Twice during this interview they say that "expanding into Made-to-Measure requires a tremendous amount of capital". That's nonsense.bond_and_beyond wrote: Die,workwear! has an interview with him
I´ve known tailors that only do MTM (no cutting of personal patterns, reduced hand work) and their operation, in terms of investment, is basically the same of a bespoke tailor. if anything, the MTM allows them to churn more garments within a given period and to have more frequent (maybe smaller) payments.
If a bespoke tailor wants to scale his business, and he has the clients for it but not the time, he doesn't need to go the MTM route. He can just cut the patterns himself and give them to other artisans to put them together by hand. This is still bespoke and that is what Mahon did with the Indian tailors trained by him. There is some need for some additional work capital under this model, but nothing tremendous.
Of course, expanding into RTW or creating a brand while opening other branches abroad, is another completely different story altogether.