How Tailors Can Protect Their Business Reputation & ROI During Covid-19 Pandemic

 

In the bustling city of Bangalore, India, a girl loved tailoring more than anything. Needles and silk stitched her childhood. She grew up to work for various tailoring companies and garment industries.

She has around two decades of experience. She started as a helper, then got promoted to a seamstress. Today, she is a quality analyst at a leading garment industry in Bangalore. 

She is 41 years old. And her monthly wage is just Rs.8000 ($109).

 She also has a family that depends on her little income.  

Remember, this was the case of most of the garment workers and other local tailoring stores before COVID-19 wrecked our world into shreds. 

Reports claim that in the month of May, the apparel sector has suffered a steep dip of 84% in sales. This is due to reduced orders, absence of workforce owing to security concerns, and shutting down of traditional tailoring stores.  

Bloomberg claims 1,089 garment factories in Bangladesh have experienced a huge cancellation of orders, worth around $1.5 billion due to the virus outbreak. Most of the workers were laid off, and some were paid less than a month’s salary. And they all had a family to feed and take care of. 

Questions That Knock Fashion and Garments Industry

1. If the global revenue in the fashion industry amounts to $578,392 million, and even in such an unprecedented time when people crave new fashion, how exactly can the tailoring industry seize the moment? 
2. How can the apparel industry and its workers leapfrog from the survival scare to prosperity?
3. When the majority of the global workforce is getting laid off, can garment workers/tailors double their income by working from home? 
4. Can the Bangalore-based woman exponentiate her wage from Rs.8000 to Rs.80,000, and afford food and education to her children?

As daunting questions continue to mount, the answer, however, remains the same. 

Yes. It’s possible.  

Bespoke Online Tailoring Store - A Solution For Tailors To Overcome Financial Uncertainty During a Pandemic

As simple as it sounds, tailoring brands can operate their business by setting up their exclusive online tailoring store. It helps them retain their existing clients and acquire new customers as well. From all around the world. 

So, here’s how the entire business flow works. 

1. Customers design their outfits and place orders online.  
2. Orders are received online. 
3. Tailors work on orders from home. 
4. Completed garments are sent to the delivery service. 
5. Delivery service ships the garments. 
6. The garments reach the customer’s doorsteps. 

Beautiful. There’s no physical transmit (or) interaction involved. A secure mode of operating a tailoring business with enlarged profit.  

However, this raises some major questions.

• Customers purchase online. What if the attire doesn’t fit? 

A valid concern that’s efficiently taken care of by tools such as online measurement charts and 3D visualization tools. 

While the chart has all the appropriate measurements of all age groups, the visualization tool helps users to view their end-product in three-dimension. 

• Does it mean I can just put up my clothing collections online? 

To display our ready-made stock online and garner buyers is very much possible. But, pretty old-school in the 21st century. 

What helps tailoring companies stand apart from the mainstream crowd is the choice they offer to their customers to “personalize their attire”. 

Imagine one of your customers who has longed for a creative never-seen-before suit. And he wishes to rock his wedding by looking cool and unique, but unfortunately not any of the local stores could help him with his dream attire. 

Then, one fine day, he stumbles across your online tailoring store, where he gets to select the fabric, change color, add custom designs, and completely personalize the suit, catering to his desires. 

With online custom tailoring stores, customers get more options and more freedom. So, they wouldn’t mind paying extra for a better and greater experience. 

Other Major Perks

1. Reduced Cost of Maintenance-  By transforming retail stores into online tailoring stores, maintenance cost is highly reduced.
    
2. Improve Work Performance- With the help of an in-built content management system (CMS), tailoring entrepreneurs can monitor, analyze, and improve their work performance.
    
3. Improved customer engagement- Customers can be well-informed about the festive offers and other deals set by the tailoring store in quick notification messages, without them traveling all the way to the store.
    
4. Marketing Campaigns Can Bring More Results- Effective marketing campaigns can be executed across worldwide customers. This is practically impossible with a retail outlet. 
    
5. Stable Revenue Generation During Disasters- The biggest advantage of the Online tailoring business is unaffected by external disorders like a pandemic. It’s known for its no-touch order delivery system. 

Benefitted Audience

Tailoring Companies

Tailoring companies can go online and link apparel manufacturers too for clothing materials. It paves way for both B2C (Business to Consumer) and B2B (Business to Business) business opportunities. 

Retail Tailoring Stores

Tailors can set up an online store for their brands and go global with a reduced workforce. It helps them retain and acquire a new customer base. The operation will not be halted at any cost. 

Fashion Designers

Fashionistas with quality education on fashion design and technology can leverage the potential of such online platforms. The online tailoring store helps them showcase their millennial innovation to a wider global customer-base. 

Seamstress

Tailors who prefer self-employment can commence their online tailoring business. Confinement to norms and regulation constraints are eliminated with entrepreneurship. No more victimization of verbal abuse and harassment at the workplace. 

Closing Thoughts

On 19th March, 20 apparel factories in Myanmar had shuttered with 10,000 workers laid off. The state’s garment association has claimed that if the pandemic persists, the figure may scale to 500 factories and lakhs of workers walking away with nothing. 

With such simple and efficient methods of business, tailors and tailoring stores are empowered with security, idea, and innovation. Digital marketing is the brand-new immortal marketing, and digitization of business helps us improve our sales numbers with a variety of tools. 

Even when the sky falls and the roads crack open, there’s always a way out to serve our society with innovation. 

As the famous Dr.Seuss said,

 “Why fit in when you were born to stand out?”

Fit4bond

In its 10 years of industry experience, Fit4bond has helped thousands of retail tailoring stores in setting up digitized online tailoring stores and upgrading their business. The variety of customization software it offers, from shirt/saree customization software to hoodie customization software, serves a global audience irrespective of their region.