Ibi Cookey When we set out to fix the custom tailoring value chain, we did so understanding that fashion for events was at the heart of the challenge now we have finally simplified event fashion – hooray!
The stress individuals faced in getting quality outfits made on time was one of the major reasons customers patronized us. As our customers are typically young, pretty hip aspirational guys, they are likely to have weddings for friends and family as well as milestone celebrations. Not all events required new outfits for our customers, but for those that did get new ones, ensuring the right fabric gets crafted by the right tailor is essential.
The better we got at solving our individual customer’s problems – whether we used their fabric or sold ourselves – the more they began to ask more of us. Soon, these events became our events – weddings became our customers’ weddings, and they began to ask us if we could help them just coordinate outfits for their entire events. https://blog.fitted.ng/ordering-experience-made-easy-tailor/
Anyone who’s ever had an event where custom outfits are part of the plan knows the exact pain we’re talking about. It’s a month to the event (wedding? party? church program? movie filming date?) and you have to coordinate anything up to 100 different people across different cities or even countries to get matching outfits made. This can be an absolute nightmare.
What’s worse, attendees of the same event might want to use different tailors to handle their outfits. Then for measurements, it’s another ball game altogether – somehow we’re supposed to coordinate which measurement needs to go to which tailor all while juggling the rest of our lives.
What did we do?
We did some research to see how many of our customers would like to see us do this. The results were staggeringly supportive. A good subset of our customers seemed to share the same complaints whenever coordinating group fashion was concerned. This could affect them as an event attendee, or the event organizer. We were surprised to find repeating stories with every event, be it milestone birthdays, parties, church programs (like ushers), movie & music shoots, weddings, you name it. Everyone sounded the same, here’s some of what they listed:
- Measurements: it was a pain to coordinate tens, hundreds, sometimes thousands of different people across different places or even countries as deadlines needed to be met
- Communication: Even with receiving the measurements, communicating these to tailors and fashion designers was difficult
- Style & management of fabric: was also an issue – especially when people were using multiple tailors. How do you track what everyone is getting made? How about visual standardization? And then what about the quality?
- Monitoring to avoid disasters: no good thing ever came from increasing unresponsiveness from your tailor as your event big day approaches.
Our action plan
We then set out to build a platform to let you organize tailoring for any number of people for an event of your choice. And we went even further to ensure we solved the challenge of your tailors. Now introducing groups and tailors
Groups
On our Groups platform, we’ve provided one place to track and coordinate everybody’s orders for fashion for an event – whether 2 people or 20,000. We’ve started off with the measurements side of our product while we handle event orders requests offline, but are building out the full order capability to work with any tailor. Like what we’re building? Encourage us by giving us a like and a shoutout on any of our socials! Follow us on instagram and twitter!
We’ve already processed hundreds of orders for customers within just a few weeks of launching. Just from people using the platform to send measurements to tailors, we’ve seen an 800% growth in user sign ups. We’re finding people are using the features to solve real problems.
Here’s some of the things you can do with Groups, and what’s coming soon!
- Create accurate measurements: for yourself either by manually inputting these measurements or answering 6 questions. We’ll give you 18 measurements back (Autosize)
- Manage measurements for groups of people: by creating a group and inviting people to join your group. Each one of them can either input their measurements manually or using our Autosize.
- Create any event: what type of event are these outfits for? Choose from birthdays to weddings, corporate events, funerals etc.
- Save measurements: on your page and access them anytime and anywhere you are without stress.
- Send measurements: to any tailor, anywhere they are around the world for them to sew your outfits or send to vetted tailors on our platform to get custom made, exquisite outfits
- Upload and send body pictures: while sending your body measurements to tailors to enable them to confirm your body measurements visually.
- Manage and coordinate outfit orders: for yourself or your group for upcoming events by placing outfit orders directly from your page.
We didn’t stop at just giving outfit buyer customers this functionality, we simplified event fashion. We pushed it further and created Nigeria’s first, customized order management platform to tailors for FREE. We created a parallel side of the platform for tailors to be able to receive all your event outfits in one place. We went as far as giving the app offline capability, just to match tailors at whatever their habits are with respect to the internet. And the uptake has been overwhelmingly positive!
Tailors
On our Tailors platform, tailors can finally have a trackable, online and offline method of receiving measurements that can’t get lost or misinterpreted:
- Get body measurements from customers anytime, any day and anywhere they are around the world
- Access customers body measurements online or offline anytime, anywhere and any day.
- Download and save customers body measurements online or offline anytime, anywhere and any day.
- Favorite customers body measurements for easier access to the measurements.
- Request edit permission from customers who sent their body measurements to you in case there are any changes to be made.
- View uploaded images of customers’ bodies who sent you their body measurements to visually confirm and verify their body sizes.
- Get customer support if you’ve got any questions or challenges for better clarity.
While we are rolling out these products, there are some features which we are still in the Beta testing mode and would be released and updated for each product for better customer experience. These features include:
- Creating orders: You can’t create orders for yourself or your group via our group platform right now. If you’d like us to fulfill your group order, simply hit us up on any of our channels, preferably whatsapp! Note that you can place individual orders from our vetted tailors via our store www.store.fitted.ng.
Order status tracking: Because you can’t order directly from your own tailors yet, you also can’t track your outfit orders online via a dashboard. If you order from our vetted tailors on store.fitted.ng you can get this service though! We send you email order status updates every step of the way, though you can’t track this from a dashboard just yet. You can also give feedback to us easily once your order is delivered.
Turbo charge your events today with our groups platform for any measurement need. Are you a tailor or do you know one? Sign up as a tailor here.
