Suits

[5.25.2007 | Mercer Island]
Don Callahan

Jeff, I'm kinda curious how many suits a haberdasher like yourself has.

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1 responses to: "Suits"

Wednesday, October 3, 2007 Jeff Collins, Professional Haberdasher says: Don, Thanks for the "how many suits do you have" question. I actually get asked this one often. My answer is usually 'quite a few,' because I don't really like to focus on quantity when it comes to suits. Even though I'm likely to make more when selling more, my main focus is on service to my clients. I feel giving them the most combinations of dress shirts, ties and casual shirts is the best way to make my clients' wardrobes work for them. Allow me to illustrate it this way, if you have 1 suit, 1 shirt and 1 tie then you can wear that suit with or without a tie, 2 ways altogether. If you have 1 suit that goes with 5 shirts, with or without your 5 ties then you'd have as little as ten outfits (each shirt w/o a tie & each shirt matched with a tie) and as many as 60 combinations if you mix and match each tie with each shirt. So here's the investment part of all of this. Let's assume your new custom suit is $795 and you bought yourself a shirt and tie each for $85. Your total investment is $965 or $482.50 per outfit. In the other example you invested a bit more to gain some variety. There you have the same suit but 5 shirts and 5 ties for a total of $1,645, a little less than twice the investment. However you have the potential of creating 60 combinations. So you are looking at $482.50/outfit in the first scenario vs. $27.42 in the second. To vaguely once again answer your question, I personally have thousands of combinations with my suits that in the end each cost pennies. I hope this answers your question. Jeff Collins, Professional Haberdasher

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