

Dressed for Success - bond
http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/219343

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jaysonelliot
I hadn't heard of Blank Label before, and fell in love with the idea after
seeing this.

The price is very good if you're used to buying shirts from a quality label
like Emile Lafaurie, Paul Smith, Burberry, etc.

For me, though, I've switched to shopping outlets like Nordstrom Rack, Century
21, and Filenes - so I've gotten used to getting those kind of labels for
about $20-$40 per shirt. I have to be a little less picky about exact styles,
but I always end up with nice shirts.

I tried customizing a couple shirts on Blank Label. The cheapest I was able to
get was $50, and that was essentially a standard shirt, nothing I couldn't get
at any store, and I don't know how it will look or fit.

When I started playing with it and having fun, I quickly ran the shirt up to
$92 - and could have easily sent it far higher.

It's a wonderfully well-designed web site, and fun to use, but hard for me to
see the value in buying shirts there.

Best of luck to the Blank Label guys, I just thought I'd give my "why I didn't
buy" feedback, since they seem to be here on HN.

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lifeoffbi
thanks, that is massively helpful. so our core value proposition is providing
an affordable option for the various long-tails; skinny tall guy, french cuff
guy, monogram guy, etc. we have an incredibly high customer retention rate
because once we get someone in, they usually don't want to order from anywhere
else. and the best part, a good percentage will tell their friends because now
they're proud custom dress shirt owners :)

~~~
hammock
Website needs some work. The "wide" and "narrow" collar choices are backwards!
(the shirt image on left doesn't match up with the button selection) which was
enough to make me instantly lose all confidence in my order.

~~~
lifeoffbi
Thanks, that's something that we're fixing on the next release.

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pmichaud
The main thing I expected from this when I first saw it, and the thing that
excited me about it was the possibility of interesting fabrics--possibly
arbitrary fabrics that I could choose out of a huge library. I was
disappointed to find that there are only a few, relatively tame choices, and
that's why I was never interested in buying. I understand that sourcing a
billion different fabrics is probably difficult or impossible, but if you can
figure it out, you'll make a customer out of me.

~~~
lifeoffbi
That's great feedback; to optimize pricing, we buy fabrics in bulk, so as we
grow, we'll definitely be building our fabric inventory. Look out for some
really awesome choices this Summer.

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khafra
Any mailing list I can get on for notifications about that? I'd be all about a
seersucker short-sleeve button-down or something.

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lifeoffbi
this is our general landing page, there's an email collection point at the top
right <http://hello.blank-label.com/hi-5/>

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cma
Seems like a someone could put something together using a kinect to make in-
home measurements.

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lifeoffbi
have thought about it, but am not sure there is a significant overlap between
dress shirt owner and kinect owner?

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nitrogen
Here's at least one Kinect hacker, who also wants to buy quality clothing.
It'd be pretty cool to have an app that automatically takes your measurements.
Of course, you'd have to be wearing tight clothing for it to be accurate.

Edit: it might also be possible to get a rough personal preview of a shirt
using skeleton tracking.

As for camera owners overlapping with shirt owners, there are millions of
Kinect cameras out there hooked up to Xboxes, and as people start buying them
for PCs, that number will grow.

If it ends up making sense, I think you should do it.

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jerf
"Of course, you'd have to be wearing tight clothing for it to be accurate."

Effectively-no clothing would be much better. It's not like a human is looking
you over. You'd also need to hold a known calibration image, too. I'm still
not sure you could do it even then to the requisite accuracy, that's asking an
awful lot, but maybe. Would take some clever work and a lot of testing.

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bostonvaulter2
I agree that it probably wouldn't be practical, but I think it would be
awesome!

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tseabrooks
Anyone know of sites like this for a "big and tall" guy?

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lifeoffbi
we have a microsite for big and tall - <http://www.blanklabelbigandtall.com>
hopefully that should help

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cgallello
That's the most unlikely but awesome response ever.

~~~
lifeoffbi
haha, thanks chris :)

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barrydahlberg
Is there a gallery somewhere of designs people have done? Can I enter mine in
the Ugliest Shirt Of All Time category?

This seems like it has great gift potential. Is there any way we can load a
gift card so that when entered it comes up with a shirt design the giver
prepared as a suggestion? That way it's a step closer to a personalised gift
but without the difficulty of returning it is not liked!

Edit: No I wont be sending out the Ugliest Shirt Of All Time as a gift...

~~~
lifeoffbi
Re link in e-gift cert of designed shirt - that's actually a great suggestion;
have just loaded it up to the team.

We don't currently have a gallery feature, although will be adding that very
soon.

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jhen095
Being from New Zealand the first thing I look for on e-commerce sites is the
currency of the quoted price and the availability (and charges if applicable)
of international shipping.

I could find neither on your site.

Apart from that it's a great site and lots of fun designing different shirts.
Hopefully I can buy something from you in the future :)

~~~
lifeoffbi
Got it, that's great feedback. Everything is in USD, and we do international
shipping for $17 including duties.

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xiaoma
During my 6+ year stay in Taiwan, I regularly went to a tailor for custom
shirts and trousers. I usually paid about 750NT/shirt and about 2500NT for the
trousers. that comes out to about $25 and $75 in USD. Strangely, prices were
pretty much the same in HK (which has a higher per capita GDP than the US).

I love having tailored clothes and if I could buy them over the internet, all
the better! Even if I left Asia, I don't think I'd use such an expensive
service, though. At least not until after achieving some business success
myself. :)

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brianbreslin
I love this idea, years ago I tried ordering from Target's custom tailored
shirt site (measurements were pretty inacurate, but concept was clever, it
unfortunately was discontinued).

As someone who has a tough time finding properly fitting dress shirts (big
neck,broad chest/shoulders, narrow waist) I would be curious as to what the
return policy is. Some custom shirt sites seem to cater to certain crowds.

I've had several friends ask me if any companies make clothes tailored to
bodybuilders physiques.

~~~
lifeoffbi
We have a how-to sizing guide here (<http://bit.ly/e7q8La>) and we do free
remakes if your shirt doesn't fit as you'd like :) Free returns, remakes and
even refunds on a custom product, we think that's pretty risk free.

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StrawberryFrog
So, like <http://www.asuitthatfits.com/> but for shirts not suits?

.. just seen that they also do shirts.

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anigbrowl
Nice one. I'll likely be a customer for this firm too...I have to take my
shirts to a tailor anyway so I might as well cut out the middleman. Next,
suits.

~~~
mcastner
I've heard good things about IndoChino: <http://www.indochino.com/> but I
haven't tried them myself.

~~~
Stwerner
I just ordered a suit from them because I kept reading about them and had to
try it out myself

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will_lam
Danny Wong is a pure hustler. I've seen his Mixergy interviews and read many
of his articles on high pagerank sites like Huffington Post, ReadWrite Web,
Mashable etc.

I have no doubt that Danny Wong will be going places, even if it isn't with
Blank Label.

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zygot
Is there no https at checkout?

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lifeoffbi
depending on which route you take, https is not forced. will be fixed on the
next release. thanks for the feedback.

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thefool
Bug? In chrome when I try to design a shirt, I can't figure out how to change
the fabric design. Mouse overs show the description, but then I don't know
what to do.

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atacrawl
There used to be (still is?) a business that did this for jeans. It's a neat
idea.

But the site design is cheesy, to put it nicely.

~~~
fooandbarify
I actually like the design, fwiw.

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ahh
Anyone know a site like this for pants?

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earl
People already do this, just without a website. My tailor was based out of
Hong Kong. He flew to NYC every 3 months and rented a nice hotel room for 4
days. You went there and were fitted, picked out fabric, etc. Somewhere
between a week and 12 weeks later, clothes arrived in the mail. Paying $80 -
$100 for a custom shirt is a pretty good deal.

~~~
lifeoffbi
agreed, but isn't part of the point of the web to allow you to do things at
your own convenience? i agree that some definitely prefer the physical tailor
visit, we're just providing a web-enabled offering

~~~
earl
Sorry, my comment wasn't clear -- I thought it was interesting that you were
closing the circle to bring it solely online. The outsourced clothes isn't
interesting, but solely online is. Your website is cool and I like how you see
the clothing combo you pick out, but I'd be concerned about getting the wrong
measurements and ending up with not the shirt I want... In particular, I have
a power lifters build so it's hard to find shirts that fit my shoulders that
aren't far too big in other areas, and eg j crew's slim fit is just too tight
for my biceps when it fits my shoulders.

~~~
lifeoffbi
thanks for the clarification, that helps. getting the sizing right online is a
concern for any e-commerce apparel company. we have an online sizing guide
here (<http://bit.ly/e7q8La>) and if doesn't fit you great, we'll remake
another one with new sizing for free.

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martinshen
Congrats Fan

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davidnelson
I'm curious why anyone thinks $350,000 a year for two people is a lot of money
and impressive.

Seriously, $175k a year and you get an article in entrepreneur magazine and 26
points on hn? Really? They must not live in the bay area!

~~~
bond
$175K a year is a LOT of money in most places, so I still think it's
impressive.

~~~
lifeoffbi
thanks - for a 23 and a 19 year old, we think it's decent for our first year
online. we should be able to triple that in year 2.

