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!

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.

What’s In and What’s Out

I’ve always wondered how people decide what is officially going to be trendy for the next few years. It’s called fashion trend forecasting and I’m guessing it’s done by experts in the fashion and fashion-history field. I remember a few years ago I was so blown away when I learned about the colour forecasting group: a group of people who decide/predict which colours will be in trend two or three years down the line for the global retail industry. Large retailers follow their advice because they work on their production a year before it hits the stores.

Once I started Brass Tacks I found out that at a more local level, trends are told by the media from their interviews with designers and retailers. I am often asked what the current trends are- a somewhat hilarious question considering I pay no attention whatsoever to “trends” in fashion while designing my collection. I firmly believe that people should wear what they like and what they feel comfortable wearing. Everyone’s taste is a function of their environment while growing up, so it would be ridiculous to suggest that someone who grew up in a small town with a modest household income should gradually aspire to wear something more “trendy”- like harem pants for example.

What shocked me recently, is that fashion magazines have started a section within their magazine on “beauty”. They mean “trends in cosmetics and the how-to of grooming”, but they call it beauty. The beauty section tells you what’s in and what’s not (sorry South Asians with thick eyebrows and big hips, you are not “in” this year) and how to change yourself if you are not in. I guess cosmetic companies and make-up artists call the shots on beauty, and just like with fashion, what gets my goat is the lack of cultural understanding. Or in the case of make-up, no regard whatsoever for difference in racial features (“black glossy lips give power to your pout” – but do they really if you are brown?)

And finally, here is my confession and dilemma: as a small company with practically no budget for advertising, I need every kind of publicity I can get. So if a journalist calls me to ask what the latest trends are, or what I think the Indian fashion scene is lacking, I try to answer the question to the best of ability even though I’m no authority. So in my own small way, I could be accused of contributing towards the message the media sends out about fashion and beauty. Maybe it serves me right that my hair dresser asked me if I want to thread my eyebrows, for my wedding at least.