new ruling on bespoke

"The brute covers himself, the rich man and the fop adorn themselves, the elegant man dresses!"

-Honore de Balzac

Costi
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Thu Jul 24, 2008 9:53 pm

FiS, you already make a very powerful point without any need for Microsoft's Powerpoint! :) Yes, your strategy is the winning one and I am sure there is a miriad of creative, tasteful ideas to promote bespoke OVER rtw rather than thoughtlessly sign the pact with the devil (which, in our case, is not RTW clothing itself, but giving up on one's fundamental values).
For it to be a truly Faustian pact though, they should have exhausted all other possibilities - which I don't think they did. And, ultimately, I look forward to the equally Faustian redeeming act - which, unfortunately, is not in sight as I don't see a timed strategy at play here, but rather a visionless abandonment of one's basic values which is probably not even indispendable to one's survival.
Scott
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Fri Jul 25, 2008 3:49 am

Costi wrote:It is like a kosher food shop opening a pork corner for christians...
One of my best friends here in California grew up in Brooklyn, New York ... he's the son of a butcher and Conservative Jew. He tells the story of their Christian customers ordering pork in whispered tones ... with it being delivered directly to the customer from another butcher's shop known for having quality pork. Moreover, it was always delivered under the other shop's name ... otherwise it might have ruined the business of my friend's father.
Costi wrote:Rather than make the name (whether Huntsman or another) no longer synonymous with "bespoke" and "top quality" they might be better off inventing a new brand name for their RTW.
I hear you! Of course, it has been my experience that many of Huntsman's RTW customers buy due to the firm's association with Bespoke.

Having been a bespoke customer of Huntsman ... and also having one of their RTW suits in my closet ... I can say in all honesty ... THEY AIN'T THE SAME!
Frog in Suit
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Fri Jul 25, 2008 7:44 am

I also heard recently that there was trouble (staff leaving or being made to leave) at one of the big SR houses which also offer RTW. Staff dissatisfaction may also be an unexpected consequence of what some of them at least must see as "cheapening the brand".

Frog inSuit
storeynicholas

Fri Jul 25, 2008 12:43 pm

Probably, there will be several old-timers (the repositories of the real skills) who will say 'Sod this for a game of soldiers' - and retire to Spain and we will be left with the economists and their books of account and a few shopmen waggling their RTW hangers at us.
NJS
pvpatty
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Fri Jul 25, 2008 1:32 pm

storeynicholas wrote:Probably, there will be several old-timers (the repositories of the real skills) who will say 'Sod this for a game of soldiers' - and retire to Spain and we will be left with the economists and their books of account and a few shopmen waggling their RTW hangers at us.
NJS
NJS, you really don't like these economists, do you?
sartorius
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Fri Jul 25, 2008 5:55 pm

Dear Sartorius,

I might just as well write in Romanian and my message would still get across just as fine
Costi, I am hearing you just fine in english thank you. And very much enjoying our debate!

jb wrote:
it seems clear that RTW is a different business with entirely different determinants of success. In the bespoke world top notch craft can develop loyal customers, albeit one at a time, and create staying power at a modest level. RTW success is about marketing and proper merchandising, skills that are not developed in the normal course of running the bespoke business. Further, RTW takes a fair amount of investment upfront for each new season and can therefore be a new source of risk if not managed carefully.
jb - I entirely agree. Whilst I am supportive in principle of the bespoke houses' attempts to diversify, I also worry that they are going about it in the wrong way. The risks you identify are real and immediate.

In a perfect world I would probably prefer them to focus on their core business and perhaps expand by acquiring their supply chain (the mills and cloth producers) rather than trying to take ground from Ralph Lauren and Hugo Boss. The trouble is that the supply chain is itself struggling for survival and going in that direction would probably just mean acquiring another tier of ailing companies. Also, while you gain the benefit of being able to control your inputs, you don't actually gain more customers for your end product. Not much sense in that.

Alternatively, they could have gone into very high end RTW and competed with the likes of Brioni, Ermenegildo Zegna and Loro Piana. I suspect however that these companies have a very similar customer base so it would be very difficult to grow the business significantly - they would be trying to increase market share in what is already quite a small pool.

Being realistic, therefore, I feel confident that G&H and Kilgour would have analysed the market and, whatever your view about their direction now, they have gone about things wholeheartedly and professionally. They evidently do spend big on marketing (check out any issue of GQ) and they have also diversified their RTW labels (G&H has the "Gieves" label and Kilgour now has a separate RTW line housed in the newer of its SR preminses). There are differences of course - G&H has opened a string of stores across the UK whereas Kilgour is still exclusively based in SR and seems to be aiming at a slightly higher end and fashion forward customer. But both have appointed creative directors with responsibility for the RTW lines.

So, whilst I don't necessarily like what they're doing, they have gone about it with a recognisably sophisticated level of business sense and planning. That in itself is reassuring for those of us intending to continue to buy and maintain bespoke garments from these great names.
Swark
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Sun Jul 27, 2008 2:14 am

pvpatty wrote:NJS, you really don't like these economists, do you?
And he is quite right not to, as they say economists know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Costi
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Sun Jul 27, 2008 6:24 am

They must be right: I, for one, am incapable of seeing much value in the above "pensee", but I could swear it is a twopence one...
pvpatty
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Sun Jul 27, 2008 9:04 am

Swark wrote:
pvpatty wrote:NJS, you really don't like these economists, do you?
And he is quite right not to, as they say economists know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
I am reminded of a quote from Lord Keynes:

"The day is not far off when the economic problem will take the back seat where it belongs, and the arena of the heart and the head will be occupied or reoccupied, by our real problems — the problems of life and of human relations, of creation and behaviour and religion."

In reference to economists' predictions, he also famously said:

"The long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead. "
storeynicholas

Sun Jul 27, 2008 11:51 am

No I don't like economists - Gordon isn't the only moron. That's right we don't live here forever - although many people (especially spotty economists and some scientists - cold fish) seem to proceed on the premise that we do - and invite us in the (hopeless) struggle to beat death - with their orders to give up smoking do this - don't do that - bore yourself rigid and deny yourself everything to extend life in this world out for as long as possible - go for longest run, for the oldest tiredest legs and when they have given out - why not have wheelchair races (both motorised and hand-propelled)....Just remember that this world's prize is the same for all regardless - a box in a hole or a fire.
NJS
sartorius
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Sun Jul 27, 2008 8:58 pm

Let's not be unduly harsh. Not all economists are spotty. :lol:
Costi
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Sun Jul 27, 2008 9:28 pm

NJS, I may agree with what you wrote above and I believe nothing is more true than pvpatty's quote from Keynes, but to put ALL economists in a box (hopefully not the one you mention at the end of your post) and stamp them "spotty" seems to me a bit of a commonplace. Economics started out (and is still considered) as a social science. There have been many and various currents and schools of thinking and perhaps the present day tendencies are not the most "social" of all, but to discard the science itself and its representatives in corpore is... a bit harsh, as sartorius notes. I know many people who say they "don't like lawyers" (in which cathegory they usually include all graduates of a law school), but then they never met the right ones :wink:
storeynicholas

Sun Jul 27, 2008 11:34 pm

Of course, I don't disparage all economists - just the spotty ones. And the spotty ones are those with the hare-brained schemes to: demolish England's towns and reconstruct them with match-board housing and shopping malls (with a life expectancy of the mortgages necessary to buy them) - and to give access to them with swathes of tarmac across the countryside; as well as all those who advocate the lowering of anything (that they can get their abacuses around) to the lowest common denominator. I am as unrepentant as I am opinionated. I don't expect all (or even any) to agree with my views on this, expressed as they are - but, as far as I am concerned - to the guillotine with all chrematistically-minded morons like Gordon. 'Gordon is a Moron' is the title of an excellent recent book about - well - Gordon the Moron. Look at the state of the British economy - in obvious crisis - no industry left - name me a mass-produced British car - look at the property developments - matchwood and shoddy brick construction - plasterboard inside 'walls', plasterboard ceilings, under kiln-dried matchwood. Moreover, the GB£ has lost 25% of its value against the Brazilian Real in 6 months; whereas the Euro is doing quite well. Maybe, then, I should revise my view and specify for condemnation spotty British economists - and watch out SR if you're following their lead!!! And if there are any economists among members (spotty or otherwise) let's talk about the state of the British pensions' industry; the NHS or - yes, why not - New Labour's election mantra of 'Education, Education, Education!' - I'll give give you a clue as to my standpoint on the last - the British education system seems to be excelling, at the moment, in the methodology of how to stab or thump and kick a stranger to death with impunity - because they push-in at a supermarket queue or cut you up in their car - or do these things just happpen in Rio? Are the newspapers (which I read on-line) so out of touch that the journalists now resort to gothic phantasy? As for pensions - thank you, very much economists (actually, more specifically, the predator businessmen and their hangers-on from the 1980s and 1990s - willing actuaries and city firms of solicitors - nicely conspiring together - falling over each other - to rip out surpluses of assets over liabilities in company pension schemes and restore overpaid employers' contributions - and now we conceive the result. The NHS deserves a post to itself.
NJS
Last edited by storeynicholas on Mon Jul 28, 2008 3:02 am, edited 1 time in total.
Swark
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Mon Jul 28, 2008 1:24 am

storeynicholas wrote:That's right we don't live here forever - although many people (especially spotty economists and some scientists - cold fish) seem to proceed on the premise that we do - and invite us in the (hopeless) struggle to beat death - with their orders to give up smoking do this - don't do that - bore yourself rigid and deny yourself everything to extend life in this world out for as long as possible - go for longest run, for the oldest tiredest legs and when they have given out - why not have wheelchair races (both motorised and hand-propelled)....Just remember that this world's prize is the same for all regardless - a box in a hole or a fire.
NJS
Again as they say it's not a dress rehearsal it's life.

As for the state of Britain i will always blame 80's materialism and that Thatcher woman. I must admit I formed my view on politics and social structures and so on from discussions with my father who grew up in a working class area of Glasgow so i may be biased.
storeynicholas

Mon Jul 28, 2008 2:20 am

Swark - I should point out that I amended my last post as you were replying. I believe that 'modern Britain' began after the 1st WW. Good thing or bad thing; it did. It is true that, as a result of accruals of territory, resulting from it, the British Empire reached its peak (territorially) in the 1920s - but nevertheless, the writing was on the wall. After that, we had WWII, which just about finished the job of writing off the 'old order' (good or bad). I should, at this point, declare that I am am, largely, of yeoman and peasant stock - so, like the little Forsyte that I probably am, I have no axe to grind, either way. The Suez crisis in 1956 not only finished the career of Anthony Eden, it also marked the very point at which Britain's lone voice in world affairs was silenced (before it was obviously seen to be what it had become, after the depredations of 2 world wars - the rather sad poodle of the USA - and continuing). Then we had Mac The Knife (how many of his family were in his cabinet again?) - then the Profumo affair and Alec Douglas Home (who said something like "in 12 months I have done absolutely nothing"). After that, we had good old Harold Wilson (reponsible for the beginning of the 'brain drain' with his monumentally short-sighted, absurd and unfair 'supertax' - my maternal grandfather invested £1000s in war bonds which were, subsequently, quite straight-forwardly and summarily dishonoured (sixpence paid in the pound or something) - but that grandfather also died in 1963 which meant that most of his remaining estate was further purloined, by way of good old 'arold's 'supertax'. We had a bit more of him and then Bingo Heath - who took us into a European Common Market that didn't want us - even vetoed our membership once - and after that, you probably remember yourself - bland old Callaghan for a while and then: Thatcher: "Thatcher, Thatcher: Milk Snatcher" ("There's no such thing as society" - and now there really isn't). Help yourself to the goods on display because my old Dad only has a limited stock - and if your neighbour is too late and goes short just shout right over the fence ("why don't you?" - in that ghastly voice) "I'm all right, Jack!!" The 'Falklands' War (thank you for your help, Uncle Sam - but we'll still keep our nose in the crack!) Then the ERM, the sliding pound - just as John Major (KG) was sliding around with Mrs Curried Eggs, instead of keeping his eye on the ball that he was elected and paid to keep an eye on and then, after all that, Tony Bliar and now Gordon the Moron.

Small wonder that Britain is buggered - and there are - now even C of E Bishops getting onto that buggery-band-wagon - imagine that in Judaism, Islam or the Baptists? I think not. But I am not entirely with you on the "poor old British labourer" either - priced themselves out of the world market - thanks to men like Arthur Scargill (in his Jaguar motor car - "Thank you lads!!"). The Cornish China clay industry is in melt-down even now - fine clay still to be had - but - hey - why pay a British worker £20,000 pa when you can get nearly as good stuff in Brazil and pay them £2,500 pa? - shipping costs (all over the world are the same) - so sod it!! I am a Disraelian/FE Smith Tory. I think that the British labouring class has been its own worst enemy but I also disown Thatcherism. I believe, in the words of FE Smith, that "the world does still have its gilttering prizes for those with stout hearts and sharp swords" - but the hearts should be big enough to embrace failings in others and the swords should never be brought to bear on those who need shields. However, overall, I think that economists and certain other kinds of social scientists and agitators are the death knell for many a society - not to mention the licensing of the creation of the Chimaera - but that's altogether something else "666?" - step right this way, sir..... and let's all worship the Golden Calf of Yore
NJS.
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