Sophomore

For months I’ve been trying to work on a pair of cotton trousers that have a great fit around the hip and waist. I feel that most affordable brands (abroad as well as in India) make trousers that are more or less straight from the hip/butt up to the waist. So whatever fits me at the hip is loose at the waist, and if I try a size smaller then I can’t get into it because it’s too tight around my hips. I know I am not alone in this feeling, and I don’t even have a curvy figure to boast of, so what are all the other Indian women doing for trousers?

Out of necessity to add a pair of cotton trousers to my wardrobe and the desire to get to the bottom of this trouser-for-women-with-hips problem, I have been spending a lot of time and energy and even tears (yes, there was that one time when I just cried in frustration) trying to develop a pair of cotton trousers that fit well. You’re probably wondering why a simple pair of cotton trousers requires this much time, but it’s tough to get that perfect fit without lycra; plus I don't have any formal training in pattern making which would have definitely helped. Things reached a point where I tried to outsource the pattern making to other companies that provide this sort of service, but I wasn’t happy with their fits either. Then I went sleuthing around at other major boutiques, but either they didn’t have great fits in pure cotton, or they used blends of cotton, polyester and lycra to get a figure hugging fit.

It kind of pains me to know that the pattern we finally arrived at was under my nose the whole time. It just required a few tweaks from another pattern we had (raise the crotch level, tighten the thigh and contour the waist) which I discovered after spending 2 days staring at all the paper patterns and pants we had produced so far. Anyway, after months of making around 50 samples that didn’t work, I have introduced our first pair of cotton trousers, “Sophomore”, into the store. It’s fitted around the hip, it’s booty lifting, and it’s really comfortable. It comes in brown (the ones in the photos below), ivory and black. I’m so excited about these that I'm giving my regular customers a special price on these trousers just to share the joy.

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.

Shout Outs

I never imagined the ways in which running a business would affect the way I think about people interactions and social skills. I’m usually pretty good at exhaling at the end of a day and not taking things people do or say personally, but one thing I am still working on is gratitude: giving it and not expecting it.

There have been a few incidents, since the time I started, when I have bent backwards to make an order or an alteration happen in less than 24 hours, or door delivered garments (for free) without any thanks or acknowledgment from the customer. I know this attitude is not at all conducive to good customer service, but hey, I’m allowed to be human once in a while (and that’s what this blog is for anyway). These gymnastics also affect the way I treat incompetent customer service representatives at other businesses (“if I can bend backwards to make it happen, why can’t you?”), not realizing that their sales staff don’t own their business so the situation is not comparable.

As for my customers, I know they aren’t obliged to give me business, and if good service is what it takes to keep them coming back to my store, then so be it. It’s just that sometimes it’s hard coming to terms with the fact that it takes years to build a good reputation that can be destroyed very quickly if a few people have a bad experience.

In the spirit of thanks and of acknowledging important influences, I want to give a big shout out to Fabindia right here in this blog post. Fabindia is now an amazing empire with over 100 stores in India, and although a lot of people complain about the lack of great service, the lack of standard sizing and the sometimes poor quality, no one gives them credit for what they are really doing. Aside from providing relatively inexpensive traditional crafts, beauty and bath products and organic food products (their chapati atta is pretty good by the way), to me their real service has been cultivating good taste. If you think about how people’s aesthetic taste evolves, their surroundings and their exposure at a young age play a huge role. By making handwoven and printed textiles accessible to a wide range of income groups, Fabindia has reached out to generations of Indians and tourists and made them excited about Indian crafts. In the process, it has also built the foundation for brands like mine that rely on the assumption that Indian women like traditional fabrics. And thanks to Fabindia, many craftsmen still practice their art because they’ve had constant demand for their work from this amazing empire!

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).

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.

Retaining Staff and Climbing Expenses

Over the last few months I’ve felt the need for a store manager at my shop- someone smart and confident with handling customers, and most importantly someone who will run the store when I’m not around (giving me more time to focus on designing).

Ideally one of my sales people should also act as a store manager because the roles are not too different. Everyone in the store needs to be completely on top of inventory and accounts, make sure stocks are replaced, recognize regular customers (and remember their taste), and inspire confidence in customers while taking alteration requirements. The one differentiating factor is that a manager must be responsible, motivated, and accountable. At my production unit I have a manager who is in charge of production, and anytime I have a problem with the tailoring quality or low productivity, I take it up directly with her. Her job is to ensure that the problem gets solved. I really need someone like that at the store.

I am fully aware that someone at that level will command a much higher salary than a sales person. However, the most promising candidates for this job are also the least likely to stay. I’ve hired a couple of new sales staff through a recruitment agency (and I think the recruitment agency found the candidates through a job website), and while these women are bright and very quick to learn, they are constantly on the lookout for new opportunities that pay them a little more. To me this means they will never fully immerse themselves in their work to the point where they feel a sense of ownership- the criteria for being responsible, motivated and accountable. I still go through the efforts of spending time with them, training them and hoping that they learn the intricate details of store managing as well as the bigger picture of where this fits in with their personal career goals. Hopefully they will stay. If not- I guess I have to fulfill the role of store manager myself or just pay more for that position. Damn, just when I thought it was time to sit back and relax for a few weeks after the madness of February and March.

Butter Biscuits Door Delivered from Airtel

A couple of weeks ago I shifted my production unit from the heart of the city to the outskirts (in the hope that moving closer to a large bus terminal will make it easier to recruit tailors). A week before the move I called Airtel to tell them that I would need my landline and broadband connection shifted to the new office. I asked how long the entire process takes (from disconnecting the old landline and setting up the new one) and I was pleasantly surprised when they said it can be done on the same day. I made a request for that day to be Saturday, the day of our move. Incidentally if you call Airtel’s toll free number to ask for a shift in location they ask you to call their landline service centre (044-42112345) that isn’t toll free unless you are calling from an Airtel landline.

On Friday my old landline got disconnected. I called Airtel and Kavitha, at their office, said that this could not have been avoided. I asked to speak to her supervisor, and Kavitha replied confidently saying her supervisor would say the same thing. She also said her supervisor would call me back in 10 minutes, but no one called back from Airtel that day. The next day I was busy with my move, but I got a call on my cell phone from a technician asking me when he could come to the new place to connect my new landline. I asked him to come to the new address that afternoon but he did a no-show. I called back but no one picked up. I called the Airtel helpline number and no one picked that up either. All day on Saturday, Sunday and on Monday (Diwali) no one picked up either phones. On Tuesday morning I called the Airtel helpline again. This time Diana picked up and said my new connection would be fixed the same day. I asked to speak to her supervisor but she insisted that she could handle my problem and would not transfer me to her supervisor. Annoyed and worried that my complaint was not really registered, I called back a couple of hours later. This time I spoke to Zia who assured me that it would be done by the end of the day. I warned him that the office closed at 6pm so a technician had to start his work at the office before that. By 5:45pm, no one had arrived. I called Airtel and spoke to Karthik and then Selvakumar. Neither of them were able to pull up my complaints on their computer. In other words, there was no complaint registered with them that I needed this connection done as soon as possible. Finally one of them agreed to transfer me to their supervisor, Lakshmi. She assured me that they were going to treat this as a priority and that the new connection would be completed the next day morning.

By this time I was frustrated, but more than anything else I was just irritated! All those calls (that I was obviously charged for since I couldn't make them from my not-yet-connected landline) and all that time being asked to stay on hold had still not resulted in a registered complaint! The next morning no one arrived. I called back and spoke to Vasanth, then Gopinath, Dilip and finally Preethi. They all said it would be done by the end of the day. I decided to just wait until the job was done but also sent in a complaint via email to Airtel to the following addresses:
care.tamilnadu@airteltelephone.com
Nodal.TN@airtel.in
nodal.southabts@airtel.in

I didn’t hear back from anyone via email other than the auto response saying my complaint would be attended to within 24 working hours (does that mean 4 days of 8 hours each?) Meanwhile a technician came to fix my landline on Wednesday and my internet connection was fixed only on Friday, a week after my old line had been disconnected.

The following Monday I received a tin of Butter Biscuits (made from margarine) from Airtel. There was no note or letter, so I assume that this is their way of responding to my complaint. I wish there was a way I could tell them (and have them register what I want to say) that refunding someone’s phone bill might melt their frustration away a lot more effectively than margarine.

Living and Learning

After a month of hurdles, I finally launched my Monsoon collection last week. The labour related issues, which I have written about in an earlier post, are common to the industry but just harder to deal with in a small scale business. What I hadn’t anticipated was how long it would take to work with my website developers on a new look for the site.

I wanted my website revamped because the first website was done in a hurry and many details were either overlooked or done in a shortsighted manner. The website developer I was working with had a full time job in Mumbai, so all our communication was either over email or over the phone late at night. When I figured that his design sense didn’t quite match mine, and that we were running out of time, I decided to do all the design myself and have him do the HTML programming. With my amateur Photoshop skills I created images of what I wanted every page to look like, and with his HTML skills (also amateur) he converted them to actual web pages. Granted, at the time I was desperate to get the job done and I didn’t search hard enough for someone who could have done the job better, but I ended up with a website that required a ton of work each time a new collection had to be uploaded (my kind and hardworking fiancé took care of these every time).

Things were so bad with the first round of programming (the programmer had actually uploaded the text parts of the website as images so they couldn’t be edited at all) that I ended up asking around for another developer just to re-do the programming that the first guy had done. Crazy, but true.

The second guy was from Bangalore and was referred to me by a friend of a friend. He was efficient and his turnaround time was incredibly fast. My fiancé and I were really happy with his work and he came across as very professional and responsible.

So, a few months ago when I was thinking about getting my website revamped for a more sophisticated and polished look, I naturally thought of the developer in Bangalore. The developer had a design partner and together they were to take on the job of giving my website a facelift in keeping with my brand image. Despite my attempts to get started on the job early however, I ended up with the same problem: I felt my design sensibilities were not understood. This forced me to come up with a lot of visuals using Photoshop, just like I had to the first time around. The one good thing that came out of the process of sending images, exchanging feedback and listening to the developers’ arguments for their designs is that it forced me to think outside my creative box. After all, I didn’t want to end up with a site that looked exactly like the old one in every way.

The result is a new website with a more polished look and a lot more interactivity than the old one. The downside is that uploading and updating new collections will still be tough (fortunately my fiancé is good with programming). I hope people will stay on the site for longer, read about the textile crafts in the leaning centre, and send me their feedback. The next time around, I’ll be sure to do my homework, take a look at all the websites the designers have done for other clients, and work well in advance. I also have to remember that as long as I have a strong opinion on something, I have to be prepared for heavy involvement, even if it means working out detailed layouts in Photoshop everyday just to communicate my ideas.

Below are screenshots of the old and new home page.

Natural Fabrics and Fit 101

One of the biggest reasons I chose to start Brass Tacks is because I care about how a garment should fit, and I felt there weren’t many brands in India that had both fit and interesting fabric in the same garment. I am fully aware that the fit may not work for every body type, but it does work for many and when it doesn’t, we do alterations or we make a fresh piece that works better for a different body type. Still, I find that some people are not happy with the fit in comparison to a tight t-shirt or anything with a bit of elastane (lycra) woven into the fabric. Some customers end up buying a size or two too small, and I fear that they are giving up comfort for what they think is a better fit. So I’m taking the advice of my pattern teacher (and mentor) and writing a short piece on why my clothes are not meant to be worn tight like second skin.

The difficult part about getting a “good fit” with natural fabrics is making a pattern that flatters the body without cutting out those few inches of ease that is necessary for basic movement. I’m not saying you can do yoga in Brass Tacks clothes, but you should be able to lift your arms to tie your hair, or at least give someone a hug without having the shoulder or back darts pull at the seams! A good test when trying on an upper body garment is to wrap your arms around your shoulder (like you are giving yourself a hug) and then gently throw your arms back in the opposite direction (like the flying scene in Titanic). If you can do these movements, the garment is not too tight.

Ready-made clothes can never be as perfect as a custom-made piece. I have to follow a size chart at Brass Tacks because we need to have some system for our grading of sizes, but it is unlikely that a woman’s measurements perfectly match up to the measurements of any one size on my chart. They could have a shoulder and bust measurement that matches size 8, but a waist and hip that matches size 6 for example. And then if you want to get into details, there are differences in how the body curves between the waist and hip, or between the hip and knee. Ready-made garments are convenient because they are available without the customer having to do any running around, but it is tough catering to a range of sizes and on top of that variations within each size. At the Brass Tacks store we offer alterations or other solutions to give customers the best of ready-made with some tweaking to work for the customer, but our fabrics are not meant to imitate knitwear. So rather than alter the garments to fit you like a glove, I say enjoy the freedom of movement and the breathing room that our clothes provide!

Leaving during a crisis

Sales at the store have been climbing over the last few months. I guess it’s a combination of word-of-mouth finally kicking in, the press releases, and the emails I sent out to announce the summer collection. That’s the good news. Unfortunately, my quest for good quality tailors has still not been very successful and things have reached a point where not being able to replenish stocks is getting in the way of sales.

I’ve tried every method possible: contacting everyone I know in the garment industry, placing ads in all the major Tamil papers (expensive and futile), and I’ve even gone around tailoring shops in a few neighbourhoods asking them if they know someone. I’m going on a 10 day trip at the end of this month, and I’m worried that production is going to come to a stand still when I’m gone! Also, having only a few tailors means that I always give priority to alterations and customer orders, but that has slowed down the pattern development process. My pattern maker has not been able to show me what he has developed for the monsoon collection because he hasn’t been able to allocate a tailor to stitch a sample. I know, not a good time for me to take off for a couple of weeks…

On a slightly different note, I’m wondering how other stores and clothing brands handle alterations. I keep telling my sales staff that our goal at Brass Tacks is to help customers find what looks good on them. So of course it’s only fair that we offer to do an alteration if something doesn’t fit very well. After all, I have a size chart because everyone has to work from some standardized measurements, but I don’t expect the chart to apply to every woman.

Simple stuff like a reduction in length, releasing a waist dart, or making a fresh piece with a wider shoulder or a smaller armhole is not time consuming. However some alterations are tedious, especially if it requires many stitches to be removed. Sometimes it can take an entire day to rip out stitches on a silk dress (it takes longer for delicate fabric) with a side seam zip, and then re-stitch it (all this just for an extra 1/8th of an inch ease on each side). Maybe I wouldn’t be thinking about this so much if I didn’t have a shortage of tailors. I’d like to provide great customer service, and having a happy customer walk away with something that fits her well is worth the time spent on the alteration.