My Cottage Industry

A recent financial crunch has got me thinking about the future and security of Brass Tacks. I’m not referring to the recession but rather my current bank balance. I’ve been ordering fabric in large quantities to feed my store as well as the Brass Tacks section at Daaram (Hyderabad), but it’s going to take a long time for sales to pick up there and for me to recover those costs. The good news is that the low bank balance has motivated me to think of new sales solutions like the new pricing scheme and the idea of brighter colours for future collections. What I need to focus on next are issue of scale. How viable are some of my measures for quality control as the company grows bigger?

Take, for example, the issue of fabric shrinkage. To guarantee my customers that none of my clothes will shrink I have them all washed once. If a fabric has a loose weave, it is soaked for an hour and then washed. If the shrinkage is very high, it is washed again to shrink a second time. This process also gets rid of surface dyes and any nasty smell that the fabric has absorbed during its long train journey to Chennai. Right now all the fabric is washed by the woman who washes clothes at my parents’ house. It started out with tiny quantities of 30 metres of fabric per week, but as the company has grown the quantities have gone up (I’m embarrassed to admit how much fabric I send home every week). It just doesn’t make sense for me to send all the fabric home- it seems so unprofessional and so cottage industry-ish for a company that wants to operate like a mini industry. However at the moment I don’t have another solution. There must be large industrial machines out there that mimic a “gentle handwash” process for handwoven fabrics, but I haven’t had the time to research them yet.

Until Brass Tacks has more creative solutions for the not-so-easy-to-scale stuff, we’re still washing all our fabric in-house (literally). And since both my parents were out of town last week and none of their domestic help came to work, the next best (and immediate) solution for some kora coloured khadi fabric to be shrunk was for me to wash it. Oh well, at least the dress ("Lady Bird") got made in time for weekend sales.

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.

Conforming to Stand Out

In the last couple of months I’ve been going through a lot of self-doubt about my brand; wondering if what I want to do is a viable plan, and if there are enough people out there who share my taste. A lot of the feedback I’ve been hearing of late is that my clothes have cuts and styles that are "very young" but in fabrics that are meant for “old people”.

Ouch, right?

But let's set aside how crushed I feel when I see young women try on my clothes and say “it makes me look like I’m forty”. After all I suppose I can look on the bright side and take some strange comfort in the fact that they can see what I am trying to do at Brass Tacks. The whole point at Brass Tacks is to take handwoven fabrics and give them a makeover in the form of tailored, stylish clothing. However if my target customer still feels that the fabrics are making the overall garment look old, then I’ve not succeeded in my design goal.

One lady told me that the designs look “confused” because they are neither for older women (too tailored and fitted with adventurous cuts) nor are they for younger women (“old” colours and fabrics). Well if I have to be either “here” or “there” to make this for-profit model work, then here are my choices:

Plan A: Continue doing what I do with Brass Tacks designs, but also incorporate more mill made fabrics that are easier to care for, less expensive, and most importantly “young looking”. So for example if I am making an evening dresses in cotton khadi and it does relatively well, I might consider repeating it in mill made silk in a popular colour like magenta or turquoise (you know, colours that really pop). This way I will be able to cater to a wider range of tastes without losing the core ideals and fabrics that I love.

Plan B: Very similar to A, except to keep the brand image intact I need to have the less expensive and more mass appeal range of clothing under a different brand name. This will also allow me to monitor more closely which brand attracts more people or if there is an overlap, but in terms of logistics it’s a bit harder to do at the moment.

And while I figure out which plan to go with for my Winter collection, my team is scrambling to put the Monsoon collection together (sans two tailors who have swine flu). We finally managed to get the pattern right for this halter dress that I am making in a black silk with diamond shaped ikat designs. I tried it on today and breathed a sigh of relief, momentarily forgetting my deadlines, the amount of work I have ahead of me in the next 2 weeks, and all the bills I have to pay.

See I’m not confused. I’m just negotiating new territory on my own terms.

All I really do

I got back from my high school reunion on Monday night with a sore throat and twelve hours of sleep over 3 nights and 3 days. I had a fabulous time meeting with old friends who I haven’t seen in ages and also getting to know classmates I didn’t know so well before, but who are doing interesting things with their lives. That weekend was also the first time I didn’t have the urge to check email (although I did keep going back to the one spot on campus where my cell had reception to check on the store). I enjoyed the beautiful weather, wet my hair in the rain, and walked up a little hill in the slush to watch sunrise after staying awake all night. My husband, who had accompanied me, wanted to know who I had turned into, and if I could continue to be the “new Anaka” once we got back to Chennai as well.

The truth is, once I get into my routine with work I tend to get so serious about everything. Every small detail gets blown out of proportion in my head, and the lack of an office environment with colleagues doesn’t help either because it means I don’t have anyone to show me another perspective. Last night I spoke to an old friend I’ve known since 3rd grade and she said she hasn’t heard me sound so relaxed in three years!

Well don’t get me wrong, I really love my job and I find the work that I do both fun and stimulating, but it can get really exhausting. Very often I feel like how I imagine a single parent might feel with all the responsibility of raising a child but no time to really savour and enjoy the special moments (no offense to mothers with human babies- just that I often think of Brass Tacks as my baby). This isn’t the first time I’ve realized this about myself; other holidays and my honeymoon have shown me that I am more creative when I’m relaxed. I try to incorporate relaxing activities into my everyday life all the time (my latest is making sure I always have a great book to read and I find it’s the best thing to do when I’m worried about something that’s not completely in my control) but sustaining that “relaxed feeling” is the hard part.

Right now I’m behind schedule with ordering fabric for my winter collection, my bank balance is really low, and I’m worried about the sluggish sales at my retail section in Hyderabad. The difference, however, is that right now I’m able to take things in my stride and get work done without letting the stress get to me. In a week or two when this wears off I will be pulling my hair out and secretly wishing I had a “normal” job (i.e. a steady salary!).

My new mid-year resolution is to do whatever it takes to sustain that relaxed feeling. That doesn’t mean working a lot less, it just means staying relaxed mentally (and potentially getting more work done in less time as a result) and remembering that I’m in this for the fun of it more than anything else. And hey, at this point things can only get better as I start earning a decent salary right?

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).