Idea- Doorstep tailoring service for men in Delhi, Gurgaon, Noida

USP
-Home Tailoring
-ZERO INVENTORY- First of its kind in tailoring industry
How zero inventory?
Get swatches from distributors for free and show them to customers
swatch- A sample piece of fabric distributor shows to wholesalers and retailers

Business Model
- Interested buyer fills out a small form on our website
- We call him to fix a time and date
- Our designer went for consultation. Shows the swatches, finalizes the design and took
measurements. Takes 50% advance
- We order the fabric after order confirmation and get the fabric within 24-48hrs
- Outsource the tailoring
- Give a trial to the customer (within 7-8 days of order). If any problem, get it rectified within
3-4 days
- Final delivery

Average order size- Around Rs.5000

Any Offline Showroom- No

Marketing Channels Used

VC/Angel Investor Meeting for Funding- Yes

Did any meeting materialize- No

Common Problem Spotted- Scalability, experience

Website Evolution- https://web.archive.org/web/20160715045212/http://clothier.co.in:80/

The Story
Initial Idea

“What if you could wear the most perfect clothes, neatly designed and tailored, instead of
picking up loosely made clothes off the shelf?
What if you could wear clothes made just for your body by great designers at economical
prices? 
Soon Clothier is going to reinvent something that has been there since the Victorian Era”

This is exactly what our landing page said before the website got launched in the early
January’17.
What came of as random idea sitting in the EY cafeteria was about to come true. But, why on
the earth, I as a commerce graduate with no background in fashion and tailoring, think of
solving the “fit and knit” problem for the masses?

1- Most of the off the racks shirt and trousers didn’t fit me well. So when time came to step
into the corporate world, I went to a tailor/designer studio and got some shirts and trousers
made. Shirts turn out to be of great fit and priced almost the same as a decent brad (around
1200 per shirt and 1400 per trouser). But going to a tailor was always a problem.

2- Almost everything is available on a single click, but not customised clothes.

3- It was no way small and medium fashion designers could go online. On the other hand
custom clothing Industry was rapidly growing with never seen before prints and vibrant
colour fabrics coming straight from the factory at cheap prices.

4- We decided to list these designers on our platform and become ‘an online aggregator for
small and medium fashion’ where we would take care of delivery, customer measurements
(along with showing them the sample fabric) and the designer would take care of
manufacturing. We would charge a 25% commission for every order

The Pivot

Around October 2017, we realised that designers are using our technology to upload pictures
and descriptions, nor they would be meeting deadlines in busy season (sept-jan).
We removed all the ‘complicated’ things from our website.
Introduced just a small form and kept the necessary information on our website.
We pivoted to an online cum onsite tailoring service from the earlier aggregator model.
We did some “jugaad” and arranged 20 swatches (sample piece of fabric distributor shows to
wholesalers and retailers) from a Raymond distributor in Chandani Chowk on one condition
that, “it would be a discreet arrangement and we are not allowed to talk about it to anyone in
the market.” We were able to convert those to around 300 swatches within 2 months because
of decent sales.

This made us pioneer a ZERO INVENTORY tailoring service, where we would outsource
manufacturing to outside tailors and having absolutely zero fabric inventory. Gross margins
now more than 100% (on tailoring) and 20-50% (on fabrics)
Further we got more than 1000 swatches from different brands including luxury brands such
as Loro Piana, Holland & Sherry etc.
Pivot turned out to be huge success.

Demise
2018 was going smooth till April. We made more money than we could handle. We made
‘investments’ in shirt fabrics, doubled the salary of our designers and started looking for
more designers to increase the business for the next ‘busy season’.
We were aware that seasonality will kick in and revenue from suits (our most profitable
product) would fade away for few months. But, what we didn’t know was, we got a lot of
competition building up silently.
One of our designer was poached and we had no option but to hire and train a new person.
Training takes around 2-3 months since there is a huge learning curve involved in taking the
right measurements. The new person we hired and invested almost 3 months of salary,
decided to leave just at the start of peak season (August end).
We were not getting any success with the shirt fabrics and it was lying dead in the office.
Reserves were depleting and competitors were pouring huge money in marketing which we
could not afford.
When we entered peak season, prioritising the orders became tricky. We were only left with 1
designer who had to do both small as well as big orders. Instead of letting go those orders, me
and my co founder decided to dawn the designer’s hat and go out for taking orders
(measurements).
This turned out to be our biggest mistake.
Since we were in field all the time, we missed out on ‘quality checks of finished products’.
As a result, we had to redo a lot of orders. This turned out to be an absolute financial blunder
for us.
By the time October arrived, we understood that there’s trouble in the paradise. We had just
enough reserves to pay off the salaries of November.
Our business heavily dependant upon word of mouth and cross selling. Due to poor service in
the past month, we hardly got any repeat order or referral. Our google adword cost also shot
up significantly because of season kicking in.

By the time January came, we totally ran out of money and didn’t had the capacity to pour in
more of personal funds.
So with a heavy heart, I and my co founder, decided to halt the operations and pursue MBA
to learn more about the proven ways to do business.