June 5, 2005
the english cut wars have begun
Nice little marketing sparring match breaking out between me and Paul Robinson in the comments of a recent post:
PAUL: What are you now saying? That you want to sell crap. You are, by definition of your own marketing, your OWN WORDS, proposing to sell complete and utter crap. Because you know, that's what scaling is all about after all. To hell with everything we've just said, let's just pile up some sweatshop goods and sell them for a huge markup. Sure, we spent the last six months telling the world that quality is worth paying for, but if they can't afford it, what the hell? We've got kids to put through college, and who care about the customer?! NOT US!Seriously, do this, you'll see your business die within weeks. You will be heralded as two-faced liars. It'll kill English Cut, permanently. You can't have two marketing campaigns that contradict each other. If you must have two sales channels, let them complement rather than conflict - take a leaf out of Tesco's book re: Value vs. Finest.
HUGH: Five points:There are three main marketing angles with suits: The Olde-Worlde, uberquaint, "gentlemanly" Savile Row/Brooks Bothers schtick, the metrosexual glamorboy-fashionista designer label schtick, and the value-for-money-unpretentious M&S/Men's Wearhouse schtick. As the English Cut brand evolves, it seems to be avoiding all three, and instead becoming its own unique animal. This is a good thing. This is what The Hughtrain is all about.1. I never said off-the-peg was crap. I said designer label was crap, for the money they're asking. Big difference.
As Thomas said in one of his posts:
"Luckily for suit lovers everywhere, with modern technology there are now some really good ready-to-wear, manufactured suits being made, starting at only a few hundred pounds. Fifty years ago, suits that were both good and cheap did not exist. The tech simply wasn't there."Also:
"For the money, the British high street retailer, Marks & Spencer makes as good a suit as anyone. I rate them highly."M&S suits are around the £200 mark. ($300-400 USD)
2. English Cut makes the best suits in the world, for about 20-25% less than the people making the second-best suits in the world are charging. Anyone accusing us of not offering value for money is a fool.
So now the question is- can we deliver comparable value for money at other price points?
3. I've actually asked potential customers what they're in the market for, and the answers might surprise you.
Basically, they don't want us lowering the prices on bespoke, even if they can't afford it at present. The regard our current prices as more than fair. They certainly don't want us outsourcing bespoke to China. They want Savile Row suits, made by Savile Row tailors.
i.e. they'd rather wait a couple of years and buy the real deal, rather than instantly gratify themselves with a cheaper, outsourced-to-China option.
What they want in the meantime, are suits as good as M&S, with a bit more flair. At £200, you can't knock M&S for quality. But they're lacking a certain understated sexiness, which Thomas is a master of.
And therein lies the opportunity...
4. Your suggested business model would increase our overheads and workload by tenfold, twentyfold, without a similar increase in profitability. "Work harder for less", in other words. Thanks, but no thanks.
5. Cheaper. Better. Sexier. Whether we're talking about a $3000 suit or a $50 shirt or a $200 jacket, as long as (A) Thomas keeps making bespoke that's second-to-none and (B) we can keep the cheaper-better-sexier combo intact (like we currently do with bespoke), I believe the English Cut brand will be fine.
But granted, there is risk. But not doing anything is riskier.
This is also providing a lot of fuel for debate, between me and my readers. Again, this is a good thing.
Posted by hugh macleod at June 5, 2005 7:35 AM | TrackBackNice exchange. If Paul had not been in rant mode he would've had some good points, and you addressed them well anyway.
Here's a thought: if Fashion Designers can cross over to larger markets without anyone worrying about it, why not Bespoke Tailors?
I almost never need to wear suit-like things, but I'm starting to approach the age where I want to. I recently needed a versatile, dress-it-up or dress-it-down kind of sportcoat, and I was on a tight budget (around $200). I went to one of the most un-glamorous shops imaginable and got something I really like. When I took it home after the alterations, I noticed the label: Oscar de la Renta.
My point here is that I didn't care about the label, who knows if Oscar even had anything to do with the design, and it was purchased in boring-land. But if you google for Oscar de la Renta, you don't find a lot of people complaining about his putting his name on decent, non-flashy $200 coats.
A more intriguing example is what Yohji Yamamoto is doing with Adidas, though it's probably less applicable to the English Cut question.
Now, thanks to the Hughtrain marketing push, Thomas Mahon is almost certainly the *only* Saville Row tailor known to a lot of people who don't buy bespoke (nor move in those circles). In fact, the only bespoke tailor of any kind known to that many people outside the scene. Granted, it's not a huge number of people, but it's a bunch and it'll keep growing if you keep things on the right track.
So here you have a unique opportunity. You've created an awareness of Thomas that *already* extends far beyond his potential bespoke clientelle. And he's the first of his kind to have that, at least as far as I know.
You guys pretty much have to do something with this. And if you don't fuck it up, you're going to make history (and a pile of cash).
Well, two other Savile Row tailors have moved into ready-to-wear quite successfully- Oswald Boateng and Richard James... but their schtick is much more a trendy, glamorboy fashion thing... suits costing between $1-2K. Richard James actually never was a Savile Row tailor. His background was the fashion world.
Theirs is actually quite tough market- if you're willing to spend $2K on a ready-to-wear, why not just go the hold hog with $3000 bespoke? Plus, to maintain "the image" you have to spend heavily on glamorboy advertising and PR... not to mention Savile Row rents.
As I wrote above, there are three main ready-to-wear suit schticks: Olde-Worlde, glamorboy and cheap-and-boring (with the third option often posing as the second option i.e. second and third tier designer labels, like the Oscar De La Renta that Frosty mentioned.).
The more I think about English Cut, the more I think all three are going to be pissed off by us. Especially the Italian end of the market.
But that may be a good thing...
Posted by: hugh macleod at June 5, 2005 11:50 AMQuickly,
I'm still thinking that the single differentiation between bespoke (and hence the English Cut 'brand') and everything else out there is (forget the three categories, they're all one i.e. not English Cut; English Cut its own category, to get tacky about it) falls back to the training of the apprentices, a keystone when this thing originally launched, an element of the story that has stuck with me.
The scalability runs underground. Ten English Cut outlets worldwide, housed in the corner of a boutique hotel (or whatever, wherever) wherein one finds two genuine article bespoke apprentices, preferably blonde, female, with genuine English accents. (okay forget the last part... I just had a flashback to a talentless account person I worked with once with a brutal RP accent who fooled all sorts of Americans - she herself born and raised in Wichita...ignorance premium...never mind...)
Skill and eye matched with appreciation through a highly personal developing relationship. The success or failure of the brand will depend upon Thom's commitment to the ethic, not the product, which got him there. Oddly. Or not so oddly. The skill shifts to patterning, nothing wrong with that.
I'm not sure of this I'm just throwing it out there. Call me a romantic, but the guild/artisan storyline has great appeal.
Paul's rant's a good one, too, btw.
OK, look it's your business, you're not going to listen to a schmuck like me, and I wish you well regardless. But before you commit, consider these points:
1. How is 'the story' as Godin would put it, evolving? How can you make it clear the story you want to tell now doesn't contradict the one you gave the perception of telling a few months ago? All that talk of inner linings and making suits hang well is all very compelling. It raises my expectations of what to find in a suit - well done, I've become a more educated buyer of suits. However, how does the story you're about to start telling compliment it? It doesn't.
2. How much money would Burberry give to go back and stop the decision to making cheap/accessible product available to anybody who wanted to buy into the brand? Puma made a similar mistake in trying to become accessible to a market that they thought would give them increased sales and street cred - it resulted in their brand being associated with gun and drug crime in the West Indies.
Think back to your blogcard on sheep/wolf - listen to your own voice.
3. if I go to a suit shop where I'm buying Ready-to-Wear, I know what I'm getting. If I go to M&S, I know what story I'm telling the people who notice I'm wearing M&S. Here in Manchester, almost every bloke who is suited goes to Slater's - they're rubbish, cheap and the only tailor-like thing going on is the personal service. However, the story is clear - I don't want to wear this, but I have to, so I made it cheap and functional.
What am I saying if I wear English Cut? What does somebody say when they wear Burberry these days? Even the expensive boutique stuff - it's the wrong image.
Sorry if you think I'm being a snob, or churlish, but why would I want to pay $3000 to be identified with a clique who have a different set of values to my own? This is how marketing really works - it's how that suit makes me feel about myself, after all.
4. The point about Ferrari is valid. If they made a people carrier or a competitor to the Ford Focus, would it sell? Oh yes. Would they sell any more high-performance sports cars? Probably not. And you know what, their merchandise sales - flags at GPs through to baseball caps - would fall off overnight.
I just think this isn't a move you should make quickly, that's all.
I was pretty convinced that next spring I'd be making some orders with Thomas. Now, well, I don't know, honestly. If he's prepared to tell me that I can have a perfectly good suit for $600 that he has had some hand in somehow, I'm not sure what the value of the $3000 suit is any more, because he's educating me into thinking something contrary to what I currently believe.
Bah, I don't know what to think any more. I'll just shut up. And thanks for the link - I'll link back in some meaningful way at some point soon.
Posted by: Paul Robinson at June 5, 2005 1:18 PMOne more thing - sorry if I was ranting. I just care a lot about.. well... everything.
Posted by: Paul Robinson at June 5, 2005 1:35 PMFair points, Paul (My God, he REALLY cares)...
OK, let me put it another way...
When you talk with a good, honest Savile Row tailor about prices, what he does is allow you options.
For £1600, this is what you're getting...
For £2000, this is what you're getting...
For £5,000, this is what you're getting...
And so on and so on, until you're picking cloth in the £8-10 thousand per metre range (a suit usually requires three metres of cloth).
Are you suggesting that the same directness can't be extended in the opposite direction?
For £1600, this is what you're getting.
For £1200, this is what you're getting.
For £800, this is what you're getting.
For £300, this is what you're getting.
Frankly, I don't see why it can't.
i.e. The "Smarter Conversation" should exist at different price points, not just at the £1600+ levels.
Tom has already gone on record saying you can perfectly good suits for £200 (Marks & Spencer's). But of course, if you want something better than that, you have to be prepared to pay more. I never said we can make suits as good as Savile Row for a quarter of the price. That does not mean we can't make an world-class product at that price point.
So we piss off a few uptight suit geeks. No great loss. I'd rather have a customers that are aligned with what we're doing, as opposed to aligned to some vague sartorial fetish.
Posted by: hugh macleod at June 5, 2005 1:52 PMInteresting about the successful crossovers, but I still think Thomas has a special market opportunity. In short, I had never heard of those two other guys, but I have heard of Thomas. And I bet there are a lot of people in the same boat.
As to Paul's argument about buying into the wrong brand - if you're paying $3000 for a suit, aren't you paying that because you *like* the suit?
That's the key: all the stories, conversations, brands... if the product is good enough, it's all about getting people close enough so they want to own the product. It looks like that's already happened as far as Thomas is able to meet demand. I don't think English Cut Outlets would really work, but I do think you can find a way to sell high-quality clothing at a lower price point and have it scale up.
Maybe use the Internet somehow... :-)