(War Stories) Undercover with Hong Kong's Tailor King

(February 8, 2007.)

34-C Cameron Rd. G/F. Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon.  www.raja-fashions.com. Tel +852 2366 7624.  Spoke with Andy Zaiq.

1.1  First impressions.  Smaller than I expected.  Given Economist and Guardian advertisements, I expected a large store, almost like a warehouse of bolts of cloth, displays of suits, etc.  But actually no larger than any other Hong Kong tailor shop.  (see photos from my mobile phone).  Typical galley format, 10-15 feet wide and maybe 50-75 feet deep.  Apparently an upstairs workshop. 

1.2  Measurement form.  Has 24 measurements in total, 17 for the jacket + pants, and another 7 for the shirt. 

1.3  Sales staff.  Young man who served me (there were two other older men who basically ignored me) said little of any substance about the quality characteristics of Raja suits, despite my direct prodding.  Mostly relied upon reputation to impress me.  Showed me the ‘wall of fame’ at the back of the shop – something other HK tailors don’t have but arguably reflects more upon Mr Raja’s advertising and PR acumen than upon any special quality of his suits.   

• E.g., fused vs floating canvas (floating is better).  I asked ‘Do you use floating canvas?’ He said ‘yes’.  Later he said, ‘I’ll give you the finest fused canvas.’ 
• He completely missed the point, which I made explicitly, that I want to be educated about what goes into a quality suit

1.4  Price-based sales effort.  ‘How much do you want to spend?’ was his first question.  Left me skeptical re: whether I was going to get value-for-money.  I got the impression that he would charge me whatever price he thought I would pay. 

1.5  Style selection.  They use style books from design labels (Armani, Hugo Boss, etc).  Somehow, even though mens’ suits are pretty standard and straight-forward, I felt like I was looking at out-of-date styles.  I mean, how edgy or up-to-the-moment can they be?  I want a photo album of the latest and best suits being worn today…

1.6  Sales job should be about explaining to customers the sophistication of the suit vs others, and vs off-the-peg suits.  I learned next to nothing about what sets Raja’s suits apart. 

1.7  US vs European styling tends to be different.  US tends to a single slit at the back, Europe tends to two (which gives a back ‘flap’ effect).  Europe tends to use more visible stitching, and extra stitching around the edges.  US more invisible. 

1.8 Why are they successful?  (if indeed they are)  This Raja guy who goes around the world is probably a more effective salesperson.  But he’s older, his customers are older.  Is there anyone who can talk to 25-35 year old? 

1.9 Fabric.  Salesperson wasn’t able to explain to me much.  e.g., I know that ‘cashmere’ suits typically are made with fabric that’s under 10% (maybe 3-5%) cashmere…too much cashmere and it wrinkles very easily, doesn’t ‘perform’ as well…He said his cashmere wool was 100% cashmere. 

1.10  Takeaways.

• I think there’s a big opportunity to sell suits (clothing) differently.  Transparent pricing.  Educating customers on the finer points of a suit so they appreciate quality and can spot the inferiority of competitors’ products.  Somehow offer very current style selection.  Target the young professional demographic. 

1.11 Idea.  Let’s do something disruptive.  Maybe we can turn the power of clothing ‘brands’ against themselves.  Instead of competing on brand, we compete on transparency.  Brand labels like Armani and Hugo Boss will be terrified of transparency, because they’re making a lot of their suits in China too – but look how much you pay for one of their products.  Our question to customers becomes ‘are you getting value-for-money?’  Of the total purchase price, what percent reflects costs that add value for you, and how much reflects costs like branding/advertising/retail chain that don’t make the suit any better at all?  We can benchmark ourselves vs the competition on this metric.  We transparently show our materials cost, labour cost, overhead cost, delivery cost, etc, and invite customers to compare with our branded competitors. 

 

I like this idea.  The hypothesis behind it is that in an era of globalization, where so much textile manufacture is being sent to lower-cost China and India but retail prices are staying the same, customers are increasingly going to feel that they’re being deceived somehow.  More and more skeptical that retail price reflects product value, given that the cost of making the clothing has dropped so much.  We play on that.  We be upfront about where our clothes are made – and we point out that the big brands are making their clothes at the factory next door.  And we be upfront about our cost and pricing structure and contrast it to our estimates of the competition.  We make transparency to our customers the new way of doing business.  We bring our customers inside the operations and enable them to make a radically more informed judgment of value-for-money.  We make it seem that branding is a way to hide from customers the fact that the same product is being made much more cheaply than before.  Brand is the cloud that allows clothing companies to de-link price from cost.  But we understand that our customers deserve to know.  We’re confident that if you look inside our operations, you’ll think our prices are fair.  Can the competition say the same?

 

Or something like that.