Big Picture with Little Details

In my most focused moments at work, I am a bit neurotic about little details. I look at a garment and scream when one arm hole looks bigger than the other, and I walk into my store and remind myself to take deep breaths when I see paint peeling off the walls (I’ll never get to the bottom of that annoying leakage problem). I often get annoyed when people tell me that these little details are not important and it’s the big picture that matters. But to me the details are everything and without that you have nothing! Of course when I’m feeling less neurotic or a bit lazy then I’m able to shrug it off (told you not to sweat the small stuff), but of late I’ve realized that it’s not about small details versus the big picture. The two go hand in hand and it is vital to keep switching back and forth to stay on track (and to maintain your sanity).

I don’t know why it took me so long to realize this- it does seem like intuitive common sense after all- but two incidents last week helped me arrive at this conclusion. The first was an exchange between Mala Sinha of Bodhi and me. I wrote a post about Mala last year when I visited her workshop in Baroda. Recently I wanted to place an order with her and I was so impressed to receive these “strike offs” in the print I had asked for with various colour options. I had asked for this print (shown below) in indigo on tussar fabric. Before going into production, Mala sent me a few options including her personal recommendation (indigo on light blue) that ended up looking much nicer than what I had originally ordered. How many printers will take that kind of trouble to show you a different colour options on the fabric you want? Most of them will just tell you that different fabrics absorb colour differently and that you should not expect a 100% colour match.


(Mala's strike offs. The right most one was her recommendation).

Thinking about Mala’s service made me realize that for every one of her buyers who places an order, there must be at least ten others who ask for different colour variations but don’t follow up with an order. Providing that service to everyone must take up a lot of time and effort, however if she didn’t provide that service, then she might not have people like me writing about her or a set of loyal customers who appreciate her consistent good quality. Taking effort over the little details does pay off in this case.

The second incident was a mildly unpleasant experience with a retail store last month after which I realized that if I don’t think about the bigger picture and the long run, then I might be setting myself up for more experiences similar to this one. The experience in question had to do with the retail store not taking enough care about the little details that really matter (like sales statements and listing of inventory with a clear system for summing up totals, calculating commission, etc). At my own store when I see details left out of the accounts book or the inventory book (yes, it’s still handwritten but we’re going electronic in a month) I freak out and make sure my staff corrects the mistakes immediately. But we do have a system in place and my sales assistants know the importance of maintaining these records for our internal checks. How do businesses manage to grow if they are not picky about these little details? So instead of being impatient to make money and retailing in other cities, I need to do more homework and work with someone who gets the little details in the bigger scheme of things. Plus it doesn't hurt to have some terms and conditions agreed upon in writing.

Now that I finally get this big-picture-little-details logic, I need to figure out a way to keep reminding myself of it.

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.

Counting clothes

Keeping inventory has been a tricky issue right from the first day. When we moved clothes from the production unit to the store for the inauguration last August, I only had a rough idea of how many clothes we had (what can I say, I was new to this)! At the production unit I would write down how many garments I wanted tailored in each size on a fabric inventory sheet, but then depending on the fabric consumption some garments would get left out or made in excess. So when I made my garment inventory list from the fabric inventory sheets, I was only in the ballpark range.

Finally, with some help, we graduated to a system where I print out a list for each collection, and each list contains the style names, and the number of garments made in each size by style. When new pieces come to the store, my sales staff adds it manually to the list and every couple of weeks when I take a new print out, I incorporate their additions. We also keep an inventory book that shows the total number of pieces in the store at any given point of time, and each day it shows the number added to the store (new stock) as well as the number subtracted (sales). To find out the number of pieces in the store by collection, I would have to go through each collection list and count the remaining stock.

Next week my summer 2008 collection comes into the store. This means that we will now have 5 collection lists to keep a track of and I can only image how counting by style is going to get more confusing and time consuming (I am thinking of having a sale in August for the 80 odd garments leftover from the first two collections though). The next 6 months are going to be hectic- I have a monsoon-winter collection to prepare, a website revamp by September, and hopefully an exhibition in Bangalore sometime in November. But early next year my goal is to have an easy computerized inventory system (just hope there is something more user friendly than Tally around) - any suggestions and ideas are welcome.

On a different note, below is a photo of the kurta that I designed from the shibori fabric I had talked about in an earlier blog post.