Chasing After Suppliers

I have never really understood why suppliers have a pricey approach to their customers. I am talking about weavers, printers, tie-dyers and large textile cooperatives who promise to send swatches so I can place an order but never live up to their words. You could just chalk it down to a cultural difference or disorganization, but it’s at a higher level too. I met an urban educated manager of a large non-profit set up to promote handloom fabric at a craft exhibition in February and only after incessant emails and phone calls did I finally get some swatches (gorgeous ones, however) last week.

What is sometimes frustrating is that I try to do whatever it takes to keep my customers happy (like driving to a customer’s house to deliver her urgent alteration on Christmas day) but very few suppliers think of their clients as customers who are giving them business. I tell my sales staff that we have to be polite to every customer, even if we know some are bigger shoppers and others are just window shoppers. It is the opportunity that a window shopper today will buy something for herself tomorrow that we don’t want to lose out on. Plus, I want everyone who comes to my store to have a pleasant experience; it’s just not nice to discriminate.

With fabric suppliers I have to call and introduce myself to ask for swatches (sample cuttings), follow up with a text message (sms) to tell them my office address, call again a few days later to remind them, and so on. At first I used to think it’s because they knew my order quantities would eventually be small, which means I was less important than some of their bigger buyers, but recently while talking to a manager of a large cooperative I made sure I didn’t mention my order quantities. Perhaps they are heavily understaffed and have no one else to pass the job onto. But if that is the case -and I empathize completely- wouldn’t it be easier to be up front about it rather than ignoring emails or saying the swatches will be sent the next day?

There are exceptions to the rule (Eco-Tasar in Delhi is run very professionally) and there is an interesting pattern I am seeing in these suppliers with service inertia. Very often I have found that the suppliers who took ages to send me swatches are the ones who had the more interesting textile designs and better quality work. For example, after 8 months of calling my cut-work supplier in Varanasi and pestering him with text messages, I received some beautiful swatches the other day (pics below). This means that with a little thick skin and persistence, it is possible to get to the good stuff.


Cut-work swatches from Prabha Traders (more delicate and flowery than my usual favourites, but beautiful nevertheless).

It's an Acquired Taste

I know that I cater to a very niche market through Brass Tacks, but sometimes I worry that within that niche my personal favourites probably cater to just a handful. This isn’t to say I don’t like everything I design; it just means that I’m aware of my taste and my tendency to choose fabrics that are not necessarily popular.

I’ve known this for a while, especially with my love for checks and stripes. I have used these fabrics before, but I’m always hesitant and I carefully pick the ones that I think will have universal appeal.

Recently I’ve been feeling a lot more strongly about my passion for traditional checks. Why should I choose only the checks that cater to a wide audience- isn’t part of creating a brand image having a distinct point of view and taking a few risks? A conversation I had with one of my customers the other day made me realize that if I spend too much energy focusing on what will sell really well, I might lose touch with my inspiration, thereby losing the point of view I set out to show. This customer (she’s a textile designer) was there to talk to the host of a show on NDTV-Hindu* about my store, and she told me that while she loves the fact that I use soft, thin cotton that crushes, she probably shouldn’t say that on TV because most people dislike that about cotton. Hearing her say that reminded me of a look that I too love. Sometimes I get so wrapped up trying to change the associations people have of traditional textiles in order to create something that is cosmopolitan, urban and marketable, that I forget (or push aside) what I love. Soft, thin cotton that crushes at your elbows and knees has a certain old world charm to it that I love. It’s natural in a very honest way unlike stiff, starched cotton or poly-cotton blends. Those may not crinkle, but they lack soul.

A huge focus at Brass Tacks is to take handloom fabric, and re-articulate them as modern silhouettes. It’s not enough to think about how a fabric may feel, or how a style may look. The final combination of fabric, silhouette, drape and tailoring forms a product that will trigger certain associations for customers. It’s my personal opinion that there are many women in India who feel that khadi, crushed cotton, and other traditional textiles are frumpy or old-school in a very unfashionable way. Especially when it comes to woven textiles, the traditional checks are not popular because ...well, I really don’t know why. Maybe not enough high-end designers make it look glamorous in the way that they make embroidery and sequins on chiffon silk look glamorous? A lot of textile magazines and books that I read lead me to believe that our traditional checks would be really popular in Europe and the pockets of the US and Japan, and maybe that’s because their associations of that fabric are different.

Recently I went through my mother’s collection of old Kanjeevaram sarees and I’m in love with them. The stripes and checks are amazing; with colour combinations I would never have imagined would look so stunning. I’m determined to use textiles inspired by these designs, but apparently no weaver in Kanjeevaram will weave cotton yardage anymore. That’s not my main problem though: the toughest challenge at hand is to design styles with these textiles, while staying true to the design aesthetic of these stripes and checks. Below are a few photos from my mother’s collection.






*The shoot at my store was for a show on NDTV-Hindu, and will air in about a month. I am so thankful to everyone who came over that day and spent so much time helping out. Really, I was touched to see how many people came and patiently waited for camera time.

Controversial Transparency

I’ve been thinking a lot about my pricing lately. When I think about the amount of effort that goes into finalizing a style, the time spent in tailoring, and the expense in experimenting with different colours and fabrics, I think my prices are too low. But then, I never wanted my brand to be in that high-end and almost unaffordable league, so I guess it’s up to me to be smart about my fabric and tailoring choices to deliver a unique product that’s still affordable.

The definition of affordable, however, varies from person to person and from income to income. I understand that completely- we all have different reference points after all- but what does upset me is when people cannot imagine why my garments would cost as much as they do (my prices range from Rs 800 to Rs 2,600). This post is my attempt to explain why a well-tailored garment made from handwoven, natural fabric cannot be sold for cheap. Well, at least not be yesteryear's standards of cheap.

Most designers follow a simple equation to help them price a garment. There are more complicated ways of doing this by taking into account hidden costs such as rent, sales staff salaries, etc, and some designers have a wholesale price and a retail price but at its basic level, this is the standard equation.

Cost * Profit Margin = Price

Usually, only direct costs are taken into account. This includes the cost of fabric, notions (buttons, thread, zips), and tailoring charges. Let’s take a look at each of these direct costs.

Fabric: It’s no secret that natural fabrics are more expensive than synthetic fabrics. Add to that the process of small scale yarn dyeing, and weaving- that’s a lot of skilled labour right there! Many people seem to be under the impression that labour in India is still really cheap and that handwoven fabric should not be that expensive. The farmers and weavers who work for cheap can’t survive with today’s standard of living; has no one read the news stories about farmers and weavers in Andhra committing suicide? Just so that everyone is on the same page (and in the same decade), here are some figures to get you up to speed on what quality labour costs these days.

One metre of handwoven cotton can cost anything between Rs 80 to as much as Rs 450 per metre. This is dependent on the quality of yarn, the amount of yarn, and the tie-dying work done on the yarn (ikat is obviously more expensive because of the labour involved before the weaving itself). Additional textile crafts like extra weft (jamdaani) weaving add to the cost.
If the cotton is real khadi (and by real khadi, I mean the yarn should have been spun by hand) and handwoven, then it can cost anything between Rs 150 to Rs 350 per metre. I know, it’s such a steal it’s not even funny.

Handwoven silk can cost anything between Rs 200 to Rs 800 per metre. This is dependent on the weight of silk, the quality and type of silk, and special weaving techniques like jamdani or ikat.

Tailoring cost: A really good tailor can cost anything between Rs 6,000 to Rs 8,000 per month. A good tailor has control over a sewing machine, can give you a good finish with concealed zips, darts, and French seams, and he knows how to change the machine tension according the fabric so that you don’t have a beautiful satin silk garment puckering at every seam.

Oh, and even a good tailor can take up to half a day to tailor one garment if that garment has a lot of darts and pin-tucks or pleats.

A good pattern maker (and it is the pattern maker, not the tailor who decides the fit of the garment) can cost anything between Rs 12,000 to Rs 30,000 per month. I’ll say less about this because clearly there are pattern makers and there are pattern makers. This cost really depends on what kind of garments you want to make and how much time and effort the designer spends explaining her vision, concept and style.

A good cutter (whose job, literally, is to cut out fabric in the shape of paper patterns that the pattern maker generates) can cost anything between Rs 6,000 and Rs 10,000 per month.

Notions: Invisible YKK zips cost anything between Rs 35 to Rs 90 per zip, depending on the length. Shell buttons cost anything between Rs 3 to Rs 20 per button, depending on the type and size.

Now that’s a lot of information to help anyone figure out how much it costs to make a range of garments in cotton and silk. And these are only the costs for the direct input into each garment, mind you. Not factored into the direct costs are the time spent finalizing a pattern from sketch to final product, the time spent grading patterns to different sizes, the production manager’s time spent making sure everything gets done in time and without tailoring errors, sales staff salaries, rent, electricity, phone, and of course the cost of machinery.

Yeah, don’t even get me started on the hidden costs of running a business.

Active Listening

I remember when we learned active listening in college I dismissed it as an annoying paraphrase of what the other person is saying. But of late I’ve been putting more thought into it and I’ve found its use in retail, especially with customer feedback. There have been several instances when customers would tell me how I should have designed something. “This top would have looked much better with sleeves”, or “this is too loose on top- shouldn’t it be as fitted as the hip band?” are the kind of feedback that usually result in me gritting my teeth and saying “Hmm…. you think?” Inside, I quell my defensive thoughts quietly.

But my long drives to work every morning while listening to Tamil radio have got me thinking, and I think it would really benefit me to indulge in some active listening, or in this case, active thinking. A customer who tells me certain styles would look better with sleeves might be her way of saying that she doesn’t like wearing sleeveless clothes. And for customers who don’t like styles with a different silhouette (“Bishop Shirt” is meant to be looser on top and fitted at the hip) – I can just recommend styles with a regular, more fitted all around shape. The whole exercise when put to practice is a lot of fun; I get to recommend stuff that those customers actually like (and sometimes buy), and I also get to understand my customers' taste.

There are, however, times when it is nearly impossible to practice active listening. I have to fight extra hard when customers tell me my prices are too high. The way feedback is phrased has such a big impact on how well it is received. I don’t respond very well to “don’t you think your prices are too high”? Why would I think so - I’m the one who priced them! I know, I know, what they are really telling me is that a regular cotton top, in their opinion, shouldn’t cost that much. That’s when I slip into polite teacher mode, and give them a brief lesson on the labour costs involved in handloom, apologizing profusely for the standard of living costs these days. You get the point, right? Pricing is a sensitive issue, but the active listening task does prevent my arteries from clogging.

A time I really wished I had been more aware of my thought process was when a photographer came in to take pictures of me in my store last week (it was for a newspaper article and the journalist spoke to me over the phone). The photographer told me, almost right after introducing himself, that my shoes were too plain and that I needed some make-up. I should have just smiled and told him that I wasn’t prepared for something more glamorous while we wrapped up the shoot quickly. Instead I allowed myself to get worked up and then I couldn’t smile for a single shot.

My next step is to try and incorporate active listening with my staff. Often when I tell them what areas they need to work on, I’m not very understanding of their explanations (I tend to see the explanations as excuses). Perhaps they are trying to tell me something- something I can do to help them achieve the goals I’ve set for them.

Staying Motivated for Others

A few months ago when I had contacted a recruitment agency to hire more sales staff, I had an interesting conversation with the woman who runs the agency. I was describing the kind of person I wanted to hire for the position of a sales manager and I said that aside from speaking English reasonably well, and having a sense of customer service, the candidate needs to be a motivated person who wants to move ahead in her career. The woman replied saying that most people are used to just taking orders rather than thinking for themselves and taking initiative. I feel that is so true of many people, at a variety of levels. Most of us settle into a comfort zone and a kind of complacency where we are just doing our everyday tasks without striving for more. I know that I too am often guilty of this. I go through my phases of high motivation levels, but I tend to burn myself out and then spend so much time recovering that I may as well have done things at a steady pace in the first place. But what is it that helps people to stay motivated?

When I quit my job in New York a few years ago to intern for two designers, I worked for free and used up all my savings. As a general rule I think unpaid internships are a bad idea- I think hard working people need to be rewarded in some way- but for me it was an opportunity to do something in fashion, a field that I knew so little about, and get some exposure before I moved back to Chennai and started my own company. That fact that I didn’t get paid for my work didn’t affect my level of motivation, but what did help was being around highly motivated and driven people (and when my managers weren’t motivated, it definitely set a more laid-back atmosphere that I would imbibe).

I think about Brass Tacks pretty much all the time, awake or asleep. Sometimes I am tired but do my work anyway because I “have to”, and at other times I am really motivated and positive, and do my work with enthusiasm. At all times however, my goal is very clear to me (that I need to put in this effort in order to reach the next step).

Lately, I’ve not been feeling very motivated. The long drives to work, the slow activity at the store, and just the relentless amounts of work have left me feeling a bit frustrated, tired and unmotivated. At times like these I really miss being in an environment where I am surrounded by highly motivated people who are passionate about what they do. If I feel this way about my own business, I can only imagine how my sales staff feel on days when few customers walk into the store. So perhaps it all boils down to how motivated I am, because the energy that I exude does affect my surroundings. I need to spend more time at the store (rather than in the comfort of my home office) to create a stimulating work environment for them. And since there is a high turnover rate with sales staff, there really is no permanent solution to this.