Tailoring is on Life Support and Vision for the Future

 

 

“The tailoring industry is on life support. Stitch Link is a remedy and a tool to bring tailoring into the future.” Van Ly, founder of Stitch Link.

The tailoring industry is ultimately running itself to a dead end. Why such claim? Let me explain.

We all can understand the concept of survival of the fittest and this is no different to the survival of a particular industry or company. We often refer to a new company as a “baby” anyhow so let’s use this analogy to describe the working of the tailoring business.

Birthing, Nurturing, Competing

First how do you compete? By having a strong candidate. How do you have a strong candidate? By birthing and nurturing. The more you breed the higher chance of survival. However, with my eight years of doing tailoring, it has proven itself to do exactly Not that. There’s no breeding of any new tailors, not even much attempts to attract a new workforce so when the old workforce dies off so does their skills. They’re bringing their know-hows to the grave.

I know this because I’ve been doing this for almost a decade. After graduating with a BA in fashion design, like many of my classmates we ended up in retail sales. There’s not much a design scene in Boston even though we’re all technically trained to design clothes from concept to actual wearable garments. Yet most of us have a hard time applying this skill set in the real-world working arena. Some of us go on to high-end retail sales, some tweaked their skills to a desk job of designing in front of a computer such as making patterns and prints, and some go back to school for a second degree. Then there’s me – who accidentally step into a “puddle” industry called tailoring.

It’s a puddle because from the outside perspective it’s not a “clean” activity. Most adults are probably not fond of their kids playing in the puddle but if you ask the kids themselves they’re probably having the greatest time. That’s how I feel when I first hired by Nordstrom as a tailor. It turns out tailoring required a different set of skills than making clothes. I had to tweak my fashion design training to fit my new job criteria. Instead of deciding aesthetically where to put a zipper, a pocket, or a seam, it’s already done for me. My job now is to change the fit of the existing garment while keeping the integrity of the design. How fast can I rip open a dress, a pair of pants, a shirt, do the alterations, and sew it back to its original state becomes the new measuring stick of how experienced of a tailor I am. Here I realize I’ve become “the kid playing in the puddle.” I’m learning and growing but yet from some of my peers’ perspective it’s not a glamourous job. I still sit behind a sewing machine and do the same thing over and over again. It closely resembles sweat shop and I don’t blame them. But the fact is my pay itself is nothing of a sweat shop. At zero experience I was making $19.50/hour when minimum wage was $11 in 2012.

This stage was my “birthing” stage. I birthed myself into an industry where I didn’t know existed. Fashion schools don’t teach you to become a tailor; designer sounds better. Even though the techniques I learned in tailoring would have helped me tremendously in executing my school projects. While at Nordstrom I also encounter the first disconnect in this field. I’m among the youngest tailors they’ve ever hired. I was working with people of my mom’s age and our bonding conversations would be on how to cook various cultural dishes, where their kids go to school, and how cute their grandkids are. I was 23. While most of my friends go out with their coworkers for happy hour, I was going home and making food, and thinking can I have a career in tailoring? Is there any room for me to grow?

When I left Nordstrom three years later I could shorten sleeves and hem pants in my sleep. Then on a crossroad between going back to school for art education (fine art has always been my passion so why not be an art professor) and finding a part time to fund myself I stumbled into yet another “puddle.”

This time it’s a well-established tailor shop on Newbury street which opened its doors in 1997. Here’s when I submerged into the “nurturing” stage. The shop exposed me to other kinds of work such as wedding dresses, gowns, and special alterations which at Nordstrom we were more focused on providing the basic alterations. Thus, I dived in and started playing in this puddle again.

On top of learning new techniques, I was learning the overall operations of the shop. The owner later told me that I’m the youngest tailor she has ever seen, let alone hired. This becomes a more concerning issue when I start to think what happens when these experienced trade workers retired? How are we going to replace them? During my time there we’ve tried to look for younger candidates but to the owner’s perspective they are a lost investment. It takes too much time and financial resources to bring in an inexperienced person and train them fresh.

“Even after training they will not stay. They will go work for a retail company for its health care benefits and 401k.” She said. (As a small business she said she cannot compete with big companies.)

This leads me to my final stage – competing.

After working three years for this tailor shop, I know I’ve outgrown her “nurturing” ways of showing me the know-hows. I’ve armed myself with enough knowledge and I want to advance further – innovate and compete. Through numerous interactions with various customers I realize most of them would want a more interactive conversation even prior to bringing the garments to a tailor. (This is difficult because the owner is not familiar with texting or email. Her husband does all the emailing for her.) And some have expressed interests for in-home tailoring service. Yet every time I bring this up the owner always says there’s no money to be made and it’s a waste of time. A lot of the procedures in the shop are outdated and I think it’d be greatly beneficial if we can update them, give them a modern feel and attract some young faces who would like to work for us. But this is where the owner and I differ drastically. She doesn’t want to compete. She is complacent. Her shop has reached a stagnation and she’s alright with it. She’s 64 and I can understand why but what does that mean for me? I can’t compete under her business model. Eventually I find myself asking the same question again: is there any room left for me to grow? This is what I mean by dead end. When an industry cannot attract and produce new workforce thus have no one to succeed their skills and that’ll be the end for tailoring.

But like many things in life a dead end is not really a dead end. It simply means this is the time to hunker down and make your own path. I believe Stitch Link has the optimism, the drive and the technical mastery to bring tailoring into a modern pace and into everyone’s home.

Founding of Stitch Link

The birth of Stitch Link is perhaps a result of necessity rather than a want. There’s a big gap in the tailoring industry and I believe I have the responsibility to fill it, especially if I want the whole industry to succeed. As a benefactor of this trade I would like to see it thrive. In order for it to survive we have to listen to what the customers want, know the market, and equip ourselves with the right tools to compete.

Most of us can agree that going to the tailors is like a trip back in time. You’re most likely greeted by an older person with a tape measure around the neck. Till this day I still surprise some customers when they see me – “You’re so young! And you speak perfect English!”
Yes, this makes me wonder how I can duplicate myself and not have this as a rare phenomenon. Ultimately the answer is I have to run this trade like a startup. I have to compete in the unexplored territory. Rather than opening a traditional brick and mortar tailor shop and wait for customers to come, we go to them! Do the fitting in the comfort of their own home and deliver the clothes once they’re done. Efficiency meets standard.

This is a new baby I’m birthing. It will go through an incubation process, then nurturing new talents, and in the foreseeable future they’ll be able to compete. Perhaps start this business cycle again for themselves, compete with me and I’ll be alright with it because that’s the nature of business – survival of the fittest.