men's coats and trousers

2.  Direct, collaborative business administration

Micro-manufacturing Custom Men's Coats & Trousers

We would produce the finest quality custom bench-made coat & trouser, with a custom paper pattern made and kept on file for each of our clients. 

In custom clothing, the sales relationship is typically between a client & salesperson. Often salespeople will love clothing, but will have little understanding of tailoring. Knowing how a garment is made, and specifically how a pattern is designed, is vital for a proper fitting suit.

This particular aspect of the process is best attended to by the tailor that will design the pattern & cut the cloth. Once the pattern is made, this specialized step is no longer required. Lapels can change, trouser shape can change, styles can come & go but the customer's pattern remains the same. Even if the customer loses or gains weight, adjustments are made and still the pattern stays the same. 

Salespeople, designers, and tailors have three very distinct professions. Only when our clothing is sold by a retailer would a salesperson be required, and since what we make is custom, you are the designer. Our clothing is fitted by the tailor that will cut the cloth, producing a specific paper pattern made for the client, which is saved for future orders. This both provides a better service and reduces costs. 

Our shop will be composed of a five-person team. We will subdivide skills into specialized work, and piece rate the payment of labor instead of paying hourly. The labor is divided as such:

1. Master tailor & pattern maker 

2. Coat pockets & front

3. Coat sleeves & collar

4. Trouser

5. Hand sewing, buttons & buttonholes

The vision for this enterprise is to develop small cookie-cutter shops, each providing clothing for a major city or geographic area. We are in Strasburg and can attend to the local areas of Lancaster, Harrisburg, and York. We can also provide service to Washington D.C, Philadelphia, New York, and Atlanta as well. In fact, we would be glad to move our current shop anywhere the collaborative management instructs. 

The shop starts with one tailor & an apprentice, then the focus is on hiring qualified new apprentices & training them. Since our work is piece rated, and considered an art by many, we can offer greater work flexibility to people looking for extra income while learning a craft & art. We would strive to train & stimulate a local community of craftspeople who love this type of work.

There is a test; some people have a natural ability with their hands, and you can quickly see who can or cannot. Apprenticing begins with simple tasks, building interlinings, sewing seams & hand finishing. Training to be able to master one of the five work positions can be done within a year. The cutter-fitter position can be taught to a knowledgeable clothier in a matter of months.

Once a shop is established it could easily self-replicate in a new area. Since the knowledge of how to run the shop is distributed through the relationships of the client-admins and employees, there is less reliance on a key individual vital for operation of a single shop.   

Direct Collaborative Business Administration

Technology has advanced greatly since 2009; plotters can now laser cut the cloth, and open source software is available to design patterns. The most significant characteristic of the technology, however, is an aspect that has gone un-noticed. If a business platform is online, then investors can see & act directly to manage an enterprise, all from any device connected to the internet.

This was my goal with our shop in Chile: to be able to manage an offshore operation from any location in the world. Data in real time could tell me what was sold, how much cloth was cut & who sewed what button on which garment. By piece rating production the tailors were paid according to what they did each day, and I could see online what was done by whom. 

Now if you, the client, have the ability to administer the business, then you know that you are purchasing a product at cost. You would be able to verify quality & choose the sales price. In effect, you become a "client-administrator," through the sales agreement. Since I am initially offering this to retailers & attorneys, the retailers would assure style & quality while the attorneys would assure a sound agreement, and we would all assure sound management. 

A simple sales commitment by a few clients to purchase would have this unique business model up & running. We would be able to make & deliver fine suits at cost, build loyal clients that would tell friends, and we would have a waiting list of orders to keep the shop in steady operation all year. As long as quality & value is maintained, we would outcompete the market of fine hand made suits within our area of service.  

I hope you will come on board with our unique project, and will visit my shop for all your tailoring needs. Thank you.

Sincerely at your service,

Strasburg Tailors -  8 West Main Street, Strasburg, Pennsylvania  17579 

Cell: 717-305-8XX8 (voice or text)