Quality suits, whether custom or made ready to wear can cost easily over $1000, depending on the brand name, tailoring needed and type of fabric. A custom suit that cost below $500, delivered within three weeks, along with $75 alteration credit is all made possible by a e-business, Indochino, a local Vancouver company. Indochino’s e-commerce model works directly with manufacturers in Shanghai to ship custom orders directly to customers, allowing efficiency in the delivery and cost savings from having retail store. Free-returns along with step-by-step how to measure yourself videos are included.
According to Forbes, Indochino now has over a customer base of 40 000, spanning 60 countries with revenue doubling year or ver year (Zitron). As an online retail, their humble beginnings was heavily reliant on online marketing via Facebook. Without a store-front and physical presence, it is quite hard for target consumers to associate with the brand, let alone discovering Indochino in the first place. And with online shopping skepticisms, Indochino may face being tagged as “too good to be true”. But buy leveraging Facebook, Indochino gained huge online brand awareness by giving free measuring tapes to fans who like their Facebook page. And to further counter e-commerce disadvantage, Indochina started to have pop-up shops touring different cities.
Recently, Indochino brought its traveling tailor pop-up shop back to Vancouver for 10 days (Hilderman), marking their 15th pop-up store. Calgary, San Jose, California is next on the agenda. Their CEO, Kyel Vucko notes that Indochino is able to double their customer base in the matter of a week, in which “all those guys become lifetime customers with [Indochino]”. This was a clear tactic to aggressively gain customer base in different cities. Because “physical retail still rules” (Hilderman) at the end of the day, Indochino’s e-commerce platform is winning because they are thinking about “how do[es] [Indochino] create a more emotive connection with the brand”, rather than using company website as brand extension or as another way to sell.
