2024 Version
Your Guide to Private Label Custom Suit Manufacturers
Key Factors in Choosing the Right Custom Suit Supplier
In this in-depth article you'll learn about:
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1. Key words to navigate the Wholesale Custom-made and Private-Label Suit Industry
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2. 15 must-have services your Private Label Custom Suit Manufacturer and Supplier should be providing you.
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3. Where the future of Wholesale Custom Suits is heading…
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If you are ready for a Custom-Made crash course, then strap in and get ready to learn about the best Menswear Private Label and Custom-made services - Worldwide!
Let’s jump right in!
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Introduction
Key Words To Know
Intro Continued
Similarities & Differences
#1 WHOLESALE CUSTOM-MADE
Clothing sold to businesses that allow some degree of customisation (we use “degree” here very loosely). Fabrics, fit and designs are usually all selectable, but the ranges between competitors worldwide has a huge variance on what they offer.
#2 WHOLESALE MADE-TO-MEASURE
The same as #1, except Made-to-Measure is how European Menswear stores would classify “Custom-Made”. Also, in many cases, Made-to-Measure services tend to offer you more power over the selections outlined in #1. Although, even with some Made-to-Measure companies, store owners only get a choice of a few Jacket styling designs and fabric books don’t tend to be hugely diverse when it comes to showcasing a pretty strong collection.
#3 WHOLESALE TAILOR MADE
Basically the exact same thing as #1, except usually references services that are extremely old-school (think paper order submissions and 6 week deliveries)
#4 MADE TO MEASURE MANUFACTURER
A factory, who on some level, offers a range of everything from #2 (and again, the standard of what factories offer here can get pretty wide in variance)
#5 MTM (CUSTOM SUIT) MANUFACTURER
A reworded version of #4.
What can we say, it’s a popular search.
#6 PRIVATE LABEL (CUSTOM SUIT) MANUFACTURERS
A tricky customer, but one of our favourites. Although the terms used for this business description are completely different from the above list, they, uh, well they pretty much mean the same thing. Shock. Any company or factory who describes themselves as a Private Label Manufacturer are basically advertising even greater ambiguity when it comes to defining what products and services they offer.
So you’ve got this far and you are obviously banging your head off the wall.
Did I just pretty much explain 6 versions of the same thing?
Well, yes.
But also, no.
What do:
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Custom-Made,
Made-to-Measure,
Tailor-Made and
Private Label
have in common?
The answer…a ridiculous amount.
Similarities with Custom-Made Menswear
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They are all Business-to-Business (B2B) Models (i.e. they supply businesses, not customers)
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Garments are all delivered on-demand, only when the customer places an order with you, the store owner.
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There is a certain ‘degree’ of fabric selection.
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There is a certain ‘degree’ of style selection.
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There is a certain ‘degree’ of fitting control.
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Orders are paid for up-front.
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You have the power to add your Menswear Store brand logo to your garments (white-label, or “Private Label”).
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Orders are delivered to your Menswear store in about 42-56 days (6-8 weeks).
Differences with Custom-Made Menswear
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Emm..Uh..The main…Yeah I got nothing, sorry.
They pretty much all achieve the same range of activities, albeit to a huge variance of quality standards. Because of the nature of the Custom-Made industry, no one has seen to enforce a Globalised accreditation, or any regulatory standards.
Perhaps this table below makes it a bit more obvious.
* Scores given are qualitative and based on speaking to customers of firms in these industries.
We queried their service level experience, product quality and overall satisfaction with their suppliers, in each respective vertical.
** Days were obtained both from companies' direct website, speaking to their customers, and also directly contacting the companies themselves and asking them.
WHOLESALE CUSTOM-MADE SUIT PRICING
* 2-Piece suit was used for research perspective to narrow the focus and create a clear comparative landscape
** Suit refers to a Vitale Barberis Canonico S110 (VBC S110) as this is a frequently chosen Italian cloth for the creation of Custom-Made and Made-to-Measure Suits Worldwide, but by no means is a comprehensive indicator for pricing.
Summary so far
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Ok, ok, ok…
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So I reckon at this point you've got a pretty clear idea of the various terms used by our industry to describe the same thing…
…and you now have a very clear idea of the various activities involved in each vertical, broken down by their various products and respective service offerings, and cross compared with other companies who offer the exact (very close) same product and service.
But like every industry in 2023, the Wholesale Custom Made Menswear one is going through some really noticeable changes, and fast too.
So if you are interested to find out what these changes are, and also, the latest standards that you should be getting from Custom-Made suppliers, well keep on reading…
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FABRICS
COST
​ORDER TRACKING
​ANALYTICS PLATFORM
​DROPSHIPPING FULFILMENT
FITS
DELIVERY
​PAYMENT INTEGRATION
​SOCIAL MEDIA HUB
​INFLUENCER MATCHING
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STYLES
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STORE
SETUP
INVOICE
EXPORTING
eCOMMERCE
SETUP
SEO OPTIMISATION
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The basis for all true custom-made systems.
The key concept of custom-made is in the name - Custom.
This means the garment is built-to-order, for the customer, but not always by the customer.
In any case, a genuine custom-made service should be supporting a full, physical, fabric selection option.
All your fabric books must come complete with your own brand name labelled beautifully and clearly on the books.
I would even go as far as to say you should be able to choose from a range of fabric swatch book colours, to ensure the colour scheme aligns nicely with your branding.
Swatch books should contain fabrics that are deep and wide in range.
For Suiting, you can think of extremely cost-efficient Poly/Wool blends (as not every custom-made brand is ultra-high-end), to your international merino wool imports, there should be selections in books that cover a range of customer use-cases.
This also extends to blends and weights too.
From Miami to Oslo, climates and wear use-case will vary. So too might the customer’s preference for weights. Being able to offer a VBC Flannel and a lightweight Australian Merino wool are both critical offerings, even if it is for the same customer.
And like all good supplier systems, what you can do in one product category, you should be able to achieve in other categories too, so make sure your custom-made supplier is able to support you for a wide variety of user-journey cases, not just your standard 270gsm Merino Wool Suit.
Simple. Straight forward. Foolproof.
Nothing less than this is acceptable.
Taking manual measurements is all well and good, but how do you showcase to the customer what the fit of the custom garment will be like?
And you can teach 10 chaps from 10 countries all the same technique to take manual measurements, but how do you control for these fine chaps measuring in 10 different ways.
In Custom-Made Clothing, 2cm here and 3cm there makes a material difference (no pun intended)
Until 3D Scanning + Augmented Reality becomes mainstream and applicable, your Custom-made partner needs to be sorting you with a simple fitting process that works - every time.
One where your brand new sales assistant can manage to pick it up after 2-3 test orders.
Anything less than this is too much trouble and will cause errors.
If the fitting process was designed properly, and the tools (garments) developed for the fitting process were designed in a smart and intuitive manner, then the whole fitting process should take no longer than 20 minutes, tops.
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So, if you have a Supplier, or are in-talks with Suppliers, who are vague on how you execute fits in your store, can’t walk you through the process step-by-step, can’t demonstrate transparency with the end product pattern through a ‘fitting room’ type of software application, where you can verify the tailoring you performed in the beginning matches exactly what your supplier made for you, then I’d be weary.
You will have trouble down the line.
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In 2023, fashion changes on a daily basis. Literally!
Not too sure how fast-fashion retailers are going to keep pace, but this should be the least of your problems.
Your custom-made system MUST contain the ability to execute from 100s of Menswear designs.
Why?
Because your customer is giving you business in return for you to build them something special.
If you don’t have the ability to create something special, everytime, for every single customer, what's the difference between you and SuitSupply?
Hold on…do I mean overwhelm the customer with 666 fabric and design options?
Not at all! Quite the opposite.
What I’m envisioning is the future of Menswear retailing, where your sales staff have access to superhuman powers to wow your customers.
In plain English - by using their Menswear and Instagram-surfing abilities, they get out ahead of the customer and help him design his own garment from scratch.
Instead of putting all the pressure on the customer, sales staff are navy-seal trained to find out what his needs and preferences are, translating these responses into design style selections, from a selection of 100s of garment style designs.
Your sales staff have already created their own pre-saved lists of favourite designs, so pulling up a team member's favourite looks won’t be an issue.
Quick execution, yet powerful emotive responses from your customers.
Bonus tip: Screen Share your Custom-Made supplier’s software to a large flatscreen to showcase, to the soon-to-be-married couple, what his Wedding outfit will look like.
Different designs, everytime, at the click of a finger.
Imagine the experience your customers will receive when you have a custom-made supplier like this.
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High quality production, natural-made fabrics, and 100s of designs are all well and good.
But this makes no sense if you need to charge your customers an arm and a leg for the product.
Custom-Made, unfortunately, comes with a nasty (bad kind) cost implication…
But have you ever stopped to think why?
Well, here are my three cents…
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Inefficient supply chain processes
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Inability to deliver mass volume, on a per order basis
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5% vs 95% customer demand (MTM vs. RTW)
#3 is actually caused because of #1 and #2.
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#1 | Inefficient Supply Chain Processes
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First, lets make a distinction in naming conventions:
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The Manufacturer
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The Supplier/Provider
Sometimes, like in the case of Red Collar (Kutesmart/Cotte Yolan/Lapel Pin - whatever their latest brand name change is) they are both the manufacturer and the supplier.
However, in most other cases, the supplier/provider contracts a manufacturer to team up with, and through this partnership, the supplier/provider then goes around the World to win as much Store Owner business as they can.
They handle all the frontend related items - like digital marketing, offline events, customer orders,, complaints, and in some cases, the software too (usually though, software is seen as black magic to supplier/providers)
The backend processes are left to the manufacturer to take care of. You can think of cutting, trimming, assembly, pressing, stitching, quality control, and shipment.
In my experience, top end manufacturers are actually pretty streamlined. I mean, they have to be right, to produce custom-made orders at the volume they do.
The problem lies with the frontend office. It’s these guys - the supplier/providers - who tend to be broken, from a supply chain perspective.
They are conventional in thinking, slow to react to market changes, unwilling to adopt new technology, lacking in software understanding, and generally unwelcome to any modifications at all, to how custom-made, or made-to-measure, is normally executed and delivered to their end customer.
Because of this, they end up employing 10s and in some cases, 100s, of human team members to fulfil the complex roles involved in delivering complex custom-made orders at scale, which brings me to #2…
#2 | Custom made Made-to-Measure orders are bloody complex.
They contain tons of moving parts, are different every time, and offer a tiny error of margin.
All prime reasons why custom-made has never really “taken” over, as industry experts enjoy titling articles as.
Because of the complexity surrounding single orders, it is immensely challenging to piece together workflows to lower this complexity.
Mentioned above, a handful of manufacturers have been able to achieve this on a production level, but I have yet to see any provider achieve this on a fully end-to-end level, even Red Collar!
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Why is this important?
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#3 | 5% vs 95% customer demand
(MTM vs. RTW)
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Step #1: Well, with scale, comes lower unit economics.
Step #2: With lower unit economics, the supply-chain can deliver reduced pricing for retailers. (If the manufacturers don’t harvest, which they do)
Step #3: Better pricing for retailers means better pricing for customers (if the retailers don’t harvest)
Step #4: Better pricing for customers means customers buy more (in a price elastic market)
Step #5: More customers buying custom-made increases retailer and manufacturers' gross revenue
Step #6: With more gross revenue, both parties can invest to make the system even more streamlined and cost effective.
Step #7: Better pricing & smoother ops, attracts more retailers to custom-made.
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Step #8: Improved products, enjoyable store experiences, competitive pricing, causes bigger increases in local consumption.
Step #9: The loop repeats, until a considerable market volume magnitude is built up.
Finally, our industry expert friends can publish their articles and actually live to see their “Future of Menswear” prophecy come true. Hooray!
However, this time they may be right.
So the next time you decide to onboard a new Custom-Made supplier, make sure you get the best pricing you can, because now, more than ever, it is possible to deliver high quality custom-made, at scale, with some truly powerful software systems.
Please please please do not sign with a supplier who tells you 6-8 weeks is the normal delivery standard.
It. Is. Not.
This is 2023, so if your custom-made Menswear supplier thinks that 42 - 56 days to deliver an order to you is ‘standard’, they need their head examined.
Then you have the ‘4 weeks’ supplier, who thinks they are all innovative and impressive.
Be weary of these guys, it says something that they think being 2 weeks faster than the group above is something to celebrate.
If you are not getting your garments in 12-16 days flat, you're already falling behind in the Worldwide standard for custom-made Menswear.
Ask your supplier can they speed up or, eh, find a new supplier…
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First of all, there should be one.
For some of you, this may seem obvious.
Sadly, a large majority of custom-made Suppliers tell you they have a ‘platform’ (air quotes are used because the concept of a platform varies supplier to supplier. Having a broken website with 404 HTML pages is not a platform) but they offer nothing in the way of fabric swatch books, buttons, linings, zippers, catalogues (physical or digital), point of sale material and any other assets that might go a long way to help with your presentation
Then you have the likes of Munro from Amsterdam, who send you a White table which resembles a spaceship from the Hitchhikers Galaxy.
If you have a huge store to place this 700cm x 250cm x 100cm tomb in, then yeah, maybe you’ll get a kick out of this (but probably not their system price tag).
But for all of us semi-normal business owners, you need to be looking for a supplier who actually puts themselves in your shoes, with your modest store size in mind.
Branded swatch books with containers for them, visual marketing that can make the setup look attractive, master models that are artistically finished and labelled simply, and an ordering system presentable on a new iPad tablet that actually attracts the guy to kick off his design journey.
Not some huge book binder of cardboard Suiting styles.
Aside from the fact that the supplier has no way whatsoever to push over-the-air updates of new styles (because they delivered you a cardboard binder), how engaging is flicking through a binder the size of your head with your customer beside you?
Summary: you're selling something unique to the customer, so the setup has to look slick and attractive.
A 100% online platform isn’t gonna cut it, neither will a spaceship.
Look for a supplier who has thought about the customer journey from your perspective, and taken steps to help you improve the store-experience.
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In fairness to most of the well-known custom-made suppliers, they do offer some form of order tracking.
It does range in variance of accuracy though, with some vendors just giving you an estimated store arrival date, and others actually showing you updates along the supply chain.
Order tracking is pretty critical, especially if the custom-made part of your Menswear business represents a dominant revenue stream.
You may need to check an order status at any moment and it may need to tell you more than just an estimated arrival date.
Being able to comfort the customer that the Suit will arrive before his big wedding day, without having to make 666 phone calls to your supplier, is the difference between running a small-scale custom-made business, or powering up and being the #1 Menswear location in your region.
In Mr Bezos’ World, this also may seem like a pretty straight forward included feature for a supplier of custom-made Menswear to offer you.
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It’s not.
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But I think this is more to do with the Wholesale B2B industry as a whole, more so than any single supplier.
As much as we love a good Wall Street Hollywood thriller, we are not Gordon Gekko.
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Wiring money around the world is not really the point of our Menswear business.
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So having a feature which allows you to effortlessly pay for all orders inside your custom-made system is an absolute mandatory requirement.
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Anything less than this causes unnecessary obstacles and loss of your time, time which you should be spending on growing the business…
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Not as a Zurich banker…
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Ridiculously simple, but pretty vital.
Especially if you are into automation (like me).
Custom-made suppliers tend to stay away from the Retailer side of the supply chain, and so a large portion of suppliers are really out of touch with what operations look like from a day-to-day Retail perspective.
Invoicing customers is a pretty daily occurrence, and for those customers who are taking advantage of your custom-made Menswear system, you are going to need to invoice them too, right?
So any supplier that is making you print out a receipt from a separate system, one which will need all the product fabric and pricing inputs involving the Custom-made order, is making you run an extra mile when you really don’t need to.
Exporting invoices, live, from within your Custom-made system. Standard.
Make sure you get it from your supplier.
It’s a time-game-changer.
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Yeah, so now we are stepping outside the ‘standard’ offerings.
Usually left to the confines of Salesforce, Tableau and Microsoft BI, custom-made Menswear suppliers stay well clear of anything related to analytics.
But this has always confused me.
At the end of the day, a solid supplier should have your best interests at heart, right?
So this means they should be thinking 24/7 about how to build products/services/solutions that can help your business grow or operate smoother.
From a small business owner perspective, it’s pretty difficult to be able to justify the monthly subscription costs to one of these above software platforms.
Don’t get me wrong, Tableau is some nasty piece of software.
But this is not always the defining attribute for small- business owners.
I never understood why suppliers missed this.
It’s really not such a big undertaking to build out a suite of analytic solutions for their respective Menswear business owner customers, in order to allow for a deeper dive into the types of customers they have and the performance of some of their products.
I’m not saying take on Tableau. Come on. Let's be real.
But a suite of 10-15 analytic features for the small business owner - hell yeah, sign me up for that.
P.S. Must be free!!
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Kind of building on the analytical point, you’d wanna be living under a rock to not know how vital social media is for any business in 2023, never mind a Menswear fashion business.
#Instagram #TikTok #InstaHunni
So what do current Made-to-Measure, Custom-Made suppliers offer their Store retailer customers?
Well, after all my research and investigation of suppliers in the space, the results are…
Nothing.
The best I could find was from Munro (supplier/provider) and Red Collar (manufacturer) who supply high resolution graphics from their recent seasonal collection.
But that's it.
2 times a year (circa. Red collar), you will get, as a store owner, about 30 images to use for your social media.
Better make that last guys…lol
The future of Made-to-Measure suppliers has to be one where the supplier and the store owner are more integrated.
The success of the platform/factory/supplier, depends on the sales of their retail store owners, and in an ultra-digital world, that means high res, properly styled Menswear graphics, that retailers get supplemented on a monthly basis, for their social channels.
Bonus: Videos
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Whoa. eCommerce. Leave that to SquareSpace or Wix.
Eh, no, why?
If custom-made Menswear suppliers are able to offer an offline system, why then can they not offer an online one too?
If you have a customer visiting in New York, but then flying back home to Chicago or Seattle, why can’t he visit your website and execute similar steps as to those he performed when in store in New York?
I don’t get it?
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His measurements and fits have already been performed, checked and delivered - that’s a huge obstacle removed right there.
Fit - check.
He has already experienced the customer service level from you or your sales staff, so he knows what to expect from you guys and whom he is buying from.
Branding - check.
Assuming cloths are getting showcased in 1080p resolution (big assumption), the supplier has taken their time and had enough mindfulness to design out a pretty decent style design selection process - then…
Fabric - check.
Why can’t the supplier white label the eCommerce software to your Menswear store brand for $29.99 USD per month?
1 customer buys at a profit of $300 USD // ROI = x10
3 customers buy at a profit of $300 USD // ROI = x30
6 customers buy at a profit of $300 USD // ROI = x60
Yeah, you get the point I think…
Imagine the type of reach that would give your Made-to-Measure or Custom-Made brand?
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I’m not saying it’s US of A domination.
Come on…
But you will be able to leverage out-of-city customer visits, retarget and reserve a customer who already knows how good of a quality product you offer and likes the service they get from your brand.
Not being able to service these guys is just money left on the table.
But how do they get the garments you may ask? Hmmm…
Oh yeah! Now we are talking…
Repurchase orders for guys who have already taken a fitting previously, can now be sent directly to them, without any order physically going through your hands.
In short, you’ll get all the power of a direct-to-consumer logistics system, complete with product packaging and brand labelling...
…without all the hassle of building a direct-to-consumer logistics system, signing contracts with DHL, handling a box supplier, printing brand labels, handling International Customs procedures, and much more...
Tell this to your current Wholesale custom-made Menswear supplier and they’ll look at you like you have 2 heads.
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So we all know the deal with Influencers.
Without getting too much into it, as it stands, the end customer affiliates more with Influencers more so than most of the origin brands.
This is one of the primary reasons why the Influencer market has exploded in the past decade.
Now, from your custom-made Menswear partner's point of view, they are supplying many Menswear Store owners right across the US, and maybe even further afar.
Picture a wheel on a bike.
Specifically, the wheel’s hub-and-spokes.
Your Menswear supplier is the hub.
Influencers are the spokes.
You guys are the end node.
1 hub connects to many spokes, to power end nodes.
So if the supplier has such an impact on so many nodes (retailers), would it not make productive logical sense to invest into a relationship and/or service, that when distributed, would have a far reaching effect on your nodes?
Ehh, of course.
And obviously building an Influencer network would achieve just this.
But it gets better…
If the goal of a Menswear retail store owner is to gain wider brand awareness and reach a new audience through the Influencer…
What do you think the influencer’s objective is?
Mainly, to bring as much authentic value to their audience, either in the form of preference matching products and services, or by creating content of which their audience are in demand for.
One, or both, of these objectives can be thoroughly achieved by an Influencer working with your Menswear custom-made supplier to match-fit to a local Menswear Retail Store owner near them.
The Result?
The store owner gets paired with an Influencer that aligns with their business location and audience
The Influencer gets matched with a local Retail Menswear business that best aligns with the Influencer’s style and audience interests.
Who do we have to thank for this arrangement?
Why the custom-made Supplier of course :)
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I must admit, I do feel like I am going out on a limb here, but hear me out.
SEO is a beast.
Anyone who has even had any dealings with it, knows this.
But there are parts of the process and operations of which your custom-made Supplier would be excellent at supporting with.
Local SEO is a powerful tool for businesses operating in a single locale or region, to get top level positioning inside Google’s Search results, with relatively little effort.
The problem is, many ‘one-man’ business owners are strapped for time, and naturally find it challenging to educate themselves across all elements involved in growing their business.
Using the ‘hub-and-spoke’ analogy again, can this not be a super offering for the custom-made Menswear supplier to provide for their Retail store owners?
Understandably, there will need to be localisation performed for every business in every region, and just this sentence alone makes me shiver under the workload…
But there is a method in the madness…
Much of the copywriting and content is more understood from the supplier side, more-so than the Store owner side, and this part of the process does not really change from region to region.
But how amazing would it be, from a local custom-made Menswear point of view, if they could work with a supplier that not only provided all 14 of the above services and products, but also helped them optimise for local SEO?
Or maybe I’ve gone too far? I dunno, I can’t tell.
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Well guys, congrats!
If you managed to get all the way to this point, you definitely have a clear idea of what the custom-made Menswear horizon will look like.
The above 15-Custom-Made Menswear supplier checkpoints are not even exhaustive either.
I’m already working on putting together an even bigger and more exciting list of features that Menswear suppliers should be offering their Retail Store customers.
I hope you are able to use the checklist to give your existing supplier a kick up the ass and tell them to take better care of you.
And if you are a newbie and searching for your first Menswear supplier, check out RJ MTM
(disclaimer: I’m the CEO).
We cover a large portion of that checklist above, and are currently working hard on finishing out the final 3-4 features at the end of the list.
Get in touch with us below if you want to chat with me about how we will supercharge your Menswear brand for custom-made Menswear garments, and much much more…
INTRODUCTION:
KEY WORDS TO KNOW
So for the purpose of this paragraph, let’s drop Suits, and assume we are talking about Menswear Suits.
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Contents
1. FABRIC SETUP
SUMMARY
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INTRO CONTINUED:
SIMILARITIES & DIFFERENCES
Finally, a clear cut list of where the cross-overs lie and what elements quantifiably different.
CHOOSING YOUR PRIVATE LABEL CUSTOM SUIT MANUFACTURER & SUPPLIER
15-POINT CHECKLIST
If you were signing up to get your very own Custom-Made system today..
...the below 15-point checklist would serve as the perfect roadmap for grading your new manufacturer & supplier and seeing how they compare to the crop.
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Let's crack on!
YOUR CUSTOM SUIT MANUFACTURER & SUPPLIER CHECKLIST
2. FITTING PROCESS
3. STYLE DESIGNS
4. COST
5. DELIVERY
6. IN-STORE SETUP
7. ORDER TRACKING
8. PAYMENT INTEGRATION
9. INVOICE EXPORTING
10. ANALYTICS PLATFORM
11. SOCIAL MEDIA HUB
12. eCOMMERCE SETUP
13. DROPSHIPPING FULFILMENT
14. INFLUENCER MATCHING
15. SEO OPTIMISATION
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